From den121961@yahoo.com Sun Jul 06 22:57:31 2008
Subject:Re: What is it about the CX-3 sound that I like so much?

Arjan,
I've been following this thread a bit, since although we
listen to different types of music, some of our struggles seem to be
the same with clones here.
First, a bit about my clone shopping history; I own three real
hammonds and two old tube leslies at the moment, so I guess I'm a
little spoiled when it comes to overdrive. However, there's no way I'm
going to drag any of them out anymore, and frankly, even the leslie is
a bit heavy to drag to anything other than the very important jobs.
Not having much in the budget for equipment I went through a bunch of
old clones, starting with the older vintage CX3 (Which has a nice
overdrive by the way), and a crumar T1. The first thing I noticed was
the old Korg's leslie sim didn't effect the sound nearly enough to
even notice live, let alone being anywhere near authentic. Next thing
on my shopping list was a leslie sim. I started with a Rocky Road,
which was a little better than the onboard vintage CX sim, but that
was sold rather quickly and after trying a bunch of sims I settled for
the Boss RT-20. I struggled with this thing for months thinking I
liked it, then hearing it recorded and getting frustrated.
Next step was to drag out the lelie with the old clones. That
gave me a sound that was plenty satisfying with either old clone, they
both had their strongpoints. But they both sounded good enough for my
spoiled ears. However my back didn't like the prospect of dragging it
out of the studio, up the basement steps, and onto the van everytime I
needed to play out.
Meanwhile I had been listening to every clone out there and
taking mental notes. I loved the sound of the VK8 but the leslie sim
just wasn't there for me. There was something about the hammond clones
I tried, which was all of them except the XK3 that I didn't like,
again, purely subjective. I went down and heard the Diversi, which I
still think is the closest out there, but was out of my price range. I
also had heard the CX3 with about 4 different bands, and everytime I
heard it I liked the way it cut through, and loved it's sound. It's a
clone, not the real thing, and has a distinctive Korg sound, which
I've always liked. I also got to hear the C1 by Clavia by two players,
and spend quite a bit of time on the electro's. They also have a
distinct sound, which is very recognizable. I didn't like this sound
as much as the Korg, and the missing drawbars ruled these out for me.
SO mentally I settled for the Korg. I didn't actually shop for one,
but knew that was what I wanted. SO when I stumbled on a used one at a
Sam Ash store I took advantage of the availiability and spent maybe 3
hours on the thing. The distortion bothered me a bit by itself, but I
kept reminding myself I heard this thing in a few band contexts and
liked it a lot every time. So I grabbed it, and have been dragging it
out a lot lately.
My thoughts after spending a lot of time with it have changed a
bit. First of all this thing is really user friendly.First, the touch
is perfect, I can do all the two handed percussive stuff I couldn't
get happening on the others I tried (with exception of the diversi).
Also, the way the buttons are set up works well for me. I actually
like some things better than on a real B3, such as lights on the
percussion switches, and the ability to have a few different organs in
the thing. I also found the distortion to be definitely useable,
although I wish you could memorize the settings for the overdrive knob
with the patches. I'm definitely on that knob a lot though, it took a
while to find the sweet spot of not too much but enough for the
different sounds I use. It's definitely not a set and forget knob for
me. The one down side I've found that I didn't expect which drives me
a bit crazy with this clone is there's a noticable midrange hump that
I have to EQ out. The old Korg had it too, I figure it's something to
do with the Japanese ear maybe? It's easily fixable with the EQ on
most mixers, but still a bit of a pain.
Bottom line is you aren't alone in liking the thing, and
there's probably no explaining why, other that the ear is subjective.
I enjoy mine a lot. I played it quite a bit at a blues jam/4th picnic
yesterday and was getting comments on it all day as to how close it
sounded to the real thing.
I did get a chance to add the Korg to my ever growing list of
hammond and clone demo's, and posted it today on my soundclick page
listed in my profile with my other "combo's". It's here:
http://soundclick.com/share?songid=6696788
It's basically just the CX going direct with stereo out, the only
thing done to it is a tiny bit of digital reverb and I EQed that
midrange hump out a bit. But the overdrive and leslie is all stock
Korg. I'm going to try and get one with the new CX through a leslie in
the next week or two also for comparison. It's not the same as hands
on use, but hopefully it'll help with your decision a bit,
Den


--- In CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com, "arjanvangog" wrote: