From ynottnaro@yahoo.com Thu Apr 03 18:58:43 2003
Subject:VK8m

Hey All....

I got a VK8m in the mail today. (surprise surprise!)
What can I say....I'm totally not impressed.

Sounds: this is no change (at least as far as I can
tell) from the Vk8. I think the VK7 sounded better,
and this sounds really thin. Sounded better through
an amp then through the leslie (I thought the same
thing about the VK7 and 8). Pumped through the
leslie, the VK stuff gets really weird to my ears.
They did however manage to cram EVERYTHING you have on
the VK8 into this module. The Dbeam is a lot cooler
on this unit for some reason, but because of its
location, you'll be triggering it all the time, so you
have to disable it when you don't want it on.

Physical properties: This is where it gets ugly. This
thing is HUGE. Almost 2x the size of the V5. It's
not unattractive, but it is damn big. Way big. And
it has the worst freakin wallwart you ever saw.
Yamaha (for the Motif rack) and Roland have a new
wallwart that is actually a little back with a much
more robust wire (YEAH!!!) that goes to a box ,which
then pigtails out into a more substantial wire. Works
ok for the rack stuff. But this one has 2 golfball
size modules near the top (where it plugs into the
VK8m) that are white....bulbous....and noticeable from
the back row. Might as well have painted them
Construction Worker Orange. How do you go from bad to
worse????? The Yamaha doesn't have this, but who's to
say...and the manual advises you on the first page NOT
to replace this with another cable.

Midi implentation: I was on the phone to Roland pretty
quickly today...they didn't even have a unit in their
tech department, nor did they have a manual. But the
tech was kind enough to track down the info for me.
Turns out the VK8 is not even programmed to accept
volume info. HUH??? There's an expression jack on
the module itself for a pedal (just what you want,
another pedal to bring) and when I tried to use the
expression via my controller....no go. Once I
reassigned my volume info to register as expression
info, I fixed that problem. There is NO FOOTSWITCH
JACK for the fast/slow. On every other organ module
I've owned, it triggers from modulation. The Roland
does not. But after some research, the guy called me
back and you can send fast/slow changes via CC80.

Once I got those idiosyncracies straightened out, I
did some playing. At low volumes, using jazzy
registrations, the piece is decent (I feel in that
mode, the VK might actually outshine most of the other
clones). But that's where my affection for it ended.

So....if you love the VK8...this might be your bag for
$850. If you're not crazy about the VK8....don't
bother. And boy...it took a serious whoopin from the
Electro, through the amp and leslie. NUFF SAID!

Tony

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