From ccmacdon@rogers.com Mon Sep 24 11:04:16 2012
Subject:Re: Numa organ vs Mojo - HELP!

Jeff, I can't imagine ANYONE hating the VB3 or the Mojo...   the fact that said you liked them is how you've maintained some degree of credibility with me  ;-) 
 
seriously just kidding..
 
I get what you're saying that if you're playing two clones through the same amp, and signal chain, you would think it was a fair comparison, but you never know...!!! I'll give you an interesting example.. Just a couple weeks ago, on one of the Hammond organ lists I belong to (can't remember which one,  I don't think it was here on clonewheel, I think it was either the Hammondzone or Organ-ized).. one of the more experienced and knowledgable guys tossed out a statement about the ventilator, and if I recall correctly he said he had done a side by side comparison and felt the ventilator was no better than the leslie sim in his VK7.  I was shocked!!   There is no doubt that the Ventilator is in an entirely different league then a 10+ year old VK sim.. !! A bit of poking around revealed that he did the comparison using a Trayner stereo keyboard amp, and I forget the model but it had built some special built in stereo enhancing DSP and treble speakers
that were pointed at 90 degrees to each other.  So it was pretty easy to figure out that this amp probably improved the stereo effect of the old VK7 sim, and it probably over emphasized the ventilator and made it sound like crap.  Either way, when comparing stereo effects one should NOT use an amp that has is designed to distort the stereo field!!
 
Again I'm not trying to debate or argue your opinon.. but there is a difference between comparing things through the same amp/signal chain, and comparing things through a good quality signal chain, that doesn't distort or colour the sound.  If you can find an amp that makes a VK7 leslie sim sound better than the Ventilator, I'm pretty sure that you can find an amp or monitor that takes the soul out of a Numa organ... ;-)
 
One other point of interest that kind of relates.... last summer I dropped into the music store (where I used to work) and tried the new Korg Kronos.. I was particularly interested in the built in CX3 organ sounds. I have to say that at the time I hated it, and wrote off the CX3 engine altogether. At the end of the year I bought a Hammond Sk1 which I returned in 48 hours because it was obviously broken (awful noise in the EV's), and JukeFox convinced me to give the Kronos another try.  So I went back to the store and listened again, and didn't really like it, again.. However, both times I was listening to the Kronos through a couple of small studio monitors, and I had a bit of extra time on my hands so I dragged over a QSC K10 (which I gig with) and I put the Kronos through it, and the difference was like night and day, ESPECIALLY and most noticably on the CX3 patches.. All of a sudden the the CX3 engine was sounding OK.. not fantastic, but OK,
good enough for me to take a chance on it (I was looking for an all in one synth that could double as a Hammond clone in a pinch or for small gigs), so I bought one and took it home.  Once I got passed all the horrible horrible KORG organ programs (which where clearly programmed by someone who had never played a real B3), and started building my own programs, I was able to get a pretty decent sound (ultimately when I use the CX3 engine in the Kronos I send it to a separate output and run it through the ventilator and it's now very passable). 
 
It may be that all the Hammond clones would have sounded equally crappy through those studio monitors that the Kronos was plugged into the music store, but it really demonstrated to me, how much difference the right amp/monitor/listening environment could make in the overall sound of a Hammond clone. 
 
ALL THAT SAID, I bought my Mojo and my NUMA both without hearing either of them, at the time I bought the NUMA there was none in the dealer network  here in Canada (I bought it directly from the Canadian distributor), and same thing with the Mojo.. at least with the Mojo I've owned VB3 for years and I was able to hear a bunch of great sounding youtube clips... if I had demo'd either of them in a music store who knows what the outcome might have been.. ;-)
 
Bottom line, we all hear things differently.. AND to make matters worse... we're all looking for a slightly different hammond sound.
 
Craig
 
Re: Numa organ vs Mojo - HELP!
Mon Sep 24, 2012 8:41 am (PDT) . Posted by:
"raisindot" raisindot
Craig, you're absolutely right in that, in an ideal situation, you'd have the perfect environment and an extensive amount of time to run extensive demos of an instrument to put it through all of its paces.

Unfortunately, this opportunity rarely presents itself. The environment in which I was demoing these two units (side by side) wasn't the most ideal place, but both units were being fed through the same not-the-best amplification and speaker system with no real extra processing (i.e., no Vents or revers), so I would consider it a fair way to compare the two. Especially since my own home amplication system isn't significantly better.

Given these obstacles, I play each unit for around a half hour each, playing with drawbars and other settings so I think that I really got a very good feel what the capabilities and flaws of each instrument. For me, the Numa just didn't grab me. It doesn't matter to me what Joey D. or anyone else endorses or develops. Just because a player works with a company to develop a product doesn't mean that their involvement guarantees a best in class product. But, again, this is solely my impression of the two instruments, which can be taken with the grain of salt it deserves. I'll bet there are a few people out there who hate the VB3 or the Mojo, too. :)

--- In CloneWheel@yahoogro ups.com, "ccmacdon" wrote:
>
> Jeff,
>
> Yes a lot of this is subjective, but one of the things I see/hear often is people walking into a music store "demoing" some product or another and then making up their minds in a few short minutes that an instrument is good or bad (and I've done this myself).

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