From tonysounds@yahoo.com Thu May 06 13:48:37 2004
Subject:Hammond Xk3

I've been cranking this thing up for the last 2 hours. Man, it's sweet. Cursory observations: The keyboard is a dream. I was a fan of the XK2's keyboard, and this seems like an improvement on that, but that might be my imagination after playing the Electro for the last 2 years. It's a soft yet fast keyboard that feels like it wants to be played.

There are a world of Hammond tones in here I was not able to capture on my Electro; all the things I liked about the CX3 and VK8 are in here: nice warm jazzy registrations, thick plunky percussion, and yes, reverb! So far, the C/V seems to be pretty good, especially C1. C3 is always a bit much for me, but if I were to play with stopped leslie, that might be different. Everything is where its supposed to be more or less which is nice. The expression pedal is sweet (more sweep than my FC7s) and as an added bonus, it has the leslie "kicker" built right into it: Just tap your foot to the left and you're on GO/FAST mode; click it again, you're back to slow. It makes me want to try it without my Speakeasy (I'd have to get an 1122 kit first for my 122 leslies as the XK3 uses 11 pin connectors), but....I'm not in a big hurry to do that. On the other hand, Speakeasy does do an 11pin/6pin conversion in the preamp so I might have to ship it back! Um, STEVE???

Anyway, my son has a game this evening, so I'm going to have to light out of here. I'll be taking the XK3 to gigs this weekend, so I'll give a fuller review next week. Lucky for me, the case for my departed VCombo is a perfect fit, with the addition of one block on the left.

I AM DIGGING THIS BIG TIME!
T


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