What's the general consensus as to the best Rhodes synth out there?? I'd be interested for it to include software plugins, expansion cards, synths, and harware modules..

Some of the possibilities I've considered:

Roland Jv-xp keys of the 60's and 70's exp card....

EVP 88 Emagic plug in softsynth....

Kurweil sp76 stage piano....

any suggestions or opinions?

Kurzweil K 2xxx + real rhodes cd-rom from pyramid sound productions

Reason also has a great Rhodes sound . Put a little phaser on it and BAM there you go . After working in a place where we fixed them and tuned them , I don't ever want to see another real one again . Those and MELLOTRONS too .

The Roland card sounds good, but only when run through an amp or some kind of amp sim. The Rhodes are nice, but they are a little too nice. Great jazz rhodes, but not really spanky dirty ones. But if you overdrive it and like editing patches, it sounds extremely realistic. I haven't tried any of the others you mentioned. If you don't want to spend time tweaking, and don't want to run it through some effects processors or a decent amp, it's probably not going to suit you just going right out of the synthe to the main mixer.

STOP. If you want the king of the hill - get a Yamaha Motif. I'm tellin' ya - it doesn't get any better. I'm a Rhodes geek, and the Mo has it ALL.

With that much money you could just get a Clavia Nord Electro.
http://www.clavia.se/nordelectro/specs.htm

-tek

I must admit, I've never heard the Nord. Impressive specs, but I never trust the hype. Have you played it?

Only the B3 sound at a theme park here. I know nothing about good or bad B3 sounds

There's no hype. You never hear about Clavia stuff. You just see red things on stages.

-tek

I see an awful lot of silver things too, that doesn't mean that I want a Triton.

That makes two of us.

-tek