A recent setup for John C.S. Keston with a Rhodes EP at the McGuire Theater, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

As I continue my search for the “perfect” stage piano (spoiler: there isn’t one) I have been asking myself if it is practical and/or desirable to use a VST instead of a dedicated hardware instrument. This is an approach that I have used in the past, and one that many professionals choose, so I have decided to explore a few modern examples of this possibility in detail.

Since the Rhodes (the actual 130lbs version) has been the instrument of choice for me for many years, the first thing I wanted to determine was if there was an electric piano VST that could emulate the Rhodes well enough to satisfy my ears. Over the years I have used Lounge Lizard (Electric in Ableton Live), Arturia’s Stage-73 V, and several others with limited success. This article is a reflection on a new-to-me VST that might just work in my weird and atypical performance and studio setups. No emulation has the ability to replace the Rhodes, but I’m hoping to find a satisfactory facsimile for live performances.

The latest Rhodes VST that I have found interesting is VTines MK1 from Acousticsounds. Although VTines MK1 provides only one electric piano model, is it by far the most adjustable of the examples I have used. For example VTines MK1 allows for the adjustment of around 9 parameters on a per key basis! In other words you can adjust the virtual “pickup distance”, “tine height”, and more for individual notes on the instrument.

This set of features addresses one of the main concerns I have had switching from a real Rhodes to sampled or modeled emulation, and that’s the unique characteristics of each individual instrument. These subtle differences are what makes the Rhodes one of the keyboard instruments I adore the most. Even Rhodes of the same models have these distinctions, which come down to micro adjustments in the action and especially in the pickup distance and tone bar positions.

I currently own a Mark I Stage that I use for performances and a Mark I Suitcase model that stays in my studio. I also had Mark II Stage that I sold to a friend who still has it. Maintaining these instruments is not easy. They stay in tune pretty well, but the tone and dynamics of each note can vary with the climate, or shift unpredictably after moving the instrument. I have spent countless hours under the hood with a nut driver and a phillips head screwdriver adjusting the pickup distances and tone bar positions. But no matter how much adjusting one does the mechanics and physicality of the Rhodes mean that it will never be perfect. And that’s one of the things I love about the Rhodes. No two are the same, and everytime you play a Rhodes it’s a different experience requiring the artist to adapt.

As far as I know, VTines MK1 is the only Rhodes VST that allows for adjusting how each individual key behaves. If you want a certain key to bark more easily than the others, you can do that. And with the animations in the user interface I almost feel like I’m getting under the hood to tweak the “Rhodes” to my personal preference. In my first few minutes with VTines MK1 I noticed a few keys in the upper mid range that seemed a little too bright. Maybe it was my playing or maybe it was my ears, but within a few minutes I was able to adjust them individually to my liking.

The question is will VTines MK1 work for me in a live setting where I would normally use the Rhodes? I can’t quite answer that yet, but I think with the right controller and interface it very well could. Acousticsamples made VTines MK1 by combining modeling techniques with samples from a 1978 Mark I thus keeping the size of the instrument small without compromising the performance. Because the instrument they sampled was a 73 there are only that many keys active in the plugin. I would have liked 88 keys to be active, but I understand the integrity of limiting the instrument to the 73 keys that they sampled. Although I have yet to decide if it will work for me in a live setting, VTines might serve as an alternative to the Rhodes in the studio when it comes to simple quantized parts for EDM or other heavily produced applications. I just need to decide if I’m willing to bring a controller, interface, computer, and all the possibilities for failure that introduces, to the gig…