From ccmacdon@rogers.com Wed Jun 08 08:20:31 2011
Subject:Re: NUMA of SK-1 or Crumar

I would not choose any keyboard based on Youtube clips. You really need to hear these keyboards for yourself, in person, which then begs the question, where do I go to hear all of these clones together so I can do some side by side comparison of sounds and features.. and the answer is no where (that I am aware of). That will take a couple visits to a couple different music stores.. (if you can even find all of these products in your area). That's a fundamental problem with this clone market.

So you're left struggling to sift through all the feedback on various forums like this, and try to judge sound based on Youtube clips through your computer speakers.. both of which can be challenging to sort out.

My computer is the centre of my recording studio and when I listen to Youtube clips through my audio interface and my Yamaha HS80 monitors, and the sound in my studio is about as good as it gets. HOWEVER, with a good listening environment you quickly realize that a lot of these clips were poorly recorded, and/or overly compressed, or recorded at different volume levels, and they're not using the drawbar registrations and/or C/V or percussion settings that you want to hear, etc. You don't get to hear single notes on choral and tremelo, and isolated speed up/down's in order to really hear the leslie sim etc. Listening to youtube clips is very misleading.

If you're looking for JUST organ sounds, and you don't care about pianos, and ep's etc.. the NUMA is great, especially if you want clone that looks great, sounds great, feels great with a nice Hammond-style interface with reverse preset keys and drawbars. You'll love the NUMA especially if you like jazz (it's great for Jazz and of course it's endorsed by Joey D) it really does nail the traditional jazz sound.. and I can tell you this based on first hand knowledge.

On the other hand if you're looking for an all in one keyboard with most of those other traditional gigging keyboard sounds, and you care less about the Hammond-style interface, the SK-1 might be perfect for you. It's very lightweight, good hammond sound, and lot's of other sounds, should you need them (you may not need them now but you might find them handy sometime in the future).

I decided to purchase a NUMA rather than the SK-1 because Hammond has a bad habit of NOT getting things right the first time (recent example XK3 vs XK3c) and I'm not convinced that their first crack at an all in one keyboard is going to provide me with all the sounds and features that I really need for gigging in my classic rock band. Based on the sounds their list "Church Organ, Acoustic and Electric Pianos, Clavs, Accordions, Vintage String Synth, Wind Instruments and Tuned Percussion round out the specification" it's missing a lot of sounds that I'm going to need, like synths leads/pads etc.. and neither does it have pitchbend of modwheels. From my perspective, I would gladly give up the traditional hammond-style interface IF the SK1 could really do it all for me. But it doesn't appear that it will come close to that. The SK1 doesn't strike me as a great Hammond clone(based on the non-traditional interface), and neither does it appear to be a great all-in-one workstation, it's somewhere in the middle and for me that doesn't really work. For others it might be perfect.

I am a huge fan of VB3 but, and I could be mistaken,I don't think that the Crumar is in full production yet, is it? I saw a picture of it in last months Keyboard Magazine, but if I'm not mistaken it was a picture of a pre-production model, and no prices were available, so my guess is it's going to be a few months before it's available in any kind of volume. That said if you can get a double manual Crumar for not much more than a NUMA or an SK1 that would be great value.

Good luck sorting all this out, choose wisely!! ;-)

Craig

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