Hammond Teaser ???

[AnotherScott]

I"ve always wondered why Hammond would have taken up a partnership with them

Hammond went out of business, and Suzuki acquired the name and intellectual property.

 

Oddly, the Suzuki global main page doesn't even mention that they make digital pianos. (At first, you might not even notice that they have Hammond, but you'll see it if you scroll down... they link to the dedicated Hammond sites)

 

https://suzukimusic-global.com/

 

Even their Japanese site doesn't seem to mention digital pianos. https://www.suzuki-music.co.jp/products/

 

It's like a phantom business!

[drawback]

I"ve always wondered why Hammond would have taken up a partnership with them

Hammond went out of business, and Suzuki acquired the name and intellectual property.

 

Oddly, the Suzuki global main page doesn't even mention that they make digital pianos. (At first, you might not even notice that they have Hammond, but you'll see it if you scroll down... they link to the dedicated Hammond sites)

 

https://suzukimusic-global.com/

 

Even their Japanese site doesn't seem to mention digital pianos. https://www.suzuki-music.co.jp/products/

 

It's like a phantom business!

 

Interesting â and now you mention it I do recall hearing about that, probably in this forum! I'm wondering if someone like Kawai James might have some scuttlebut on what's going on in the Japanese keyboard industry (although ethically he may not be able to say). Regardless, I don't think there's going to be much hope for better other-than-organ sounds from the company unless they get serious blowback from buyers.

[AnotherScott]

New system update and manual at https://www.suzuki-music.co.jp/support/hammond/model/hammond/sk-pro/ (note that the SK Pro update is not yet on the site's main System Updates page)

 

As long as I'm here... I experienced a stuck note last week--actually not a stuck note but a piece of a stuck note since only the tone of a single drawbar was ringing--and did not find a panic function in the manual except for using with external MIDI devices. According to someone on facebook, though, I should have tried that, because the external zone panic function works to silence any stuck internal tones as well. (Hopefully they will not be a common occurrence! Has anyone else had that happen?)

[FatFingers]

As long as I'm here... I experienced a stuck note last week--actually not a stuck note but a piece of a stuck note since only the tone of a single drawbar was ringing--and did not find a panic function in the manual except for using with external MIDI devices. According to someone on facebook, though, I should have tried that, because the external zone panic function works to silence any stuck internal tones as well. (Hopefully they will not be a common occurrence! Has anyone else had that happen?)

 

Happened to me twice tonight. Didn't have the manual handy, but it did finally go away after waiting 30 seconds or so. Hope it's just a bug that has already caught Hammond's attention.

[AnotherScott]

As long as I'm here... I experienced a stuck note last week--actually not a stuck note but a piece of a stuck note since only the tone of a single drawbar was ringing--and did not find a panic function in the manual except for using with external MIDI devices. According to someone on facebook, though, I should have tried that, because the external zone panic function works to silence any stuck internal tones as well. (Hopefully they will not be a common occurrence! Has anyone else had that happen?)

 

Happened to me twice tonight. Didn't have the manual handy, but it did finally go away after waiting 30 seconds or so. Hope it's just a bug that has already caught Hammond's attention.

Did you literally just wait and it stopped? That would be strange for a stuck organ tone. More likely you were playing during that time, I'm guessing. The way I got rid of mine (not knowing about the panic function working for internal sounds) was to chromatically play every key, since re-striking a stuck note can silence it.

[Al Quinn]

I'm connecting the SK Pro to a sound module and thought that by pressing the SK Pro's Octave Down button the midi note values would shift down an octave but unfortunately they do not. I'm wondering if they should or if this is just wishful thinking on my part.

[niacin]

I'm connecting the SK Pro to a sound module and thought that by pressing the SK Pro's Octave Down button the midi note values would shift down an octave but unfortunately they do not. I'm wondering if they should or if this is just wishful thinking on my part.

 

no, you do it in the external zones menu

[FatFingers]

 

Did you literally just wait and it stopped? That would be strange for a stuck organ tone. More likely you were playing during that time, I'm guessing. The way I got rid of mine (not knowing about the panic function working for internal sounds) was to chromatically play every key, since re-striking a stuck note can silence it.

 

You are correct; I believe I was messing around on the keys in the meantime while I tried a few edits in the menu function to no avail.

[Adan]

Got my Hammond EXP50 pedal. Significantly better than the FC7 for evenness of control. As I posted somewhere above, the FC7 had about a 10 db jump that couldn't be edited out no matter how I adjusted the exp pedal parameters. The EXP50 works the way an expression pedal should. It's a shame I had to spend that much money for a pedal, but for me it completes the keyboard.

[nadroj]

Love this guy's walkthrough of it. Aimed at gigging players - even to the point where he records it in mono. The big questions he asks is: "Is this capable of being your only board on stage?"

