From organfreak@donobi.net Sun Jul 11 10:10:14 2004
Subject:The XK-3 - My First Impressions


I published this to some other lists, but I decided it belongs here
too, since it contains some information I haven't seen here before,
mostly about jazz organ configurations.
__________________________________________

The best review I ever saw online was already written-- I think it
was by Mitch Towne(?) on the clonewheel list. But here are my
impressions so far.

Action- This keyboard feels and plays great. Light but solid. Close
to the original organs in feel, but a much shorter lever (pivot
point is closer). If you play way up inside the black keys where you
don't get much leverage, you may have a little trouble. I do, but I
didn't.

Menus- You can play it right out of the box. If you want to change
anything, better settle down for a long read, in fairly good
Japanese- English (un-proof-read).

Sound- It's very good, and if you don't like it you can tweak it
with different tonewheel sets or with a three-band equalizer. I
don't know if it "nails it"-- every real organ sounds different, so
what am I comparing it to? I think it's plenty close enough with
exceptions noted later. What impresses me the most in terms of being
like the real thing, besides the feel, is its fatness all across the
keyboard; no shrillness, no harshness, no tinny sound, good body all
the way up. The one thing I'm still trying to make up my mind about
is the sound of full organ. Is it ever-so-slightly digital sounding?
Ask me in a few days. It's awful close. Since you can adjust the
sound of EACH tonewheel, I bet I could make it perfect. Standard
jazz settings sound marvellous. Disclaimer: the 1122 adapter hasn't
arrived yet so I can't hear this through the Leslies yet. This test
was done on a guitar amp with one 12" speaker.

Leslie sim- I haven't really put it through its paces yet, but I was
satisfied with it, especially the chorale, which I don't normally
use. The tremolo speed was a bit too fast but that is fully
adjustable (I haven't gone to that menu yet), as are ramp-up-and-
down times. There's a chance that the tremolo speed sounds a bit too
simple without enough reflections in it, but I really want to
reserve judgement until I get a chance to tweak it. The chorale
sound is quite rich in reflected sounds.

Chorus vibrato- I dunno. I'm not quite convinced. It's allllmost
there, but I wanted to lighten it up a bit, and here's the bad part:
you can't.
You can change the speed of it, but you only get four or five
speeds, with no increments in between. The stock setting out of the
box was a wee bit too fast for me, the next slowest too slow. But no
depth control at all. I've been spoiled by the B4 in this respect.
This gripe is true of all the chorus settings, 1 2 and 3. I wanted
to get in there and change a resistor. The other big drawback to the
chorus vibrato, as we all know, is that it is not split-able between
upper and lower manuals. This would be a serious drawback to many
jazz players on a gig, myself included, but one I could get used to
for the odd cheapo gig (I'm still using my C-3 for any serious gig).
I myself use vibrato for bass more often than not; it livens it up,
but I'm more concerned with the lack of ability to easily switch the
vibrato for comping on the lower. But here's the deal, folks. Ham-
Suz has to have a reason for somebody to want to buy a Portable New
B-3 (the New B-3p) or the Full Enchilada B-3. They simply can't
afford to give away every feature in the $2K price point. What
should we expect for $2K?-- this thing has the sound of the big one,
and that's one of the reasons I bought it.

Jazz organ stuff- I'm getting ready to plug in another MIDI
controller for a lower manual. Right now I've been playing in split
keyboard mode, 838 on the bottom. Sounds great for bass even on this
little guitar amp. With the push of a dedicated button, you can add
the pedals to your left hand, depending on the pedal drawbar
setting. It thunders. And here's the really intriguing feature: it
doesn't have a "pedal tap" button per se', but it can be done. It's
done from way inside the pedal menu, and involves setting a decay
rate, the shortest. If and when someone buys an XK-3 and wants help
with this, just let me know. The sound is convincingly pedal-tappish
but a bit shorter than I would play and it tracks each note, which
changes the tone of each tap as the note moves. (This makes the tap
too light on higher notes. Groove Holmes used to really milk the
beauty of playing high while tapping low-- with this organ, forget
it.) I would say, good enough for the gig but not as good as the
real thing. (That's partly because I'm used to controlling the
length of the tap, all the way up to legato.) But for a one-manual
clone, this is just amazing.

For funk players, BC players, or anyone who wants deep, solid bass
with the foldback, this box is for you. You can make the bottom
foldback go away with the push of a bunch of buttons. If I were
doing funk gigs with bass, this would be the box for me; I wouldn't
miss having a console at all.

I wanted to use the velocity parameters of the pedal tones to change
it from tapping to full legato pedals when you play hardest-- it
can't be done. The only thing velocity controls on the pedals is
attack, IIRC. Obviously, the only way to get full function for jazz
organ pedaling is obviously to buy a MIDI pedalboard. But think
about it-- with the addition of a second manual and a $500
pedalboard, you can do everything that a real console can, except
split vibrato.

I'm glad I got the Hammond expression pedal; the organ will accept
any volume pedal through a standard 1/4" jack, but the real one is
the real deal, with adjustable tone-shaping and cutoff point. Well-
worth the money. Mine, the EXP-100F, has a Leslie kick-switch on it.
If you accidentally get the EXP-100AN, you get no switch.

That's my story so far.

-OF