Here's a VSTi that's hard to beat. It does a better job IMO than a similar commercial product that sells for over $300.
Mr. Ray is a Fender Rhodes simulator named in honor of a famous Rhodes player.
I have owned several Fender Rhodes over the years, and while I would still prefer a real Rhodes in some circumstances, anyone that doesn't have access to the real thing should try this.
For those of you who weren't around the music scene in the 70's and 80's, during the 70's if you were a keyboard player you HAD to have a Rhodes to be taken seriously. They were in high demand and expensive. Chuck Monte even made a career out of modifying them (dyno my piano).
Suddenly, Yamaha introduced the revolutionary DX7 synth, and almost overnight the value of a Rhodes went to $0. Everyone, or at least everyone I knew, dumped the 150 pound Rhodes in favor of the DX7. Well, the DX7 did have some at the time cool Rhodes patches, which actually don't sound like a Rhodes, but were usable in a similar fashion. This was so common that 'tine piano' became a boring cliche of the 80's and eventually no one serious would use that patch. But, for a few years, people were actually throwing Rhodes in the trash!
Fast forward to the retro trend of the 90's. DX7's are being forgotten since few people ever learned to use them for anything but the factory patches which grew stale from overuse. Rhodes are now more valuable than ever.
While the Rhodes has a great and very useful sound (or range of sounds) for jazz and R&B music, one of the other reasons players dropped them in the 80s was the action. Most Rhodes pianos play like pounding on a sponge. You have to hit the keys harder than on an acoustic piano. Great way to wreck your hands. The very last Rhodes pianos had better action, but 80-90% have the bad action.
For this reason alone, many players will find an emulation actually works better for them than the real thing. Obviously there are other things an emulator can do, like fit inside a computer and work with a sequencer, etc.
So, among those looking for that classic Rhodes sound in the desktop world, a certain modelled Rhodes that was suitable for LOUNGE use (and other styles) became quite popular. It's good but not cheap.
The good news for us all is the the author of this program used his ears and spent a lot of time trying to nail the emulation, and he did a darn good job. So much so that I would recommend this over the commercial item even if they were the same price.
Also worth checking out is the Wurlitzer emulation by the same author.
The only downside to this instrument is it uses a fair amount of CPU power, but no more than a lot of other synths.Read Review