 

SPOILER: He's very positive. GASing hard, currently in talks with one store about a potential part exchange...

 

[video:youtube]

[ElmerJFudd]

Thanks for sharing. Haven"t heard much from anyone who has had their hands on one.

 

This Sweetwater customer from Nashville claims to have owned the SK Pro for a few months. He gives it 3.5 out of 5 stars and offers the following,

 

' Having been an SK1 user for several years, I was looking forward to an upgrade. I read all the articles and saw all the videos on this instrument before purchasing. I took it out of the box and plugged it in and started listening to everything. Here are the PROs:

1. Fantastic key bed. Silky smooth is the best description I can come up with.

2. A real instrument power cord.

3. Pitch Bend and Modulation wheels.

4. AWESOME Hammond sound and VERY GOOD Leslie simulator (dare I say no need for a Neo)

5. Additional Sounds are very good. (I use my Nord for acoustic piano so no review there)

6. A color and bright screen.

7. Beautiful fit and finish.

The problems start (and end) with the user interface. It is HORRIBLE. Lets get specific:

The only method of storage is a Combination. You cannot store a single sound, you MUST store one programs from each section: One Organ, one Piano, one Ensemble, one Synth. [Quick Note: Jim Alfredson was a HUGE HELP to me understanding the User Interface]

 

The first problem is just understanding that â you cannot store individual sounds in a program â you have to create and store a Combinations, was NOT obvious in ANY of the videos or manuals. That does not sound too bad, except not you are going to want to modify your sounds, that employs and obtuse method of User Interface manipulation. There are tiny drop down sections that must be understood in order to do anything. Building User sounds is not simple. If a keyboard is not simple and obvious after a few hours, it will be difficult to use on stage â live and in real time.

 

Now the kicker â I spend some time putting different sounds in different banks and went to a gig that was low risk â not a lot of people there. Going to a patch, lets say bank 2 favorite 5 - you hold down the Bank button and the "2" button to get to Bank 2. The screen give a list of â ready for this â Bank 1 and a list of its 10 programs. BUT you actually are in Bank 2. THE SCREEN DOES NOT TELL YOU THAT. Then hold down the Bank button and the "1" button to get you to Bank 1. Well it does, BUT THE SCREEN DOES NOT TELL YOU THAT. At this point I somehow got back to Bank 1 and stayed there. .

 

What is my bottom line. I think I will keep the instrument but ONLY use Bank 1. Just jam everything into those 10 Favorites and NEVER use the other 90 slots. I like the Hammond sound and the extra sounds too much to give it up. The Banks and the huge increase in storage will just not be used. It is too easy to get it wrong on stage. This is just stupid design.

 

The Synth sounds are decent, but I have not been able to test them yet. My tiny Roland SE-02 seems way more sophisticated than the Hammond Mono Synth, but we shall see.

 

Perhaps you will not have the same issues I have with this.'

 

I would imagine a jump to this type of UI for Hammond is going to have some growing pains. After getting user feedback it is surely to receive firmware updates. But as we"ve all learned at one time or another - don"t jump into a new instrument for features it doesn"t yet have. Firmware updates are often dependent upon how many units they sell. Can an owner confirm this fellows frustrations with the UI, is he just loath to read the manual?

[Al Quinn]

I"ve had an SK Pro 61 since May. I"ve used it on several gigs and a rehearsal. I love the B3. Internal sim is great; I haven"t felt the need to use my Vent 2. The mono synth is a nice surprise; I think it sounds great. I was hoping to like the APs and EPs enough to use on gigs and tried them on a gig and a rehearsal but find them dull and uninspiring so I bought a Dexibell SX7 sound module for APs and EPs. With the help of a MIDI Events Processor Plus I can control the sound module"s patches, volume, and octave switching from the SK Pro. So, no need to touch the sound module while performing which is how I like it.

[JMcS]

I was hoping to like the APs and EPs enough to use on gigs and tried them on a gig and a rehearsal but find them dull and uninspiring

 

On the other SK's it can be difficult to generate a high velocity value without playing whack-a-mole with the keys. This causes the various instruments to sound dull and lifeless since the attack harmonics etc. aren't produced. The SK-Pro probably has the same issue. Shortly after the SK-1 was introduced an adjustment named "Velocity Offset" was added that allowed the musician to add (or subtract) a value to the values generated by their normal playing. This greatly improves the quality of the sounds of the pianos and other velocity dependent instruments. The Velocity Offset adjustment is a system parameter (Pg. 81 #24 in the SK-1 manual). Velocity is a patch parameter in the Extra Voice menu (SK-1 Pg. 77 #7).

 

Good luck.

