From groovecake@yahoo.com Sun May 09 08:50:10 2004
Subject:Re: XK3 at work

Tony,

What kind of stand do you use? I tried to put the XK-3
above my Motif on my Ultimate Supports stand last
night and the XK was too big (width-wise). What do you
use?

Mitch

--- tonysounds wrote:
> Hey Y'all....
>
> Did a couple shows this weekend with the XK3.
> Before you ask: No, I have not yet even tried its
> leslie sim! I haven't plugged it into my Pro-145
> yet either. I've been having too much fun playing
> it through a real leslie!
>
> Friday morning I did some modifications to my road
> rig to ready the XK3s introduction. I use a Motif 8
> and an Invisible Keyboard stand. The Motif has some
> extruded knobs that need protecting, and even with
> my Electro, I had strategically placed 3 islands of
> gaffers tape and velcro to the Motif so that when
> the Electro hangs over the top of the Motif, it
> doesn't damage those knobs. I used soft foam with
> velcro backs between the Motif and Electro which is
> plenty as the Electro is so light and small. I had
> to replace those soft foam blocks with hard foam
> blocks (which I was able to do as I had just pulled
> the little "shelf" out of the case for my departed
> Vcombo, and after making the endblock for the case
> to now hold my XK3, I had enough hard foam left to
> do the job). After gaff taping and velcro-ing the
> bottom of my XK3, I was ready for business. The
> larger girth and weight of the XK3 demanded the
> hard foam blocks, and more velcro to the organ
> itself to safely secure it to the
> Invisible Stand. No problems!
>
> The band just obtained a "new" vehicle and this was
> its maiden voyage...we had some mechanical problems
> and arrived later than we wanted, but still in time
> for the gig; just not enough time for me to spend
> cranking and tweaking before show time. Luckily I
> had been perusing the manual (a very short read) en
> route to the gig, and figured out a couple things I
> needed to know, such as how to save a program, which
> is slightly cumbersome at first...or at least when
> you're in a hurry on a dark stage. I went to the
> last bank which had registrations I normally
> wouldn't use (very reedy and tibia-like things) and
> decided to make that my go-to bank. I set up a
> couple programs, and figured just like a real
> Hammond, I'd tweak endlessly all nite long.
>
> Man, this thing is AWESOME, simply freakin
> AWESOME!!! First off, if you're getting one, you
> must get the Expression pedal. As much as I liked
> my FC7 for my Electro, this thing is a must for the
> XK3. Like its keyboard, this adds as much to the
> realism of the Hammond experience, and playing the
> XK3's keyboard and expression pedal is like driving
> a big Mercedes. Once you've done it, you know what
> the fuss is all about.
>
> The combination of the XK3 and Speakeasy and my
> Bulldog leslie was nothing short of thrilling. The
> Speakeasy was singing after getting the added juice
> of the XK3 (the Electro's output is very weak and I
> could never get the overdrive I was looking for),
> and hit that thick, creamy grind I was looking for
> pretty quickly. YESSSSS!!!!!!
>
> I started with the "Jimmy 1" program as my base, and
> made a couple adjustments from there, and saved it
> to a preset in the last bank. On a couple of our
> songs, I have some extreme registration shifts that
> I would not have been so adventurous with had I not
> been playing an Electro when we started putting them
> together. Those songs are harder to get right on my
> real Hammond because of the number of bars and
> levels used, but now, saving them to a few black key
> presets, and I was totally in business. And what a
> pleasure it is to have a Hammond that has more than
> 2 black key presets I can use!!! Too F N cool!
>
> The tone is much thicker and much much smoother than
> my Electro, and was noticeable immediately. Of
> course the percussion is as well. It has a fatter
> thunk than either of my cutdown Hammonds, and I
> found using the "soft" button tamed it exquisitely;
> I could never use the "soft" button on either of my
> Hammonds as it would tame it too much. C3 chorus,
> which I like to use every once in a while on my
> Electro but not on my Hammonds, is still a little
> strong, but as I noticed from the manual, that can
> be tamed pretty quickly. C1 sounded great right
> away....I used it quite a bit. The overdrive has a
> dedicated knob which I found I was playing with all
> night long....very useful, and in conjunction with
> the Speakeasy and leslie, was very musical. It has
> a groovy little feature which is an LED under the
> knob that glows yellow (or was it green?) at its
> most minimum setting, glows more amber then red the
> harder it's being pushed. Oh yeah, that's another
> area where this is more like a REAL
> Hammond: It's hard to see things in the dark, and
> you'll find yourself wanting to learn the layout
