I have one on my workplace Mk 1 and another on my home treasure mark v. I’m so happy I did the install. It’s completely easy and also reversible if you need to sell an original unmodified Rhodes you can de-Avion it. There is, of course another brand …and they throw occasional shade at Avion for other things but not for the Retro Flyer. Great design job. You can decide how you want to run the power supply cable ( required). Mine is a lightweight drop hanging out the lower left front corner of the big aluminum face plate. When I am putting the. Mark I lid on, it rests easily across the key tops or music desk groove. When I’m playing, it’s hanging down out of sight to the left of the cheek block and plugs into the chunky 24v power brick with a co-ax power supply jack like you’d find on any piece of signal chain gear. This unit has never generated any noise so recording buffs will like it. I just use it live with either a cps stereo single box amp from Ashton Pittman, or a pair of relatively cheap jbl eon 612’s. If you want a brilliant cutting attack, you’ll need a twin or just a pocket mixer with eq. Lately I’ve had the mercy of no guitars on stage, so I don’t bother. Of (course, a guitarist with a little sensitivity would also eliminate the need for all that extra biting brilliance, as the preamp has the whole spectrum present… ). Wasn’t this a great demo? Thanks for posting it. Great job!
Sold! Thanks for the demo! I think like this solution better than the Stereo Vibe... I was about to go that route until I saw this video. I wasn't crazy swapping out the original cheek plate for the Stereo Vibe. This is very simple and beautiful.
Sounded great ... congrats to Avion Studios. Pricing is good ... and the tremolo stereo imaging is fantastic ... and of course your playing makes it sound great !!!
I found it on Reverb here in Los Angeles! It came from a lovely musician from Canada...it wasn't played a whole lot and she took REALLY good care of it. I just lucked out. It's an interesting story why I got the Rhodes. I made a pack for Splice a couple months ago (coming out in July) and I wasn't allowed to use my Nord to make the samples and loops, despite my longtime working relationship with them--a lot of the samples in their keyboards including the Rhodes are copyrighted and not necessarily "theirs." Everything in the Splice pack had to be analog and/or real. So, I rented a Rhodes from a good friend of mine here in LA, and made the pack, which was a lot of fun. When the Rhodes left my studio, I died inside, haha. So then the search began, and not before long, this one showed up and I went for it. I must say, the emulations, VSTs, and samples of Rhodes these days are impeccable. In many mix scenarios, I'd be hard pressed to hear the difference. However, as a player, there's literally nothing like the real thing. Nothing. The way it makes you feel, what it brings out in you, the touch of the keys, the mechanical noises, the inspiration...that, will never be replaced.
@@j3po784 Really interesting story how it lean you to get this "real" instruments. Thanks for sharing~ looking forward to hear more great music coming out soon
Doesn't sound as Wurly like as other Fender Rhodes 73's. I wonder of the tone bars are further away from the pick ups. It's how i want one to sound when i get one next year. This one is voiced perfectly.
New amp made it sound less muddy. Nice mod upgrade. Hey does your Rhodes have that Miracle Mod bump to improve the action? It seems like it plays responsively as you have the action set up. Nice “instrument” and soulful playing.
Awesome demo! I've been using the Retro Flyer for a while now and love it. Can you tell me more about the TRS cable you use? It really helped to bring the tremolo to the next level. Would it be as simple as trading out the standard 1/4" instrument cable for a different one?
Hey Keith! Yes it is essentially that simple. Use a TRS cable (preferably right angled) and if you have don't have stereo TRS input just split to dual mono and hard pan L&R. Drop us an email if you have any other questions.
Hi Julian! how r u? great channel. I need some help, maybe u can help me... I have a Rhodes Mark I 1978 (just Rhodes, not "Fender Rhodes"), and I'd never could get that sound, not even the first sound in your video, before the preamp modification/incorporation... can you recommend me some line sound flow? amp? console? preamp? or even if you know some vst that can emulate a keyboard amplifier... whatever. Thanks in advance!
Heya, Greg with Avion. It can absolutely directly swap-in for the passive controls in a Mk2. We also now make a larger black plate so people can use the larger DLX preamp on Mk2 rails. I hope that helps - any questions please reach out to us via the website. :) Cheers!
Rarely. However, I've been able to request them as backline on past tours. It's kinda like acoustic pianos though...you never know exactly what you're going to get! And every Rhodes sounds so different. And yes, they are quite heavy. ;)
Hmm, am I the only one who thinks that the plain Rhodes sounds better than the one with the Retro-Flyer. Sure, the stereo-tremolo is fantastic, and the recording of the version with the preamp is definetly louder. But the sound has somehow lost its smoothness.
