From mlongo@highmarkdesign.com Wed Sep 26 09:37:07 2001
Subject:Re: CX3 vs Electro personal shootout long post


GK,

Thanks for all the great info! I think it's very encouraging to
hear that the Electro's quality of Hammond sound is at least in the
ballpark with the CX-3, which of course is a dedicated organ. Like
others, I'm a heavy user of Electric Piano in my steady gig, so a
single keyboard with both a good organ with also good EP's is a very
good thing. (Too bad about the Electro's lack of a separate organ
output, but I won't flog that one any longer!)

I was very interested in this remark about the tone:

> 3-Upper drawbars the CX3's last 5 drawbars compared to
> the Electro were 2-3 times louder.
> If I pushed in the CX3 drawbars to a value of 3-4 it was roughly
> equivalent to the Electro.
> I could match the Electro tone color by A-Eq(treble(-10)
> B-or Reduce the Horn/Distance or alter the Horn/Rotor bal.
> Result:At at its "default" the CX3 is much brighter than the Electro
> and a Hammond is probably somewhere between the two.

I've been gigging with my CX-3/145 now for several months and I
definitely feel that the CX-3 tone (and that of most other clones) is
far too bright. (I always run my CX-3 with treble on -10) I like
the CX-3 very much, but I feel that the top 5 drawbars are way too
loud, at least compared to a B-3 and even some other clones I've
owned. I compensate for this by simply not pulling the CX-3 bars out
very far. Your remarks above lead me to think that maybe the Electro
is more similar to a real B-3 in it's drawbar balancing than is the
CX-3. This could be good news.

Also, I feel that the CX-3's chorus is too deep (true also for
the XK-2) and that the CX-3's C2 sounds more like a B-3's C3. Some
have said that the CX-3's C3 is more like the A-100's deeper C3,
which is somewhat the case (I played an A-100 for a few years) but I
feel that the CX-3 C3 is deeper still than the A-100's. (Korg lets
you adjust the chorus speed but not the depth, go figure) So anyway,
the questions is: did you feel that the Electro's chorus is as deep
as the CX-3's?

Thanks again for all the great info!

Mark