“A Timeless Classic Reimagined for Today”: Rhodes MK8 Review]

What is it?

Talk to any contemporary keyboard player and the chances are, they will hold an enormous amount of affection for the electro-mechanical piano known as a Rhodes. Much like conventional acoustic pianos, the Rhodes adopts a key and hammer mechanism, but instead of striking a string, the hammer strikes a thin rod, known as a tine. The tine vibrates across a pick up, producing the beautifully identifiable sound, which we intrinsically know as the sound of a Rhodes.

Of course, there’s a little more to it than than that, but as each note on the instrument requires its own set of moving parts, there’s a lot going on under the hood of the instrument, although the instrument itself has significant history.

The version that we tend to think of as the original, is the Mark 1 Stage, which was originally released in 1970. Of course, there have been numerous revisions over the years, but many people still regard the Mark 1 and Mark 2 as the benchmarks, although purists will tell you why one is better than the other. That is until now, because under the direction of renowned keyboardist Dan Goldman, Rhodes is back on the block, and producing amazing hardware and software, with the pinnacle being the flagship Rhodes MK8, now complete with a full FX section and MIDI.

Performance