He's just running it a hair too hot into the mixer, it's not the RetroFlyer, those units have gobs of headroom - but the secondary drive sounds good, so I get why he's coming in hot. Cheers, Greg @ Avion
I'll (Greg here) try to answer somewhat objectively. The biggest difference is the RetroFlyer is rail-mountable, while the LA is in its own enclosure. The RetroFlyer has a wide mid boost/cut while the LA unit is treble and bass plus some sort of blend function. Electronically the LA unit is 5v and some SMD stuff so less repairable and lower fidelity - more like a pedal. The RF uses 24v, split to 12v so higher headroom and dynamics etc, more like a rack piece. They both sound good, any decent active preamp that's reasonably designed will be a big improvement over passive outputs. We put a lot of effort into pricing and so the RF costs significantly less while having around the same cost in parts, if not more. There's not a wrong way to go really, different units will fit different situations. Any other questions just shoot us an email. Always happy to talk shop. 👍🎹
@@avionstudios6463 Wow, thanks for the insight in the differences. Years ago I bought a McLaren Harmonic Clarifier preamp from MajorKey (which is (I think) just a boost and a BBE processor). So the RetroFlyer offers EQ and Tremolo. Does it also offer some coloring of the sound, like eg a Fender Twin amp? or is it just a boost with EQ and Tremolo?
@@vanzea So from a signal perspective the preamp side is just about the cleanest gain you can get in a compact preamp. The Rhodes itself generates around 500mV-1V but it's extremely dynamic so it may be putting out 100mV then 1.2V. To cover that range you need big headroom. So the preamp side raises the signal around a factor of 3-4x (logarithmically of course). So the lower half of the rotation is good for high-gain amplifiers while the later half is great for going direct to mixer/interface etc. - essentially line level. There's also (very importantly) an on-board switchable high-pass-filter, which really helps keep the signal focused/usable. It all generally equates to better gain structures and signal to noise ratio. From a studio perspective, we generally want things as clean as possible because you can always add color/dirt/grunge later down the signal chain or in post production, but you can't take it away. So if you have a Fender Twin, or even a Fender Twin modeling plugin, the RetroFlyer will you give you the cleanest/highest fidelity sound for that emulator or amp to then color or otherwise affect. In short - a boost with tremolo and eq, haha. -Greg
@@avionstudios6463 Thanks again for your good information. So in essence this is a clean boost optimised for the Rhodes (impedance matching, gain), a nice tremolo, and a good EQ (also optimised for Rhodes). Am I right?
I'm not very good with screwdrivers and things, but I gotta say, it was pretty straight forward and easy. If I wasn't filming it I could have done it in probably 20 minutes. It took me more like an hour while trying to do all the videoing, haha.
You should do a studio tour if you haven’t already
I promise, I'll do it soon. :)
I have one on my workplace Mk 1 and another on my home treasure mark v. I’m so happy I did the install. It’s completely easy and also reversible if you need to sell an original unmodified Rhodes you can de-Avion it. There is, of course another brand …and they throw occasional shade at Avion for other things but not for the Retro Flyer. Great design job. You can decide how you want to run the power supply cable ( required). Mine is a lightweight drop hanging out the lower left front corner of the big aluminum face plate. When I am putting the. Mark I lid on, it rests easily across the key tops or music desk groove. When I’m playing, it’s hanging down out of sight to the left of the cheek block and plugs into the chunky 24v power brick with a co-ax power supply jack like you’d find on any piece of signal chain gear. This unit has never generated any noise so recording buffs will like it. I just use it live with either a cps stereo single box amp from Ashton Pittman, or a pair of relatively cheap jbl eon 612’s. If you want a brilliant cutting attack, you’ll need a twin or just a pocket mixer with eq. Lately I’ve had the mercy of no guitars on stage, so I don’t bother. Of (course, a guitarist with a little sensitivity would also eliminate the need for all that extra biting brilliance, as the preamp has the whole spectrum present… ). Wasn’t this a great demo? Thanks for posting it. Great job!
Beautiful Fender rhodes Sounds!😊
Wow, with the gain and tremolo in Stereo, it sounds heavenly amazing!!! Need one! :)
You are absolutely musical in all things you play. Thanks for you artistry, I saw you with Marcus miller and many others!
Just ordered it. Now I only need a Fender Rhodes
Makes it sound cleaner as in less muddy ... also makes it sound dirtier as in more bark! Definitely sounds top notch.
Wow!
Like you said, " That's worth the price of admission."
Outstanding ...
You're such a great player!
It sounds fantastic. And the elephant in the room is you're such a great feel player you make everything sound good.
Sold! Thanks for the demo! I think like this solution better than the Stereo Vibe... I was about to go that route until I saw this video. I wasn't crazy swapping out the original cheek plate for the Stereo Vibe. This is very simple and beautiful.
