From MRK7421@aol.com Tue Apr 24 09:22:24 2007
Subject:Clones through Leslies

On my last post I informed people on the list that the price for Roland VK8m
modules seems to be going into about the $550 range on ebay.

A few people commented that they didn't like the VK8m sound through a
leslie. That's fine... I just thought I would offer some obeservations.

When I demo a clone, I always run it through my home Hammond ( A 100 and 122
leslie ) . There is an RCA jack on the A 100 that allows me to do side by
side comparisons.

The first clone I had was a Roland VK7. When I demoed it through the organ/
leslie I liked a lot of things about it, but I noticed that the chorus vibrato
had a wider and deeper character than the A 100. This always bugged
me....but I liked a lot of things about the VK7- particularly the feel of the
keyboard, so I kept it for 5 years or so.

I kept hearing good things about the Electro, so I decided to try it.
Immediately I noticed that the output was considerably weaker than my A 100 . That
, and the fact that the Electro broke down the first day, and that I found
out I had to buy a 6 octave one to get a functional split point broke that deal
for me. I also noticed that the percussion notes were louder than my A 100
in the top octave.

The next clone I tried was the Hammond XK1. It had very hot output, and a
lot of bass capabilities. However, I tend to use long percussion decay and I
could get the percussion quiet enough for my taste. It was noticeably louder on
long decay than my A 100. If you like short percussion, the #1 or #2
percussion volume settings were close to the real Hammond. But when using the
digital system to adjust long decay percussion volume I was unable to capture
the nuances that my real Hammond percussion has.

The reason I like the VK8m is that I can adjust the percussion volume LOW
ENOUGH to match my A 100. It uses a digital system also but when using long
decay the volume does not significantly increase like it did on the XK1. The
percussion volume matches my Hammond very well and therefore sounds more
authentic TO ME.

The VK8m has slightly less output than my A 100, but I use "Overdrive 1" to
compensate for this. Overdrive 1 is subtle and tends to add slight lows
causing the overdrive to kick at about 3/4 of the way up. Back it off from there
and the character gets very close to the real deal.

Overall, I have no major problems with the VK8M through a Hammond A028
preamp and 122 leslie.

By the way, I have never tried the pedal outputs on the VK8m. I don't have
midi pedals. I like the keyboard bass on 808000000.


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