From timshea59@yahoo.com Fri Jun 15 17:13:24 2012
Subject:Re: Got my Mojo working...

I feel a bit of GAS coming on.

Great post, can't wait to hear your assessment from a gig.

Tim

________________________________
From: ccmacdon
To: CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2012 10:51 AM
Subject: [CWSG] Got my Mojo working...


 
Hey folks,

Received my Mojo yesterday afternoon and I've been playing with it a bit today.. I thought I would provide my first impressions... (I posted this on Keyboard Corner as well)..

Looks Great - I was never much of a fan of the NORD red and the first thing my girlfriend said when she saw it was how nice it looks ;-) (not a real technical assessment) but the truth is that I quite like the looks of it too.. black/grey colour scheme for the controls and nice wood sides and ends. It's also a little deeper and more substantial looking than my C2.. although it weighs a few pounds more as well, but it really has a nice look.

Build Quality - EXCELLENT - very well built and it survived a very bumpy ride from Italy.. when it arrived at my door it was obvious that it had a rough ride, the box was really beat up and one of the feet was sticking out of the bottom of the box (yikes). Thankfully when I opened it up, it was one of the feet of the gig bag, not the organ itself, and the organ was nicely packaged inside the gig bag with extra packing around it. So despite a rough ride it arrived in perfect condition.

Regarding the sound, here are my thoughts taking the organ straight out of the box with no editing...

Percussion - perfect (what else can I say?)

C/V - perfect

Raw Tones - excellent

Leslie Sim - definately equal to Ventilator quality

Overdrive - good (but like most clones it just gets weird beyond 75%)

Key Click - Excellent

Interface - it's excellent as far as an organ interface goes, but with no display, editing parameters is a bit tedious and it's not particulary intuitive because you have to remember which shift/button/knob combinations control what (there is no indication on the control panel what the alternate functions are of each buttom.. perhaps editing would be easier if the alternate functions for buttons and controls were noted in a different colour?). That said, you can plug a VGA monitor and mouse into the Mojo to edit all the parameters on a big display.... This is a big plus!

Keyboard feel is excellent, a little stiffer than my well worn Hammonds, but very similar to my Nord C2, and very playable.

I have to say that right out of the box the Mojo f-ing screams and yet it is very warm and ballsy..

A few little installation quirks that I encoutered. The presets were blank..? At first this made me think that there was something wrong with mine, but apparently Crumar just leave them empty for us to configure ourselves (I thought this was a bit weird and it left me a bit confused for a couple of minutes). They were VERY easy to program however, just like the radio stations on your car, set the drawbars how you like them and push/hold the preset button you want to save this to... and done.

I also encountered a ground loop between my Mojo and my QSC K10's and I had to lift the ground on the Mojo. I'm still investigating this to see if I have a problem with the wiring here in my studio (I had a similar problem with my new Kronos when I plugged it into my audio interface on my computer to do some recording).

I've just started editing and I've switched the overdrive to type 2 which is more like the Deep Purple sound that I need for my 11STEPS band, and I have reduced the mic distance a bit (I always liked the close mic sound), and other than that I haven't changed much at all..

So I have to say that my initial impressions are WOW!

Craig MacDonald



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]