Sounds slightly cleaner, I like those mechanical sounds so beautiful 😩😩😩
Love it! Thanks!
Amazing tone, vibe and amp, Julian. Love it! I’m gonna get one of those as soon as I have my MKI or MKII. Insane vibe and that tremolo. Yay! Heaven!
Sounded great ... congrats to Avion Studios. Pricing is good ... and the tremolo stereo imaging is fantastic ... and of course your playing makes it sound great !!!
Thanks Julian!
Great sound, but the song below!!!!!! beautiful 💙🎹🎛🔝
Absolutely beautiful!! That tremolo is very unique... I‘m glad you reviewed it!
thank you for this, sounds so good. love your playing!
wow inspiring u r !! please post some of your voicing approaches and tutorials J3PO
Klassic Keys GB have now sold OVER A HUNDRED RetroFlyers to all over the world.......not one has gone faulty......everybody is very happy..........
Great player!!!
Sounds incredible bro!
It sounds amazing🔥🔥👌👌
Insane !
sounds great!
:: Ok, first I see a Moog, also you're wearing a Price t-shirt. Then you drive that '74 Fender so bad with Retro Flyer like no one= kudos!!!! ::
Awesome I love it
Sweet! 🤙🏽
Great player 🤓
Hey Julian, that's a beautiful sounding Rhodes. What upgrades have you had done in addition to the preamp? Keep it up!
1973 was the golden year of fender rhodes
Your rhodes sounds really good, would you mind telling where do you get it? There must be someone who took good care of it right?
I found it on Reverb here in Los Angeles! It came from a lovely musician from Canada...it wasn't played a whole lot and she took REALLY good care of it. I just lucked out. It's an interesting story why I got the Rhodes. I made a pack for Splice a couple months ago (coming out in July) and I wasn't allowed to use my Nord to make the samples and loops, despite my longtime working relationship with them--a lot of the samples in their keyboards including the Rhodes are copyrighted and not necessarily "theirs." Everything in the Splice pack had to be analog and/or real. So, I rented a Rhodes from a good friend of mine here in LA, and made the pack, which was a lot of fun. When the Rhodes left my studio, I died inside, haha. So then the search began, and not before long, this one showed up and I went for it. I must say, the emulations, VSTs, and samples of Rhodes these days are impeccable. In many mix scenarios, I'd be hard pressed to hear the difference. However, as a player, there's literally nothing like the real thing. Nothing. The way it makes you feel, what it brings out in you, the touch of the keys, the mechanical noises, the inspiration...that, will never be replaced.
@@j3po784 Man, what a story! Great that you had this to share and the luck to get one for you.
@@j3po784 Really interesting story how it lean you to get this "real" instruments. Thanks for sharing~ looking forward to hear more great music coming out soon
@@j3po784 Cool story!
What's your favorite VST Rhodes out there?
Love this and a lift to see this :O)...What was the track played at 00:57 please ...keep on enjoying your blessing in music brother :O)
Doesn't sound as Wurly like as other Fender Rhodes 73's. I wonder of the tone bars are further away from the pick ups. It's how i want one to sound when i get one next year. This one is voiced perfectly.
Herbie @4:08
New amp made it sound less muddy. Nice mod upgrade. Hey does your Rhodes have that Miracle Mod bump to improve the action? It seems like it plays responsively as you have the action set up. Nice “instrument” and soulful playing.
Killer.
Even on computer speakers I can hear the difference.
4:08 that's Herbie Hancock's actual proof solo
those tones are stunning 🙌🏼 have you heard the mk8?
Shit, now I gotta get this *and* two 1x12 amps
Top!😉👐🇩🇪🇧🇷
This sounds great. What speaker/cabinet would you recommend to use?
Awesome demo! I've been using the Retro Flyer for a while now and love it. Can you tell me more about the TRS cable you use? It really helped to bring the tremolo to the next level. Would it be as simple as trading out the standard 1/4" instrument cable for a different one?
Hey Keith! Yes it is essentially that simple. Use a TRS cable (preferably right angled) and if you have don't have stereo TRS input just split to dual mono and hard pan L&R. Drop us an email if you have any other questions.
@@avionstudios6463 Thanks for the response. Just ordered a TRS cable, can't wait to try it out!
Hi Julian! how r u? great channel. I need some help, maybe u can help me... I have a Rhodes Mark I 1978 (just Rhodes, not "Fender Rhodes"), and I'd never could get that sound, not even the first sound in your video, before the preamp modification/incorporation... can you recommend me some line sound flow? amp? console? preamp? or even if you know some vst that can emulate a keyboard amplifier... whatever. Thanks in advance!
