Photo: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Rhodes Piano Bass
LegacyReleased 1962
The first Fender Rhodes: the bottom 32 notes of a Rhodes in a small Tolex box, designed to stand in for a bass player. It is the reason The Doors could tour without one, and it still sounds fat and round through a decent bass amp.
Spares: Rhodes sells the common wear parts on its own website: tines, hammer tips, damper felts, pickups, grommets and springs, made for every Rhodes and Fender Rhodes. Official spares ↗
Specifications
General
- Manufacturer
- Rhodes
- Status
- Legacy
- Released
- 1962
Keyboard
- Keys
- 32
- Key action
- Hammer-action
- Aftertouch
- None
- Keybed
- 32 full-size weighted keys, E1 to B3 (roughly a four-string bass guitar's range)
Sound
- Tone source
- Tines
- Sound engine
- Electromechanical: hammer-struck steel tines and tonebars read by electromagnetic pickups; passive, needs an external amplifier
- Polyphony
- Full polyphony (32 notes)
- Features
- Bass-range Rhodes, Sits on a tripod stand or on top of an organ, Fibreglass lid on early units
Connections
- Outputs
- 1/4-inch unbalanced
Size & weight
- Colours
- Fiesta Red, Black
Heard on
Artists and records that used it, as Rhodes tells it.
- Ray Manzarek (The Doors) – Bass lines with his left hand while playing organ with his right
Featured in
More from Rhodes
Legacy since 1969- Keys
- 73
- Key action
- Hammer-action
- Tone source
- Tines
—1965