From james_eaton@btopenworld.com Fri Dec 05 01:57:25 2003
Subject:Re: Small quibble with Roland clones

--- In CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com, "mate_stubb"
wrote:
> Electro does have selectable vib per manual.

Ah yes - sorry I misread what it said in the manual. Incidently new
CX-3 has this feature as well.

Actually, the VK-88 has this feature, but not he VK-8, VK8M (or the
VK-7), so they want us to buy the bigger instrument.

But then the VK-88 has its shortcomings as well. Rather than
presets per manual like a real console, it has "registrations" that
apply to the whole organ.

So if you're using the lower manual for left-hand bass, as lots of
us are, and you want to change to full organ on the upper manual,
you don't want all the Leslie, vibrato, amp settings etc to be reset
because you switched to another registration.

Viscount with their DB5 have presets per manual. Voce uses a second
set of drawbars to cope with this need. Probably Roland's
marketing department insisted on having combinations similar to how
their electronic organs work. I don't think Hammond organs are
used in this way.

It would seem to make sense to provide two modes of operation, one
for keyboard players and one for organists.

For keyboard players who need to sound like Jon Lord one minute and
Keith Emerson the next, then these registrations will work fine
(except that Keith would like percussion no both manuals!).

For organists who need to be able to change registrations per manual
individually, then a mode should be provided to be able to change
drawbar settings per manual without affecting chorus, vibrato,
percussion, pre-amp settings, Leslie settings, pedal settings etc.

Then I would probably stop complaining!

I think the CX-3 already does something like this. The Roland
definitely doesn't.

I guess that organists are a very small minority. How many
organists on this list by the way?

James