From ccmacdon@rogers.com Fri Jul 12 06:34:00 2013
Subject:Re: The SK1-88

Ken I have to agree as well.. 
 
A couple of things.... From my perspective, the Extra Voices in the SK series are just plain mediocre (although to me they don't sound that bad in this video).  I returned my SK1 19 months ago, for two reasons..  first, it was defective and had noise/hiss in the Extra Voices, but I the main reason I didn't have it replaced were the mediocre EV's, but it wasn't just a problem with the sounds themselves, the list of sounds included in the SK simply wasn't very comprehensive..  it contained many odd sounds and no warm sampled strings (??), and at the time they didn't even exist in the downloadable sounds. The other issue was that you could split and layer sounds but one sound had to be an organ.. so you couldn't layer piano and strings for example.. (what self-respecting "all-in-one" keyboard doesn't have the ability to layer piano and strings??)
 
With respect to the keyboard, and this video..  The way HS promotes this SK-88 it sounds like it has this "magical" proprietary feature that allows you to choose between high and low trigger point for organ or other sounds.. and this is just more HS "over-hype", because most other clones have had this ability for years (Nord certainly has as does my Mojo).. and HS has actually been slow to introduce this.  The reality is that the keyboard doesn't change, it's the same standard SK keyboard, but it will have a slightly lighter touch for organ (initially there were a lot of complaints about the low trigger point on the SK and they fixed this in one of there later OS updates). 
 
Frankly, I liked the SK organ but overall I found the SK disappointing.. primarily due to the over-hype vs the quality of what they actually delivered.  I'm not a Hammond hater, I'm just frequently disappointed by these guys.  I do like the organ, but I really didn't like/want the EV's and if I wasn't going to use them $2000 was too much for a single manual organ.  That said the new XK-1c looks to be a very nice drawbar organ, the only question I have is whether the list price of $1495 is a bit steep considering the price point of the VR-09 (which is not a bad sounding drawbar organ and it has a whole lot of other sounds and features for significantly less - $999).
 
Bottom line, if you're a piano player you're probably not going to like playing this keyboard for acoustic piano.. but it is something that you can probably get used to IF you have a good reason to..  and I'm sure that there are guys on this list using the SK as an all-in-one who are fine with the action (and the sound)..  There are also lot's of guys using the EV's on the SK, who think they're just fine.  So take what I'm saying as one persons opinion.

Regards,
Craig MacDonald


________________________________
From: "ken@kenhall.ca"
To: CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, July 12, 2013 8:35:08 AM
Subject: Re: [CWSG] Re: The SK1-88

 


Ben,

You pretty much identified all of the reasons for which I
sold my SK-1.

Ken

On Fri, 12 Jul 2013 08:30:43 -0400 (EDT),