From bruce@ashbysolutions.com Thu Jan 17 17:37:46 2002
Subject:Re: Roland VK-8 debuts at NAMM

James,

>Definitely not holding my breath. I don't want to take an organ and
>a PC to a gig, or else I might as well use the B4. In fact, I'd
>rather all the buttons were on the front panel and the OS remembered
>them so that when I turn the machine back on again, they are as I
>left them. The B-3 did this. The XB-2 did this from what I
>remember. The B-4 does this. Not so the VK-7. What does the CX-3
>do ?

This is not a totally fair comparison with any clone. The B-3 didn't allow you to adjust the key click. It didn't allow different decay times for percussion, different amounts of overdrive, expression pedal sensitivity, Normal/Soft percussion balance, or any of a number of things that a modern clone allows, many of them on a per-patch basis. Perhaps you find all this adjustment unnecessary, maybe even undesirable. I, OTOH, value it highly. I want to sound exactly like Jon Lord on one song, exactly like Felix Cavelliere on the next, Jimmy Smith on the third. The CX-3 allows me to do this nicely. Actually, a real B-3 does not.

The CX-3 allows all of the elements of the sound to be changed; most of them can be saved in a different manner with each preset. The one area where I am not pleased with the KORG View of the World (tm) is the method of saving drawbars. KORG treats the DBs as essentially real-time-only controllers. If you change the DBs during performance, and end up liking the result better than the patch, don't just hit Save at the end of the song: The percussion, split, and vibrato changes are saved, but if you want to save the drawbar settings, the Edit mode is required. I've never gone through all the complexities to see if there's a logical reason why the CX-3 -- whose DBs can be routed to either manual, or both at once -- can't support direct DB save. Perhaps there's a "can't get there from here" in the design.

Regards,

-BW

--
Bruce Wahler
Ashby Solutions™ http://music.ashbysolutions.com
CloneWheel Support Group moderator
978.386.7389 voice/fax
bruce@ashbysolutions.com