From james_eaton@btopenworld.com Mon Apr 11 18:19:08 2011
Subject:RE: Ham-Suz XB-2 - It's ALMOST 20 YEARS!

ahorne63 wrote: < years since I acquired a Hammond XB2>>

Ha ha a blast from the past!

My 1991 XB-2 S/N 91040312 was my first clonewheel after various home-made
electronic organs with strange filters to fake a Hammond sound!

Bought from Dawson's Music in Warrington for £999. I was travelling abroad
for a few years and needed somethingportable. It did the trick just about.
I used a Korg M-1 for the LM, a PK-5 pedalboard, and a Boss volume pedal
jerry-rigged up to the exp pedal input using the 8-pin DIN and some funny
switches and cables to link it all together. It was a tiny bit like playing
a B-3 and I thought I could sort-of get some of the sounds from the records.

The more I listened to the sound though the more I got tired of it.
Sometimes I would think it was good and then start playing and get annoyed
again. It served a purpose but was glad to see it go.

I probably should have got rid of it sooner, but the VK-7 was the first
keyboard that I thought was a real improvement.

James

Good:
- A proper clonewheel!!
- its got drawbars!
- you can use another keyboard with it to play 2 manuals!
- its got fake wood!
- it doesn't weigh 130kg!
- it almost sort of sounds like a Hammond?
- 11-pin out!
- it has 1,000,000 presets (or it seemed like it 128 of which only 8 were
available at any one time or was it 64?)
- it had split v/c!

Bad:
- tone generation noisy and poor quality, especially below the split (or LM)
- Weedy percussion
- couldn't use V/C and Leslie at the same time
- single rotor leslie sim
- first versions of firmware had all sorts of bugs like the MIDI-in on the
lower manual cancelled notes on the upper manual! It took until 1.3 some
time in late 1993 for most things to get sorted out, then a major revision
to fix the remaining bugs (2.0)
- no pedal support