Tines & Reeds RhodeStar Electric Piano Preamp
Update 06-29-2024
Depending on the era of production, it can be hard to get a good
sound out of Fender Rhodes pianos. CBS had owned Rhodes pianos
(and Fender guitars/amps) from 1965 to 1985. The MBA degreed
beancounters were the real people in charge and they were always
reducing the cost of pianos by substituting vendors for components,
much to the chagrin of product engineers and customer artists.
I had owned multiple Rhodes pianos over the years and I was not
happy with most of them. The only Rhodes I own now is my old 1967
sparkletop piano which has the best sound and plays great, but
it has really sensitive green coil wire pickups which can suffer
tone suck and noise depending on the receiving device - DIs, combo
amps, preamps, etc. The wrong device can make the pickups
noisy and drastically alter the tone. Getting a good sound was
not an easy task! Newer Rhodes pianos are not as sensitive,
but I'm partial to the sparkletop.
When I bought my sparkletop piano, it was missing the original
Jordan preamp and power amp, and only one functioning original Utah
speaker was intact. The original electronics and Utah speakers
sound awful (no loss if they were missing), the speaker baffles were
warped from humidity, each baffle had cutouts for 1x12 and 1x10
speakers, and I did not want 1x10 speakers. The bottom case of
the sparkletop was essentially a keyboard stand. However these
cabinets from the 1960s era of Fender/Rhodes are built from good
unsegmented one piece pine sides, so I built new front and rear
speaker baffles from 1/2" birch plywood and loaded each baffle with
two 12in Celestion 75W ceramic speakers (total of four) which sound
much better. A previous owner had swapped out the original
felt hammer set for the wood/plastic hammer set with neophrene tips
(they are interchangeable). The 1960s pianos used tone resonators
that produce a unique tone and decay envelope, which I grew to
like. With the green coil wire pickups, this combination
produced the full range of Rhodes tones from mellow bell tone to
full fusion bark which is very controllable with playing dynamics
and even loudness across the piano - if you have the right processor
chain!
I had done a lot of experimenting with my studio processors with
this piano and it wasn't easy to find some chains with great Rhodes
sounds. The front end preamp or DI was the acid test - if they
have an input impedance that is too low (under one Mohm), it loads
down the pickups which alters the tone and makes the noise
worse. I do have a vintage Peterson preamp that was scavenged
from a "parts" Rhodes but the sound has too much mids for my taste
and it attenuates the bell tone too much (the original Rhodes
preamps had restricted bandwidth to mask the noise from the
pickups). Not only does the Rhodestar produce a great tone
with very low noise, it replaces the multiple devices in my
chains. It's an all-in-one-box channel strip optimized for
electric pianos that delivers warm full dynamic range of tones from
bell tone to fusion bark, and it includes DSP effects that are
suitable for the Rhodes. It is also designed for other electric
pianos like the Wurlitzer reed piano of the 1960s/1970s.
The best audio routing from a suitcase piano is from the "Accessory
1" jack on the namerail, which is the raw audio from the
pickups. If you have a stage piano (or a sparkletop or early
suitcase piano without the accessory jacks), route audio from the
RCA jack on the harp assembly, to the left and at the rear (also the
raw audio). Do not route audio from the 1/4" jack on the stage
piano, the passive electronics will wreak tone suck and the
Rhodestar can't do its job effectively. In fact, many
professional recordings used a DI from the raw audio RCA jack for
best tone. Use a cable as short as possible; the output signal
of the pickups is very small and a short cable reduces the risk of
noise and induced RF interference.
Features
The power switch is on the VOL control on the far left of the
Rhodestar panel. There's a "click" position that is the power
switch at full counterclockwise rotation; in the "click" position,
the power is off. Rotate the VOL control clockwise out of the
"click" position, and power is on.
The raw audio from the piano plugs into the rear panel INPUT
jack. Next to that jack is a GAIN control; while playing the
piano, rotate the control clockwise until you see the COMP LED flash
in the EQUALIZER section of the front panel. The equalizer
includes a master compressor at the end of the EQ chain (to prevent
digital clipping of the effects). When this LED flashes, back
off the GAIN control until the COMP LED briefly flashes only when
the piano is played hard. This is not a hard fast rule, you
can max the gain for crunch if you wish. In the PHONES section
on the far right of the front panel, plug headphones in the jack and
turn up the VOL control.
Turn off the TREMOLO and EFFECT section to explore the EQUALIZER
section. The usual bass/treble tone controls are augmented by
a sweepable mid control that can cut or boost - a control I had long
wanted in a piano preamp. Note that as you use more EQ boost,
this makes the compressor more active so you may have to reduce the
input gain control. If you desire the vintage "fusion bark"
tone without the bell tone transient, the FILTER control brings in a
low pass filter that attenuates the bell tone. At full
clockwise rotation, the cutoff frequency of the filter is high
enough that it does not attenuate the bell tone; rotating the
control counterclockwise gradually lowers the filter cutoff which
attenuates the bell tone. It is completely variable so you can
vary how much or how little bell tone you want. One might
think that the TREBLE control is redundant, but it isn't.
Note that some eras of Rhodes pianos will not produce the bell tone
- my 1976 stage piano had no bell tone. This is a consequence
of the "substitutions" of components (read: the pickups) that the
MBA beancounters were changing. Likewise, the late 70s/early
80s "Mark II" Rhodes will produce the bell tone, but not the fusion
bark.
