From Markweisgram@aol.com Tue Sep 12 07:41:47 2006
Subject:Re: VK-7 vs.VK-8

I have a VK7 and plan to keep it. I also have the VK8m.

I do like the easier access to overdrive ( on "bypass setting with a real
leslie ) on the 8m. I also agree that the lesie sim is improved on the 8m.

Perhaps my main beef with ALL the clones( Hammond, Roland and Nord are ones
I have tried so far ) is that I feel that the percussion volume settings are
TOO LOUD. This particularly becomes apparent when the slow percussion
setting is used.

Why do I think that the percussion is too loud? I always compare my clones
to the real thing by running a 1/4 jack to the RCA input on my home A 100 and
122 leslie . When you do this you can really hear what is going on.

I am not going to comment on any other clones but Roland as not to offend
anyone. To me , the Roland VK8m was the one that best emulated the true
percussion volume ( on slow percussion) of the A 100. But I had to put the
percussion on 1 or 1 1/2 in order to achieve the correct volume. I also had to put
the drawbars between , for example 777000000 and 60000000 to achieve the
correct balance.

On the Hammond and Roland they have percussion volume going from 1 to 15 -
on "soft" setting . I rarely went beyond the 2 setting on either of these
clones. Do some of you guys really like it THAT loud?

I like the slow setting because I like to hear percussion "blend" into the
drawbar tones rather than stand out. It's just what I like to hear. I tend to
prefer faster percussion on 2nd harmonic rather than on 3rd.

In all honesty I have to admit that even though both the Hammond and the
Roland sounded good through my A 100 in the middle register, it is the upper
octave where you begin to notice a difference.

The Hammond A028 preamp will not compensate for digital differences. The
best solution I ave found is in using a BI AMPED leslie ( mine is an 860 used
with a subwoofer) and turn the tweeter level down slightly. OR also incorporate
some subtle EQ into the mix.

I know a lot of you guys swear by tube amplification in Hammonds and clones
but to me, I seem to get better results when I use the solid state bi amped
leslies to compensate for upper octave weirdness.

I have really enjoyed playing the Roland VK7 and VK8m. I really like the
fidelity I hear when using some of the upper drawbars, and the VK8m has chorus
vibrato the way I like to hear it - not too deep.

You can probably thank Joey De Francesco for that extra deep chorus vibrato
on the VK7 and also the recent Hammond clones. He was involved in the design
of each of them.

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