From ken@kenhall.ca Thu Jun 09 10:12:23 2011
Subject:Ken's visit with Craig



Hello all,

Well, as Craig mentioned I had the pleasure of
spending a few hours with him in his music room. Craig is a very
generous guy ( he fed me pizza! ) and was completely honest and open in
our discussions about gear. He has two keyboards that I'm very
interested in - the C2 and the Numa organ. He, like most of us, has gone
through many pieces of gear, searching for that elusive perfect gig rig.
I have always had some type of organ in my rig, everything from a
Farfisa Fast IV with a 145 Leslie, through my B3 with two 122s, Yamaha
SK20, Korg CX3, Voce V3, then V5, Nord Electro, Electro2, then Stages.
My current rig most often consists of my Stage 76EX with a VK-8M drawbar
organ module and the Ventilator into two K10s for stereo or one K8 for
smaller gigs. I personally have learned to keep my gear fairly modular
and I can adapt to most types of gigs by having enough gear to be able
to choose the best combination for the gig. When I use my full blown gig
it's a lot of gear and a fairly complicated setup. One of the things
that really helps me is that I took the time to build a small snake
which routes all signals and power to my gear. That really speeds up my
set up / tear down time. Anyway, in the spirit of keeping my gear
flexible, I've been thinking about the Numa and Craig took me for a very
nice test drive. The Numa initially underwhelmed me - it seemed a bit
muted and bottom heavy - but the more I played it the more I realized
that that's usually my first impression when I sit down at the B3 after
being away from it for a while. The more I played and listened to Craig
play the Numa, the more it reminded me of the thick, meaty tone of a
real Hammond and Leslie. The percussion is perfect. The chorus vibrato
is perfect. The keyboard feel is perfect. The Leslie effect, although
not quite as realistic as the Ventilator, is very good. The layout is
very good, including,of course, the drawbars. Craig made a good point
that the drawbars are located right where you want them. Easy to access
with your left hand as you play. Is the Numa perfect? No, not by a long
shot. The Leslie controls are in an awkward spot, the Midi
implementation is a bit weird, there isn't enough control available
(yet!) over adjustments to percussion volume, chorus depth, Leslie
tweaks, etc. Many of these things will hopefully be addressed with
future software upgrades, and we've seen some evidence of that already.
I'm guessing that I will add the Numa to my stable of 'go to' keyboards
at some time in the not to distant future. But, all of this aside, the
best part of my visit with Craig was getting to know him a bit better
and just enjoying hanging out with a fellow gear head. I value Craig's
opinion as I hope he values mine. He gives freely of his advice and
experience and it's obvious that he genuinely loves music. Let's face it
- any guy with two Hammond consoles and two Leslies being stored in his
living room, making it impossible to sit on the furniture, is OK in my
book. Thanks again for a very interesting and informative visit Craig,
and hopefully I'll be able to return the favour sometime in the future.
I still love this list!

Cheers, Ken