Realsamples 73 Stage Piano Collection HALion

How long have you been making music?

Well with some breaks about 20 years

What kind of music do you make?

Kind of Pink Floyd, The Cure, Jean Michel Jarre and Depeche Mode style. Mostly depending on my moods. Maily I m a guitarist without Band so I use MIDI Equipment.

What application(s)/sampler(s) do you use the library with?
NI Kontakt

How long have you been working with the library?
Strange question! But 2 Weeks perhabs. It took me only some days to judge the lib. I had already that many crap and I think I m able to judge a lib fast and further if I need to make it up and how much work this will take.

What is your primary listening equipment? (soundcard to headphones, digital monitors, etc.) Arg! Do U want a review or how ong do U want to spend on reading a list?

Was it worth the price tag?
What are your favorite sounds? Are all the sounds usable?

Well I payed about 30EUR in total for it. First I had doubts if I should buy or make a bank with free RHODES samples in the net. Afterwards I m very happy that I bought it. Not only due to a nice new contact to REALSAMPLES but this lib adds real RHODES to my equipment. I spend some Nights to jam only with this sound and some effects of the Kontakt (and got the Rhodes sound of Pink Floyd with about no work due to I had to make it wet. Thats what I wanted!). All sounds are 100% usable. Only release samples are missing but I got the promise to get these soon for free. What a service!

Are there a wide variety of sounds, or is the library very specialized?

Only Rhodes in high quality and mutisamples. Want a Rhodes and got a sampler? Get these Samples!

I'm producing R&B and some jazzy stuff as well.
I guess you have to have a Rhodes sound for that kind of music :)

Great!! Had an original Rhodes but got rid of it - great sound, but I've always had tuning and reliabilty issues.
This sample set sounds very close to my Rhodes model, dynamics are just the same, and the price is really, really good.
Their other stuff looks nice, too.

I'm 45 years old and I've been making music since I'm about 10 years old. I was doing some clinics in the 80s and played keyboards in synths in several professional bands. I've been working mainly as a studio musician in the 90s and for the last 4 years, I've been building my own studio and record original stuff now. I'm mostly in the digital domain (Logic, Powercore, UAD-1), but I also got a Studer tape machine where I sometimes record in the first place to get more warmth and where I finalize things.

I've been using their Strings CD set for the past 6 months and I liked it very much, so I bought the "73 Stage Piano Collection" which is a 3-CD set of a Fender Rhodes piano.

I always liked the good old Mark I Rhodes sound and its dynamics. I tried the XSample series, but they had only like 4 velocites of each note, which does not sound real enough in my opinion.

With this CD, I have 16 velocities of each note, which sounds much more realistic. The sound is warm and full, just what I'd expect. I had a conversation about it with the one of the guys at Realsamples, and I was told that they recorded in 24/96 and then went down afterwards to 24/44.1. I think you can hear the clarity and depth.

I had to decide between Scarbees CD and this set here. I went for this set, because - judging from the demos - the sound is a little bit warmer and more natural. Scarbees CD has 12 velocities, while this has 16, but I think this difference is not what got me here.

I like the philosophy of Realsamples very much, so I thought I'd give it a try. As far as I understand, it's pretty much the same like Scarbees (they also used a Mindprint preamp here, but the DTC instead of the En-Voice which Scarbee used, I don't know the difference. They went straight off the piano's pickups, too), but the price is 60 $ compared to 200 $.

I haven't played on a real Rhodes for a while, but expect for the difference in feeling when I hit my master Keyboard instead of a Rhodes panel, the sound is just there.
It's a shame Realsamples is not so well-known. Maybe in Germany they are. I just wished it had 32 velocites like their other CDs (that's why I gave it a 9), but then again it sounds as real as a real one and it's still ahead of all the others.