> really quickly to navigate it and get what you want
> the first time. The LCD is in the upper left
> corner, and if you have the XK3 stacked on another
> keyboard, you won't be able to see it too well. (I
> couldn't find a contrast adjustment anywhere either,
> but you probably don't need: I couldn't see it so I
> can't verify that!) No big deal: Just like a real
> Hammond, you have black preset keys to save your
> base settings (except this Hammond won't require a
> tech to rewire 6 of them) and you'll learn the
> location of your "spices" quick enough: and if you
> have played a real Hammond for any length of time,
> everything is just about in the right place, but
> like in the case of the percussion buttons, there
> are a couple extra little things you want to make
> sure you're aware of so that you don't hit the wrong
> thing. (The split and manual bass buttons are near
> the percussion and in the dark at
> first, you could accidentally grab them.) The
> drawbars, which looked to be kinda funky in
> pictures, make total sense from a playing POV: The
> left drawbars function as the "top manual" or top
> half of a potential split keyboard and are
> comfortable to grab, and the right drawbars are for
> the "lower manual" or bottom half of a split, and
> are in the right place for that exactly. I found
> myself disengaging the split on my presets: I don't
> play LH bass (my bassist despises when I get
> anywhere near his space, so I respect that and grab
> a fist of piano instead), and the left side of the
> split is only adjustable by ONE OCTAVE, which I
> think is an oversight on Hammond's part. The
> Electro 73's lower split can be adjusted by a few
> octaves, which makes left hand organ comping for
> your right piano or organ playing sweet and
> comfortable as you can keep your left hand on the
> left side of your keyboard! You can't do this on a
> real Hammond though, so it's not a big deal...I'm
> used to that dilemma
> when I use the cutdowns live, so I'm used to it.
> It would be a nice update for the future though.
>
> The keyboard itself is very inspiring to play, and I
> found myself eschewing my normal piano parts over
> the weekend trying new things on the XK3. The band
> loves the sound of the Hammond and would probably
> have no problems with me playing nothing but organ,
> however there are still places I think the piano is
> the way to go. But still, this thing sounded and
> felt sooooooo good, that I couldn't resist when the
> urge hit, and it hit a lot. After last night's gig,
> the guitarist came up to me and said this thing
> sounded awesome. "Tony, I don't know nothin, I'm
> just a guitar player, but that thing growled a lot,
> and sounded just....earthier!" (Sounds like he
> knows plenty to me.) "Plus dude, no offense or
> anything, but it looks cooler than that other thing,
> and it's not red." (First time I heard anything
> negative about the Electro...lmao) But he was right
> on both counts: it looked a hell of a lot cooler
> from where I was sitting. Oh yeah, smears and
> thwacks sounded correct on this clone:
> to my ears, doing smears on the Electro was dicey
> business; it's almost a necessity in rock music, but
> on an Electro, the individual notes in a smear sound
> too individual...there's too much seperation,
> whereas on the XK3, they all blend into one another.
>
> The midrange on the XK3 is sweet as hell, and I
> really think the upper range on the XK3 sounds
> better than the Electro. As MT pointed out, you can
> really get crazy with editing on the XK3 and save
> your own tonewheel combinations, but judicious use
> of drawbars seemed to work just fine for me. At the
> end of the night with the volume war, I even found
> myself using 88888888888 for the end of a solo; with
> the overdrive of the XK3 working with the Speakeasy
> and Leslie, it sounded big without being shrill, and
> that's not exactly a favorite sound of mine.
>
> This thing is beautiful man, that's all I can say.
> Definitely my favorite purchase of the last 5
> years...in fact the only thing I've enjoyed as much
> is my JD990 synth module, and my HammondStore
> cutdown, but this will get used infinitely more than
> both of them. It's definitely a lot heavier than my
> Electro (I really noticed that putting it on top of
> my Motif) but it sounds a lot heavier too: a fair
> trade-off as far as I'm concerned. At this point,
> IMO, this is the king of the clones (Leslie sim not
> evaluated of course).
>
> I'm taking my wife and boys out to a Cubs game today
> for Mothers Day, and of course it's Sopranos tonite,
> so the odds are I won't get to play with it any more
> this weekend, but tomorrow I'll start playing with
> it with no leslie to check out the simulator. And
> the Pro-145.
>
> Sorry to take up so much bandwidth, but this thing
> rocks.
>
=== message truncated ===



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