From aevett1@yahoo.com Thu Oct 27 09:28:47 2005
Subject:Re: A Yamaha Clonewheel???

Astute observation, Bruce. My conversations with Phil
Clendenin of Yamaha - over the past 7-8 years -
support much of what you said, here. Along with recent
questions about producing a Clonewheel, I've pestered
him for a long time as to why Yamaha doesn't produce a
new piano module, i.e. - putting the P250 in a rack,
etc...The bottom line is that, since the P50m didn't
sell terribly well, the company is leery of attempting
another effort to those of us in the piano module
market; more on the 'clonewheel' issue in a moment...

Being that Yamaha is huge, they tend to look at the
broader markets, one of which is the 'easy to use
workstations for the common person' market (excluding
the Motif, of course - which as a writing tool can be
quite a 'rabbit hole'...); the range of instruments in
this category is quite broad - both in technology and
cost: from PSR to Tyros, as it were. And, within the
'top of the heap'- the Tyros, we find Yamaha's
'clonewheel', so to speak. If you go to Yamaha's
website, you can read all about it: "...91
independently oscillating voices to simulate the
rotating tone generation wheels found in classic
organs. And now, with the color screen, all of the
functions like realtime virtual drawbars and rotary
speaker switches are photo-quality representations of
the originals". The catch is that if you like Yamaha's
'clonewheel' sound, you have to pay a rather steep
price, plus end up a lot of other stuff you may not
need; conversely, if you're in the market for a great
composing/live performance (non-weighted) keyboard,
and you're looking for a solid Clonewheel, then this
'board may be just the ticket.

I think Yamaha could give everyone else a run for
their money if they produced a dedicated Clonewheel.
From my live performance experience - with a previous
rig, I found many an occasion where the 'Drawbar
Organ' voice in my S90 was the choice over my VR 760 -
usually on the stronger guitar driven tunes, and
especially when I had a solo (and this was generally
within the context of a well mixed country-rock act).
The Yamaha organ voice has an 'in your face' element,
like a V3 - but without the 'over the top' noise (been
there, done that: lost $$$...). The only time the
VR760 could cover the whole gig equally was when I
used my Leslie. Weird thing about Yamaha's current
live performance instruments, though: In the ES series
- among the basic waveforms, there are 9 individual
drawbar elements (samples), plus leakage, percussion,
and other pertinent elements; yet, you only get 6 midi
assignable control sets....Arghhh ! I love my S90ES,
but why not 9 sliders and 12 control sets ? Then I
could play it from the synth keyboard above it as
part of a 'Performance', perhaps assign the
individuals outs to my Leslie...Oh, well, the VK-8M
I've got coming in will do the job more than nicely,
for now...

Allan

--- Bruce Wahler wrote:

> Hi Barry and Pete,
>
> >> I'm kinda surprised that Yamaha hasn't produced
> their own version of a
> >> Clonewheel.
> >
> >I've thought of that, too. But I'm surprised
> there's enough people buying
> >organs (compared to synth 'workstations') to
> support the XK3, CX3, VK8, etc,
> >etc..
>
> Yeah, that's why you don't see a new clone out of
> each of those companies more often than every 5-10
> years.
>
> Yamaha is a huge MI company, but their focus is more
> on acoustic pianos, the home market, and
> band/orchestra instruments. I suspect that their
> interest in gigging musicians, though, is a small
> part of the overall picture. It's enough to drive
> the Motif family, but a ROMpler has much wider
> appeal than a dedicated organ clone. Working
> musicians need one, but so do schools, film scorers,
> etc. The same was true of VA synths: Yamaha made
> one promising entry into the market (the AN1x), then
> dropped the whole push after sales didn't skyrocket.
> They still sell a VA add-in board for some of their
> products, but it's basically 1/2 of an AN1x, with no
> changes in the past 5-6 years.
>
> The teaching realm is also big for them: Most
> children become interested in music at some point,
> and most parents are willing to drop some coin to
> see if the interest will amount to anything. I think
> that to get Yamaha's attention, a product has to
> have that "next big thing" kind of potential. And
> unfortunately, tonewheel organs doesn't fall into
> that area any more. :-(
>
> Regards,
>
> -BW
>
> --
> Bruce Wahler
> Design Consultant
> Ashby Solutions™ http://consult.ashbysolutions.com
> 978.386.7389 voice/fax
> bruce@ashbysolutions.com
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
> removed]
>



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