From groovecake@yahoo.com Sat May 08 13:42:51 2004
Subject:It's Christmas at my place!!! (XK3 review)

That's right! My XK-3 showed up today!

Wow.

That's my initial impression.

A couple things of note that make this an INCREDIBLE
piece of gear:

1. You can adjust the tone of the organ NOTE BY
NOTE!!! There are tone wheel parameter sets for each
individual note on the keyboard. This is a dream come
true for those of us who are never quite happy with
the top octave of a clone. You can actually work on
just those notes!!

2. You can adjust the depth of the chorus/vibrato! I
thought the C3 was a tad deep out of the box...then I
found out how to change that!

3. They have devised a clever way of sort of making up
for the lack of key contacts with a parameter that
controls how loud the tone-wheel is when you first
press a key. For instance, a setting of "1" means it's
at full blast from the moment of contact. This setting
goes all the way to 15. The higher the number, the
less loud the initial sound is. The tone always
reaches it's full amount but the higher the number,
the longer that takes. (We aren't even talking seconds
here...we're talking milliseconds I'd guess.) It's
kind of hard to explain but going from "1" to "3"
really makes a difference in the playability of the
keyboard. Those of you who have real Hammonds know
that if you are playing really fast, you sometimes
aren't pressing all the way down on a key and you are
only getting part of the tone. I assume (and I could
be wrong) that this parameter is to help duplicate
that feeling.

4. I have only been messing with it with the internal
Leslie simulation so far and, to a guy who has spent
the last few years with simulated leslies, this one is
just as good as the others (Vk-7, B4, way better than
the CX-3 with that fake swishy effect). Tonight will
be the 147 test. I have a good feeling about that!

5. The keyboard feels like a Hammond that hasn't been
broken in. It's going to take some getting used to but
that is a good thing. It's very fast and responsive.

Thats all for now. I'll post more later. I have to get
back to it!

Mitch



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