Review: V Tines MK1 Electric Piano by Acoustic Samples

With the V Tines MK1 Electric Piano, Acoustic Samples has proven that it’s not only possible to make an amazing sounding recreation of a classic 1978 Fender Rhodes Mark 1, it’s possible to do it in under 90 mb!

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Review: V Tines MK1 Electric Piano by Acoustic Samples

The race for realism in sampling often feels tied to a race to fill up hard drive space. By this I mean that in conventional sampling, if a developer wishes to offer a huge amount of round robins and velocity layers, the fact is that they will need to record all those samples and the hard drive footprint of the instrument will balloon out to a large size. With the advent of sample modeling beginning to really come into its own in the last decade, this is no longer necessarily the case. With the V Tines MK1 Electric Piano, Acoustic Samples has proven that it’s not only possible to make an amazing sounding recreation of a classic 1978 Fender Rhodes Mark 1, it’s possible to do it in under 90 mb!

V Tines MK1 Electric Piano sells for €99.00 from Acoustic Samples

Thoughts

I will admit that when I downloaded this instrument I glanced at the download size and thought something was wrong and that I hadn’t gotten the full file. I had after all already listened to the demos on the website as it was downloading and was impressed with how realistic it sounded. The download was only 85mb once I had uncompressed it. How could something so small possible sound so good and playable? I opened it up and sure enough, it felt like I was playing a real Fender Rhodes! The reason such a small instrument is able to have seemingly infinite round robins and velocity layers is because it wasn’t made purely from sampling. It was made through a hybrid process of sampling and sample modeling. Though the initial process began by sampling an actual Fender Rhodes, the majority of the nuance and sound is actually happening procedurally.

I was fortunate enough recently to be able to play a real Rhodes and what really surprised me is that when the instrument was off and unplugged, it still made noise and could actually still be played. This was a great reminder that at its core, even though it’s paradoxically called an electric piano, it is still very much an acoustic instrument in terms of the way the sound is initially generated. When you plug it in, you’re of course hearing more than the metal tongs being struck, but that initial acoustic sound generation is the key to the way it sounds. A lot of electric piano libraries on the market seem to miss this aspect of the sound somehow and though they sound vaguely like “an electric piano” the nuance that makes each individual electric piano special and unique sounding is lost. With the MK1, this could not be farther from the case and I felt like I was really playing a Rhodes with all its nuance.

The main UI is clean and simple giving you control of all the parameters you need. The front panel gives you control of volume, EQ, and Vibrato amount. This can be toggled between mono and stereo as well as tempo synced. From this panel you can also turn on the amp simulation. These controls are given to you in more detail in the amp panel. Here you can control everything from the mic placement to the amount of amp vs DI signal.

The preference page really surprised me. This allows fine control of almost every parameter you can image including the pedal volume, tine hight, pickup distance, bell amount, etc. What’s really cool is that these parameters can be changed for individual keys. A common occurrence with a rhodes is that certain keys can find themselves to be a little more dead than others. This “flaw” is part of what makes the sound of each unit so unique and special. With these controls, you can emulate these flaws to great effect. This is where the power of the hybrid modelling/sampling technique they used to create this really shines through. On a real electric piano you can adjust some of these settings using an ancient earth tool called a screwdriver. In this instrument you need only use a few clicks of the mouse to have full control of all these parameters.

The FX panel gives you access to a full pedal board of effects including chorus, phaser, flanger, delay, saturation, and reverb. Using these, one can really shape the sound they wish to get out of the instrument. If mucking about in these settings isn’t your thing, they have taken good care of you because the instrument comes with a large collection of 35 amazing sounding presets. Of course as with most modern libraries, your own custom presets can be saved and recalled for later use.

There are many electric pianos on the market and as with acoustic pianos, the choice of which to purchase is not simply about realism but rather about taste and preference. If you’re looking for that classic Fender Rhodes sound this this instrument is absolutely perfect. It’s sure to put a smile on the face of any keyboard player and for only 99 euros, it’s an absolute steal!

Facts

Weighing in at an astonishingly small 85 mb, the V Tines MK1 Electric Keyboard from Acoustic Samples is a recreation of a classic 1978 Fender Rhodes. Built with a combination of sampling and sample modeling, the instrument is able to have a seemingly endless amount of velocity layers without the need for a large hard drive or RAM footprint. The instrument features 35 presets with the ability to create and save your own. It also features a collection of effects including reverb, delay, chorus, phaser, flanger, and saturation. The V Tines MK1 requires the free UVI Workstation 3.0.0 + to work and will not work with Kontakt.

It can be purchased from Acoustic Samples for 99 Euros.

V Tines MK1 Electric Piano sells for €99.00 from Acoustic Samples

Demos of V Tines MK1 Electric Piano by Acoustic Samples

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Contributor Shaun Chasin reviews V Tines MK1 Electric Piano by Acoustic Samples
“With the V Tines MK1 Electric Piano, Acoustic Samples has proven that it’s not only possible to make an amazing sounding recreation of a classic 1978 Fender Rhodes Mark 1, it’s possible to do it in under 90 mb!”