From lindaleed@earthlink.net Mon Dec 15 06:16:45 2003
Subject:Re: Crumar Organizer.........?

I never owned an Organizer, but I had a T1 (I think that was he model),
a single manual organ-only "clone".
I set it on top of my Rhodes too like Kevin. Didn't have the Rhodes
flat top model, but it still would sit there as it was quite heavy,
too. I used it with a couple of guitar stomp boxes to get a quasi
"Leslie" effect.

It was a pretty decent keyboard as I remember. However, it could sound
like a Farfisa if you weren't careful with the registrations and didn't
have a chorus stomp box to warm-it up a little.

I also remember it having a number of presets and percussion option on
ALL the drawbars. Pitch bend and spilt bass option, although the bass
sound left a little to be desired.

I ended up selling this when I bought a Kawai K-3 and was able to make
reasonable Hammond patches in the additive synth mode this model
offered.
Still have this one. The K-3 is nice for thick monophonic analog leads,
also.

I also owned a Crumar string/brass machine (model name ??) which I
never replaced until I found a synth with warmer strings than most of
the 80's models of keyboards offered. (Kawai K-1, then a Kawai K-4).

Still have the Rhodes Suitcase 73, which I recently had rebuilt, but I
sold the Crumars long ago. Still have the all the Kawais, but moved on
to some more "modern" synths too. I was always impressed with how much
I could do with all these Kawais as far as programming and getting good
synth and some passable Mellotron string sounds out of the K-1 and K-4.

After dealing with the frustration of programming Yahama FM synths, I
welcomed the grainy samples of the Kawais and their user friendliness
(for that time) in ease of programming. Subtractive and some additive
synthesis things, I understand, but FM has always been elusive to me as
far as creating patches that I could use on gigs that did not cover
Harry Partch or John Cage tunes;-).

However, I never owned the additive Kawai K-5 synth. Even the real
"scientific" programmers I knew at the time thought this synth was very
difficult to program and stayed away from them.
I just build patches from "intuition" and tweaking by ear. The usual
"2+2=4" on other synths equaled very strange sounds on FM synths for
me....haha...

I saw a K-5 recently in a resale shop. Heavy duty controller with pitch
bend and a mod wheel. Had it not had a broken key, I might have picked
this one up just for fun to try to program or use as a controller. The
K-3 and K-5 always had very nice keyboard action and a sturdy case and
none of those "wall-wart" things. Kawai cut corners on this with the
K-1 and K-4.

Finding synths in the 80's to tweak with ease, save for the Kawais and
a couple of Korgs was difficult, IMO. I also remember scratching my
head working with a Roland D-50 a studio had on a session to smooth out
the string attack transients, also. I thought the K-1 sounded better
even though the engineer was not fond of the grainy 8K samples they
used, but we ended up using this anyway as the Roland did not allow for
a nice pad without a sharp attacks between the notes without spending
some time with it....which we did not have to spare.

Linda

>
> --- In CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com, "Norman Peterson"
> wrote:
>> Hi all, I am new to the Clonewheel group. I play a V-Combo, which
> I am real happy with, through a Motion Sound KP-200s. Back in the
> late 70's I owned a Crumar Organizer which I ran through a Leslie
> 147 and a Leslie Combo preamp. It sounded pretty good. . It had
> these big wide drawbars and wasn't the best built machine. The keys
> were always coming loose. It ended up falling apart on me and was
> traded off to someone. Could this be the earliest clone?? Anyone
> else ever own one of these relics? It was my replacement for my cut
> down, Tolexed Hammond M-3! I wish I still had that 147!
> Happy Holidays to all, Norm Peterson
>>
>> Norman Peterson
>> normpeterson@e...
>> Why Wait? Move to EarthLink.