[kwyn]

I was hoping to like the APs and EPs enough to use on gigs and tried them on a gig and a rehearsal but find them dull and uninspiring

 

On the other SK's it can be difficult to generate a high velocity value without playing whack-a-mole with the keys. This causes the various instruments to sound dull and lifeless since the attack harmonics etc. aren't produced. The SK-Pro probably has the same issue. Shortly after the SK-1 was introduced an adjustment named "Velocity Offset" was added that allowed the musician to add (or subtract) a value to the values generated by their normal playing. This greatly improves the quality of the sounds of the pianos and other velocity dependent instruments. The Velocity Offset adjustment is a system parameter (Pg. 81 #24 in the SK-1 manual). Velocity is a patch parameter in the Extra Voice menu (SK-1 Pg. 77 #7).

 

Good luck.

 

The Sk2 was like that. The SK PRO, however, is better. Just set the velocity curve on the SK PRO patch and eq a bit. DRASTIC improvement! Just the velocity curve itself made it sound like a completely different patch to me

 

Edit: I think the Sk Pro deserves a new thread!!

[AnotherScott]

This Sweetwater customer ...offers the following,

...

'Fantastic key bed. Silky smooth is the best description I can come up with."

For some reason, I do find this implementation of the TP/8O to feel better than others I've played.

 

'The only method of storage is a Combination. You cannot store a single sound, you MUST store one programs from each section: One Organ, one Piano, one Ensemble, one Synth.

...

you cannot store individual sounds in a program â you have to create and store a Combinations"

This does not seem right. I'm still new to this myself, but as i see it, you can---and in fact MUST be able to--store individual sounds, in order to have them AVAILABLE to store in Combinations.

 

In fact the specs show:

 

Favorites: 10 banks x 10 numbers (Combination), 10 numbers (Page)

Combination: Factory: 100, User: 100, Bundle: 100, Manual

Organ Patch: Factory: 100, User: 100, Bundle: 100

Piano / Ensemble Patch: Factory: 300, User: 400

Mono Synth Patch: Factory: 100, User: 100, Bundle: 100

 

So yes, you can store an organ patch as its own thing, and a piano/ensemble patch as its own thing, and a mono synth patch as its own thing. (Don't ask me what a Bundle is, though.) It kind of sounds like he's complaining that you can't save a Combination that consists of just one of these sounds... instead it has to be, well, a combination of sounds, and that's true. But you can create a 4-sound combination and make three of the sounds muted by default, in order to effectively end up with a single sound combination. I think the other issue is that Favorites (re-ordered pointers to your saved sounds) can, themselves, only refer to Combinations, So if you want a Favorite to bring up nothing but your favorite clav sound, you'll have to create a Combination that has that clav sound (and three other silent/muted sounds) in order to get it. But practically speaking, it doesn't add any significant effort, and you end up with the same result.

 

I think he's right that this is not well described in the manual, but OTOH, I think the idea that Combinations exist to combine individual sounds that exist separately on their own is the most common way multi-timbral boards have worked for decades. If you want to create some kind of split/layered combination of sounds (like a Korg Combi; or a Yamaha Performance as it has existed on many of their boards; or a Kurzweil Setup/Multi; or a Roland Studio Set, Live Set, Performance, Scene, Program, Registration, or whatever they call it next month), you typically FIRST have to have all the individual sounds exist by themselves, before you can combine them (i.e. the individual components of a split/layered combination must first exist in a Korg or Kurzweil Program, or what has typically been a Yamaha Voice, or a Roland Tone or Patch, etc.). Sometimes you can make "tweaks" to the version of something saved within the combination (i.e. offsets), but essentially, you've still usually needed to have the underlying single sound in existence in something close to the form you want before you can combine it with something else. So the idea that the individual component sounds of a combination must exist before you can save them as part of a combination is not so unusual.

 

That said, the Hammond interface is different from the others I mentioned in that you're never explicitly in a single-sound vs. a multi-sound mode. You're always in the multi-sound mode, even when you're editing/saving a single (possibly solo'd) sound in its appropriate library (organ sounds, piano/ensemble sounds, mono synth sounds). And it is different from what we tend to see in other "direct control" boards (like the Nords, the Vox, the new Yamaha YC/CP series) where there is a single command that saves all the settings for all the component sounds of any split/layered combination. As always, it's a trade-off. It's nice (in that latter category of boards) to be able to set up the board however you want and take an instant snapshot of it, regardless of what changes you've made to what underlying components of the combined sound. OTOH, if you want to "re-use" one of the component sounds as part of another combination, that actually can be pretty awkward, whereas if each component were individually saved with whatever edits you made, you could easily bring up that sound individually and re-use it in combination with other sounds any time you want it in the future.

