From carl@vanselman.co.uk Thu May 02 06:44:30 2002
Subject:Re: Electro ( and VK8 )

High praise indeed!!!

The Electro is by any standard a fine machine. I was only looking for a Hammond clone so the piano sounds are a bonus. That said, the fender rhodes emulation is pretty damn good. The acoustic piano is not very good, your average roland sound canvas has a better piano.

The Hammond section is great. Drawbar buttons rather than 'real' drawbars but it doesn't take long to get used to them and you can push as many of the 'in and out' buttons at one time as you like. Foldback as you move to the upper and lower end of the keyboard is pretty well covered. On quite a few emulators as you 'pull' more drawbars out you start to loose definition between them and it is sometimes hard to hear and single step increase in the 1' register. The electro seems to have covered this pretty well also. The rest of the sound comes from the FX section which includes a rotary sim that winds up and down quite convincingly but to my mind just a little to fast. There is no adjustment to this other than off/on fast/slow and stop. This lack of control may be close to a real leslie but if they really wanted to be close to the real thing you can 'adjust' a leslie to suit your ears. The overdrive actually sounds like a bit of white noise and distortion underneath the tones you are playing and although you can get a fun john lord overdrive it doesn't warm up the sound like the real thing. You can use other FX such as chorus, tremolo etc. and they are fun for a short time. The C1, C2, C3, V1, V2, and V3 is excellent and when used with the leslie sim really starts to get your blood moving.

So why my OTT praise of the VK8.

It has everything as above plus; A control for 'leakage' that adds the noise of a leslie just idling away, you can have three different valve amp simulations, there is a brightness/warmth control (like the real thing) that is not simply a bass/treble but something that does what it says. You have lots of control over how 'old and dirty' you want your organ to be by changing the amount dirty contact noise, even how the key bounces and give you a kind of double note.

The bottom line is; the electro is a great B3 emulator and it sound close to the real thing and no-one except a Hammond player will tell the difference but the VK8 will deceive even an experienced Hammond player. I have been playing Hammonds for the last twenty years and have owned quite a number of B3, C3 and old M series hammonds and have spend countless hours next to all sorts of Leslie and Sharma speakers and this Roland could fool me!

Carl