Turn on the TREMOLO section. The TREMOLO section emulates a
few classic tremolo effects (circuit is Vactrol based, close to the
original). Many Rhodes players prefer the tremolo effect in
the Peterson preamp and the Rhodestar manual says this can be
emulated by setting WAVE to "square" and TYPE to "stereo", then
varying DEPTH and SPEED to taste. The Vactrol opto elements
have a "lag" response when hit with a control signal with steep
edges (IE square), so the "square" shape modulating the Vactrol
element will yield the "trapezoidal" panning motion of the classic
Peterson tremolo. If you're using a Wurlitzer piano, set TYPE
to "mono" and WAVE to "square" for the classic sound. An LED
gives you a visual indicator of the tremolo speed. The tremolo
can be remotely turned on/off via the rear panel FOOTSWITCHES jack.
A great addition to a piano preamp is the EFFECT section. Turn
it on and there are eight DSP effects to choose from: shimmer
reverb, plate reverb, stereo delay (ping-pong), mono delay, chorus,
phasing, flanging, and autowah. Effects are selected with the
PROGRAM control. Three PARAMETER jacks vary effect settings,
and a MIX control varies dry/wet balance. Only one effect can
be active at a time; but when using
delay/chorus/phasing/flanging/autowah analog effects, the reverb
level (I think it's the plate reverb algorithm) is always available
via the PARAM 3 knob. Nice touch to include reverb with the
analog effects. The DSP effects can be remotely turned on/off
via the rear panel FOOTSWITCHES jack.
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Effects
How are the effects? The DSP is a Spin Semiconductor FV-1
IC. The reverbs are stunning, especially the shimmer
reverb. Reverb is usually a weak point in DSP effects, but the
Rhodestar DSP reverbs sound really good. This is coming from
an owner of pro audio digital reverbs like Lexicon and Eventide, so
I don't using the adjective "stunning" lightly. I wish there
was an ambient reverb but that's a minor omission (and the effects
loop provides a solution). The analog effects sound pretty
warm for DSP effects. Delay sounds like classic BBD/tape delay
(Echoplex was a popular effect with early Rhodes artists), and it
behaves like a tape echo - changing the delay time does not
interrupt the audio so you can do manual pitch smears. Try the
stereo tremolo into stereo ping-pong delay...! Chorus is
stereo and rich, Phasing and Flanging are very analog
sounding. Autowah sounds neat for staccoto funk playing.
If you want the Richard Tee phasing sound, you can always plug an
ElectroHarmonix Small Stone phaser in the effect loop.
MIX control has an impact on the quality of the analog
effects. Chorus can work with any dry/wet balance, flanging
sounds best between 50% dry/wet and 100% wet. In fact, the
classic analog flanging is done using 50% dry/wet; as you increase
the depth control (PARAMETER 2), the dry/wet balance is crucial for
extreme flanging so experiment with the MIX control around that 50%
dry/wet range.
If you want the authentic autowah and phaser sound, the MIX control
must be 100% wet - that's how the original effects were
configured. The phasing effect gets weaker with MIX of other
than 100% wet, but it's not "wrong" and the effect is subject to
taste. Real analog delays, chorus, and phasers tend to be
noisy - not a problem with DSP effects.
All in all, the DSP effects are all useful with a Rhodes. Good
selections for electric pianos.
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Rear Panel
Stereo outputs are provided as unbalanced 1/4" jacks or stereo
balanced XLR jacks with ground lift, perfect for your DAW or vintage
multitrack tape recorder (well, how hard core vintage are you?!?).
One of the features that appealed to me is the effects loop (mono
send/stereo return). This is between the EQ and TREMOLO
section. This allows me to patch in external processors to
further color the sound. I have several effects processors I
like with my Rhodes that I can patch them into the effects loop - my
A/DA STD-1 Tapped
Delay, my MF-103 Phaser,
my MF-108M
ClusterFlux, and my Dynacord CLS-222 Leslie
Simulator. If you want some overdrive or vacuum tube
coloring you could also use a tube preamp in the loop. If you
use this loop, be careful not to use too hot a signal in the RETURN
jacks to avoid digital clipping of the DSP effects. Note that
the SEND jack can be used to route audio to your favorite combo amp
or external effects chain, and this is after the EQ section.
If you re-amp a Rhodes from a track (using raw audio), you can use
the Rhodestar for post processing by routing that re-amp track audio
to the RETURN jacks to use tremolo and DSP effects in the Rhodestar.
The rubber feet suspends the box safely above the harp cover, which
protects that beautiful silver sparkle finish from scratches of the
Rhodestar's metal enclosure. The Rhodestar can be rack
mounted, optional rack ears are available on the Tines And Reeds
website.
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Epilogue
The Rhodestar is a new product for 2024 and can be ordered here.
It is a german website, click "Opposite Language" on top right for
english.
I've seen plenty of Rhodes preamps on the market - this one has
everything I wanted and is a very compact and practical
solution. This device is powered by a wall-wart; while I am
not fond of wall-warts, this one gets a pass because:
- An internal power supply would require transformers, which
would induce 60hz hum in the pickups. The wall-wart avoids
this because the transformer is far away from the pickups.
- I like the option to place the preamp on the harp cover close
to me while I am playing, with the controls within easy reach.
- Using the shortest cable possible between pickups and preamp
has the benefits of reduced noise.
- I no longer gig Rhodes pianos, so the wall-wart will not be
exposed to damage from the rough rigors of gigging. Studio
fixture only, thus the wall-wart cable won't break from moving
around gigs.
I'm still exploring the Rhodestar - so far I have no regrets.
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