 

So I'd agree that the interface can be confusing and that the manual is far from a model of clarity, but conceptually, I think the basic "individual sounds vs. combis" approach is okay. Some more clarity in some of the on-screen displays, perhaps some confirmation dialogs that let you know exactly what you're saving when you save something, and some better descriptions in the manual, would all help.

 

As for navigating banks (different sets of what the ten buttons will do, and correspondingly, what's displayed on the screen)... I haven't looked at exactly what he's described there, but my experience is likewise that it's a bit of a mess. I'll need to conquer that in order to consider making this a regular choice in a 2-board rig. We'll see. (This may be where the interface could most benefit from improvements.)

 

One other area where I wish it were better would be LH bass applications. I want to be able to keep my left hand bass going while I seamlessly change the RH sound to whatever I might need at any moment (organ, strings, horns, Rhodes, Wurli, etc. etc.), either by being able to seamlessly change the RH sound alone to any other sound I need, or by being able to seamlessly switch from bass+soundX to bass+soundY for a wide variety of possible Xs and Ys... and as far as I've seen, there's no great facility for this. (Of course, that applies to many other boards as well... it was just something I'd hoped this board would be stronger at.) If this were my top board of a pair, for a LH bass gig, I'd have to use the bottom for the LH bass work, which is opposite of what I usually do (and also affects my choice of appropriate bottom boards I could possibly pair it with).

 

Despite the negatives discussed here, I think it may still be my favorite multi-function clonewheel. The only real competition is the much pricier Nord Stage 3, and there are a bunch of gotcha's on that one, too.

[nadroj]

Someone should respond to that comment on Sweetwater if what AnotherScott said is correct (which, let's be honest, it probably is). Some of what the SW commenter says is pretty damning, and if it isn't true it's important that the misinformation is dealt with, especially considering it's on the same page where potential customers are one click away from buying the thing.

 

Currently in the process of selling my gear to finance a new board which will become my live workhorse, and this is at the top of the list, which currently looks like this:

 

1) SK-Pro

2) Nord Stage 3 Compact

3) Kurzweil PC4-7 w/ Organ module/vent (wildcard option)

4) Yahama YC61/73

 

Each of the above would be complemented by Mainstage when needed.

 

There's a small 2 week gap in September where I don't have any gigs, so would ideally like to get rid of the final keyboard and make the purchase in that window...

 

I'd also be very curious to know if they were thinking about a dual-manual version, or a lower manual in the vein of the Mojo 61. If this was a dual manual the list above wouldn't even exist.

[Outkaster]

SK Pro 73- notes are on back order till Sept due to supply chain problems.

[AnotherScott]

I guess Hammond came to realize that more thorough documentation was needed. They just released a 600 page manual describing every function, with a walk-through tutorial approach to each section.

 

https://hammondorganco.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/SK-PRO-Reference-Guide-edited-r.pdf

[BenWaB3]

I just posted this on the SK-PRO forum on Facebook but thought I would cross-post it here. I'm certainly open to further suggestions & tweaks:

 

Hey folks - I was just fooling around with the Wurlitzer sound on the PRO & thought I would throw this out there if it (hopefully) helps. For one of the components I threw in a square wave & it helped fill out the overall tone. On the filter I used LP-12 cutoff to 63, resonance 17 & keytrack 32. On the filter EG I have Att - 0, Dec - 106, breakpoint - 32 & Slope Rate - 66. I forgot to write down what that component's volume was & the organ is off now but needless to say it was way below 127. This was just a quick setup so it could certainly stand to be fine tuned. I had remembered back to the 80's when I had a Korg Polysix and with only wave forms to work with that was how I got it to approximate a Wurly. On the PRO it does seem to give it a rounder tone more reminiscent of the real deal. I may try to go in & fool with a pulse wave on the Rhodes at some later date to see if that helps that voice. Anyway, hope this helps & if anyone has done this before or something similar please let us know your findings. Thanks.

[AnotherScott]

Things I find most useful to control from the top panel are: organ spring reverb, drive, delay (and a button for tap tempo), amp envelope attack, amp envelope release, filter cutoff, filter resonance, portamento glide time (with a button for portamento on/off), lfo speed. Hopefully the SKpro modwheel has some mapping options.

So real time controls for drive and the delay options are what the SK Pro is missing for you. Besides possible mod wheel mapping, the other possibilities would seem to be whether these are controls that are on a screen you can easily get to (i.e. one or two taps)

 

If you hold down the overdrive button for about a second, the knob next to the display becomes a drive amount knob.

[Pa Gherkin]

Don"t know if this has already been posted. Organ OD amount can also be routed to the mod wheel. SkPro manual combination control pg 76

[AnotherScott]

Has anyone figured out... What determines what organ parameters are used when you hit the Manual button?