The famous Fender Rhodes Mark II stage 73 electric piano!
Essential if you plan to do funk-jazz, deep house, or any soulul music.
The Rhodes keys can be heard on countless tracks, from Herbie Hancock to Stevie Wonder, the Doors & Ray Charles, Chick corea & JojoLapin.

It’s funky, soulful, deep, smooth, jazzy, lounge, groovy.
Here are the best FREE VST emulations of the e-piano:

The Salamander piano plugin is the latest free piano plugin that I’ve tried out. With this, what you see is what you get. It’s not a crazy in-depth plugin, but it’s efficient. The quality might actually be my favorite to date. With this being said, you may run into problems with it. I’ve seen and heard a few different things going wrong. Versilian is a virtual instrument development company who develop a wide range of orchestral, acoustic virtual instrument plugins. This free piano VST plugin was sampled from a Yamaha upright piano at Berklee College of Music. Given it was recorded in a “lonely basement dorm room” the sound is clean, precise and very good quality. With the help of VST instruments, you can make your keyboard sound like a Steinway grand piano, or perhaps a Rhodes electric piano, or an old-time Hammond organ. You might not even own a full-length, 88-key digital piano, but may only have a MIDI keyboard with 49 or even 25 keys.

1. MrRay73 & MrRay22 VST by Guido Scognamiglio

• Get the soul and character of a unique electric piano, sampled to capture the nuances of the original vintage instrument, with effects, compressor and amp added. 3758b9b5-045c-4b7d-b020-80f9b068d990 07:10 AM EST.
• The last on our list of the 25 best piano VST plugins is The Grand. As with many of the other free piano VST plugins we’ve mentioned, it’s simple, lightweight, and easy to use. The Grand utilizes a sampled grand piano and has 4 velocity layers per note. In addition, it also comes with a typical ASDR envelope and a reverb.
• What better way to add some embellishments to your songs than with an orchestral plugin? Even better if its free, right? Orchestral samples, and samples in general, have come a long way. They were practically unusable back in the day, but now, even though you can hear the difference between a sample software and the The 10 best Free Orchestral VST/AU Plugins That Sound Great!
• Free Electric Piano VST Plugins. If you’re a producer on a tight budget, fear not, I’ve put together some free electric piano plugins that I think you’ll enjoy. Some of these work with MAC & Windows while others only work with one of the two. I’ve listed the compatibility below. The 2 best free options are Keyzone Classic and Noiseash.

MrRay 2.2 ! rhodes 4 ever

These two VSTi are donationware.
and they are pure synthesis, no sample involved.
The sound is very good, Mr Ray 73 VST gives you that funky feeling when you play it.
Mr Ray 22 has more parameters and some good classic effects : a chorus, a wah wah, a tremolo/autopan, a distortion and a stereo delay. Free vst compressor for hip hop vocals.

Mr Ray Charles:
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Mr-Ray-Charles-Shake-a-Tail-Feather.mp3

stormy !
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/riders-on-the-storm-mrray22.mp3

straight Rhodes e-piano
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/mrray73.mp3

soft deep house chords
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/mrray22.soft_.mp3

Rhodes piano through wah wah effect!
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/mrray22.wahwah.mp3

2. MDA ePiano

Based on a small but clever wavetable, the antique MDA ePiano still sounds fresh in 2014!
and since MDA plugins became open source, you can also find version for Mac & Linux, and also 64 bit versions => http://sourceforge.net/projects/mda-vst/files/mda-vst/mda-vst-src 20100214/

MDA ePiano VST is simple & effective, of course it’s more limited than Mr Ray, but sounds great!

riders on the storm!
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/riders-on-the-storm-mda-epiano.mp3

Ray Charles – Shake a Tail Feather
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Ray-Charles-shake-a-mda-epiano.mp3

3. EP-Station VST by Big Tick audio

EP station : more groovy keys

A very nice FM modeled electric piano. EP-station is now freeware.
The plugin is not a straight emulation of a Rhodes piano.
It can also do the ” DX 7 e-piano “, the famous FM piano as heard on 95% of the pop / ballad / tv show theme / etc. tracks produced between 1983 & 1989.
The EP-station also features a chorus & a phaser effect.

smooth sound for deep house
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ep-station1.mp3

phased Fender Rhodes !
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ep-station2.mp3

ultra smooth Deep house Rhodes+phaser
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ep-station3-effectrhodes.mp3

FM pop piano ! the sound of the 80’s
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ep-station4-dxpop.mp3

4. 4Front R-Piano VST

Based on samples, but not only, this emulation gives you a clean sound.
It comes for Windows 32 & 64 bit, and Mac OS X.
4Front R-piano also include a reverb.

soft e-piano for lounge house
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/4frontrpiano.mp3

plucked style
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/4frontrpiano2.mp3

5. LazySnake VST by Andreas Ersson

Lazy Snake VST

Back to a 100% synthesis emulation !
The Lazy Snake electric piano gives you this lounge and mellow sound.
The synth is easy to tweak, and you have a tremolo + wah wah effect.
It’s not really a Rhodes piano emulation, but it’s perfect for deep house chord.

soft clean deep house chord
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/lazysnake-smooth.mp3

wah wah effect!
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/lazysnake-wah.mp3

Ray Charles shake a snake
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Ray-Charles-shake-a-snake.mp3

6. Orange Lounge 2004A by StarrFish Lab

A funky japanese VSTi , created with Synthdit.
It’s not a Rhodes MK2 emulation, but it’s also groovy, and well suited for that deep house feeling.
We can feel the FM modulation but it’s nice!

pretty hard tremolo effect for this e-piano
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/orangelounge-deep1.mp3

funky !!
https://blog.wavosaur.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/orangelounge-deep2.mp3

7. SFZ + Learjeff jRhodes3 soundfont

SFZ+ soundfont player

SFZ+ + Learjeff Rhodes soundfont

Best Free Keyboard Vst

There are some nice free Rhodes multisample bank around the interweb. So you can pick your favorite sf2 capable VST player and load a Rhodes piano soundfont into it!
Here i choosed the SFZ+ player by RGCAudio and the jRhodes sf2 , that’s the best combo!

(november 17 2014 update !!)

Best Free Electric Piano Vst

8. RhodyMK1 by Wahnsyn

A Synthedit VST plugin from Plugindex German website : it has a clean sound, i think it’s based on a soundfont / wav bank. It’s very usable. Unlike the other “classic” emulations, it features a vibrato effect instead of a tremolo effect, it’s strange but that makes unusual sounds!

9. Clavia Lab by Simple Media

Free Keyboard Vst Plugins

Clavia Lab VST

Best Free Virtual Electric Keyboard Vst Plugins Free

This plugin is intended for e-piano sounds and also organ and clavinet / harpsichord sounds.