From daleassociates51@yahoo.ca Fri Jun 01 14:27:29 2012
Subject:Casio XP1 Organ Sounds

Hi Gang,

It has been a while since I last contributed, but I have been busy rehearsing with my new band, and work has kept me quite occupied. I have been following a lot of the discussions lately, but some of it has been too technical for me to comment on. Today I ventured out of the office to a local music store to test out the new CASIO XP1 to see what all the fuss was about. I thought if the sounds were better than my current Roland RS5 I might consider selling it and some other modules I own to add it to my rig. One of the guys in the keyboard department who I respect told me he was not wild about the keyboard action, but thought some of the patches were pretty solid. I brought along my headphones and proceeded to play. At first I was totally underwhelmed by the organ engine and believe me VB3 and the Ventilator have nothing to worry about. The leslie effect was lame. The drawbars and percussion work pretty well, but from the the small time sample I had to try it out , dare I say the organ engine lacks balls! I tried out some of the pianos they were just okay. In the end I did mess up a little as I realized somebody had set the octave range higher thereby taking removing some of the bottom end presence out of the patches. When I adjusted it the pianos and organs did improve somewhat, but I was running out of time. I did have the opportunity to play a Kurzweil board for a few minutes and there was no comparison the keyboard bed was far superior and the onboard pianos were better than the CASIO as well, but of course the price was almost twice as much. I would like to spend a little more time with the CASIO learning how to program it properly as I am sure you could probably tweak some better sounds. That was my initial impression. Maninstage patches are far superior and even some of my older Roland modules have much punchier sounds even though they are more than a decade old. Of course I still love my VB3. I would be interested to know if any of you out there have tried out the CASIO yet, and what your initial impression was. Always new toys to try out.

David
Ottawa, Canada