Hi, I recently joined the Miami-based band The JeanMarie as a full-time keyboard player. My rig consists of a full-sized rhodes and a Korg MS2000. We're booking a tour for the spring and there's no way I'm lugging that rhodes around for a few weeks. What's a good virtual rhodes these days? Preferably a module...I'm looking to spend well under a grand.

Cheers!

The Yamaha Motif has the best sound I heard so far for Rhodes tones with great effects. You can get a rack version, but I think it's more than a grand.
You can also get lucky ( maybe) and find a Roland MKS330 ( not sure of the number ) - it had a great rhodes sample too.

Used Motif racks sell for <$1,000 on eBay. There are several listed right now.

You could try the Lounge Lizard PC based Rhodes emulator...I use it on stage running on my laptop...much lighter than the real thing...

Here... http://www.applied-acoustics.com/loungelizardsession.htm

Hi,

talking about wirtual instruments I would like to go for the free plug-ins available at http://www.soundfonts.it
they are made by Guido Scognamilio, a very good guy from Naples (Italy) that with great passion has created different vintage keyboards including 2xRhodes, Wurlitzer, Hammond clones.

Really nice IMHO.

Regards.

pasadoble: yeah, i'm thinking that's my best bet. i'm either going to pick up a used Dell laptop that's a couple years old or build a mini/micro-ATX machine and have lounge lizard as a startup item, so i could run the computer headless on stage. that would only run me around $150 sans software! (There's no way I'd bring my precious iBook on tour, heheh)

booby: wow, thanks for linking to those soft synths! I'm definitely going to check them out once i get my windows box back up and running!

I'm curious, why wouldn't you use your BEST stuff for yout tour? Is this your living, or a hobby? Either way ...... I suggest you use the best available. The laptop I use on stage is a Sony Vaio - best one I EVER had.

There's a soundfont called
Learjeff's Rhodes MK I-Soundfont

Can't find the link for it right now. It's been available for about a year now or more. Kind of a dark rhodes, not a really twanky snappy one.

I make my living as a musician and as a producer. Taking my laptop on tour is not an option because it is my primary machine for the other half of my professional life. Plus I play in a rock band, I've been on tour with rock bands before and if there's one thing I know it's not to bring along any gear that isn't necessary. All I'd be using are Lounge Lizard, NI's B3, and perhaps a Gigastudio piano, not computationally demanding stuff. If a $100 mini-ATX windows machine can get that job done with the same efficiency as my mac, I'll take that on tour any day over the $1000 liability.