I would be super curious to how what this sounds like A/B against running directly off the harp.
Exactly. I always read run directly off the harp. DI.
Need - want - Need - want - Need - want - Need - want - Need - want - Need - want - !!!!!
This sounds lush. Can this be used on Mk 2 and beyond?
Heya, Greg with Avion. It can absolutely directly swap-in for the passive controls in a Mk2. We also now make a larger black plate so people can use the larger DLX preamp on Mk2 rails. I hope that helps - any questions please reach out to us via the website. :) Cheers!
Might have missed it but are we hearing a direct sound or a recording of it fed into a guitar amp?
direct
Makes it sound more like a suitcase
it is a suitcase
@@christopherpederson1021 oh thank goodness lol
Do you bring the Rhodes to gigs? I've heard it's extremely heavy.
Rarely. However, I've been able to request them as backline on past tours. It's kinda like acoustic pianos though...you never know exactly what you're going to get! And every Rhodes sounds so different. And yes, they are quite heavy. ;)
And if you take the Nord as a substitute, which of the Rhodes samples do you like the most?
whats the name of the song playing at 1.00?
Hmm, am I the only one who thinks that the plain Rhodes sounds better than the one with the Retro-Flyer. Sure, the stereo-tremolo is fantastic, and the recording of the version with the preamp is definetly louder. But the sound has somehow lost its smoothness.
What’s with the distortion?
He's just running it a hair too hot into the mixer, it's not the RetroFlyer, those units have gobs of headroom - but the secondary drive sounds good, so I get why he's coming in hot. Cheers, Greg @ Avion
How does this compare to: fenderrhodesla.com/fender-rhodes-preamp.html
I don't know, as I haven't tried theirs!
I'll (Greg here) try to answer somewhat objectively. The biggest difference is the RetroFlyer is rail-mountable, while the LA is in its own enclosure. The RetroFlyer has a wide mid boost/cut while the LA unit is treble and bass plus some sort of blend function. Electronically the LA unit is 5v and some SMD stuff so less repairable and lower fidelity - more like a pedal. The RF uses 24v, split to 12v so higher headroom and dynamics etc, more like a rack piece. They both sound good, any decent active preamp that's reasonably designed will be a big improvement over passive outputs. We put a lot of effort into pricing and so the RF costs significantly less while having around the same cost in parts, if not more. There's not a wrong way to go really, different units will fit different situations. Any other questions just shoot us an email. Always happy to talk shop. 👍🎹
@@avionstudios6463 Wow, thanks for the insight in the differences. Years ago I bought a McLaren Harmonic Clarifier preamp from MajorKey (which is (I think) just a boost and a BBE processor). So the RetroFlyer offers EQ and Tremolo. Does it also offer some coloring of the sound, like eg a Fender Twin amp? or is it just a boost with EQ and Tremolo?
@@vanzea So from a signal perspective the preamp side is just about the cleanest gain you can get in a compact preamp. The Rhodes itself generates around 500mV-1V but it's extremely dynamic so it may be putting out 100mV then 1.2V. To cover that range you need big headroom. So the preamp side raises the signal around a factor of 3-4x (logarithmically of course). So the lower half of the rotation is good for high-gain amplifiers while the later half is great for going direct to mixer/interface etc. - essentially line level. There's also (very importantly) an on-board switchable high-pass-filter, which really helps keep the signal focused/usable. It all generally equates to better gain structures and signal to noise ratio. From a studio perspective, we generally want things as clean as possible because you can always add color/dirt/grunge later down the signal chain or in post production, but you can't take it away. So if you have a Fender Twin, or even a Fender Twin modeling plugin, the RetroFlyer will you give you the cleanest/highest fidelity sound for that emulator or amp to then color or otherwise affect. In short - a boost with tremolo and eq, haha. -Greg
@@avionstudios6463 Thanks again for your good information. So in essence this is a clean boost optimised for the Rhodes (impedance matching, gain), a nice tremolo, and a good EQ (also optimised for Rhodes). Am I right?
Sounds better without..
I bought this and it frequently went in and out, messaged the company and they wouldn’t help me. I can’t recommend this product..
Ordered one a couple of weeks back can't wait to install it.
How easy was it to install.
Great playing as always
I'm not very good with screwdrivers and things, but I gotta say, it was pretty straight forward and easy. If I wasn't filming it I could have done it in probably 20 minutes. It took me more like an hour while trying to do all the videoing, haha.
@@j3po784 To get the mono signal did you just use a TS Cable I take it
@@sebchedick yes, the preamp is mono with a regular TS cable
According to Greg at Avion the preamp is stereo. They recommend a TRS to 2XTS cable.