Phil M.

I agree that being able to assign the knobs to any internal or sound parameter would be a huge plus. I intended to use MainStage integration as my main rig but for live use the internal sounds are probably good enough in many cases, and leaving my Mac at home will make life much easier on the bandstand, but in that case I will miss the knobs.

Hi, just to let you know that I'm interested by any news on this topic as well. I'm amazed by the integration between the RD-88 and my Mac, and by how easy it is to mix outputs of programs on my Mac and sounds from the RD-88 (and get the result on the out jacks). But I've had a hard time sending a Program Change to the RD-88 when changing patch in MainStage. I've tried to investigate with MIDIMonitor, but not everything seems to me working smoothly. Let me explain what I did. I started with DAW Ctrl OFF (no MainStage patches on the display of the RD-88). I wanted to send a scene change event from MainStage when changing patch. As suggested elsewhere, I created an "External MIDI" channel strip, configured it on the RD-88 interface, channel 16 (the same as on my board). On the "MIDI Output" tab of this strip, I tried to configure both the Send Bank Select (to MSB 85 and LSB 0 -- check the MIDI implementation chart) and the Program Change (to, say, 5), but this didn't seem to work, for reasons I couldn't figure out (the events did not show up in MIDIMonitor -- only on the RD-88 interface by the way... it did show up on a different MIDI interface). The only way I found to get my board change scene was to capture a small scene change event in Reaper, save it as a MID file, then choose this file as "Send MIDI File" on the "MIDI Output" tab. This way I can select a patch on MainStage and have it send a scene change event. So far so good. This can still be useful, as it allows me to easily select a scene and whatever plugin patch on MainStage: the best of both worlds. The downside is that, as soon as I tried to enable DAW CTRL integration (by pressing SHIFT [DAW CTRL]), it seemed the scene change event did not make it to the RD-88. It shows up on my MIDIMonitor, but the scene does not change. And I currently know no way to inspect MIDI messages received by the RD-88. I'm stuck... It would be really nice to make the most of this DAW CTRL integration. Has anybody managed to do better? Please share your own experience. By the way, I generated some MIDI files for all 400 scenes, if this can be of help to anyone: just let me know. All the best, Phil

Brilliant! Thanks JMcS, it works with an SK-1 as well. Of course with LOCAL set to OFF (described, as you said, in p.114). The SK has also decent master keyboard features. While experimenting I discovered a strange behavior: with LOCAL set to OFF without MIDI loopback, no sound is generated. Press SPLIT then M.BASS: the bass sound can be heard in the lower part below the split point, which is unexpected (because no MIDI information should be sent to the sound generators). Probably a bug to be reported to H/S.

I've come across those documents by googling for PDF files on Hammond's site, but I don't know how they can be reached otherwise. The numbering suggests there are some missing chapters, which I haven't found. Very newbie-oriented, but I'm sure they can still be useful, for starters at least. http://hammondorganco.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/01-INTRODUCTION.pdf http://hammondorganco.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/03-DRAWBARS-PERCUSSION-r.pdf http://hammondorganco.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/05a-KEYBOARD-SPLIT.pdf http://hammondorganco.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/05b-LOWER-TO-PEDAL.pdf http://hammondorganco.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/09-EQUALIZER.pdf http://hammondorganco.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/13-SPECIAL-UTILITY-FEATURES.pdf http://hammondorganco.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/QUICK-START_to_HAMMOND_SK_OPERATING_SYSTEM.pdf http://hammondorganco.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/QUICK_START_to_HAMMOND_FAVORITES_SETUP.pdf http://hammondorganco.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/USING-THE-USB-PORT-120613-FINAL-WITH-LINKS-reduced.pdf

@b3halt: thanks for your time getting in touch with H/S.

@BBblues: the shortcut to the organ type selection page is [uPPER and [LOWER] pressed together (two fingers -- see the manual in page 41). If you also press [PEDAL], your SK-1 gets confused I think.

So far I'm very satisfied with my SK-1, for the sound of course, but also for its ease of use and customizability. There are really many possible tweaks and controls to make it behave the way I need during a live performance. There's a small nagging detail which bothers me a little bit: it has two separate buttons for 2nd and 3rd percussion harmonics (which is good!) but it is possible to set both on at the same time, which I can hardly find useful. Not a big deal for sure, but it's nagging (me at least) when I want to switch between the 2nd and the 3rd, because two buttons need to be pressed for that, which is very unnatural to me. Am I missing something? Otherwise would it be possible to allow them to operate just like the two vibrato/chorus V1/C1 and V2/C2 buttons which are exclusive, unless you press them together, in which case the V3/C3 is what you want: this could work the same way with 2nd-3rd percussion. To me this would be a small though useful fix to this weird design. Any thoughts about this? Any way to suggest this to H/S?

Hey Facundogarde have you made it through your problems? Sorry, I've been offline for a while... And thanks to JMcS for giving you the link to the old versions of firmware.

Hi, I wanted to share with the community the problems I've had with my SK-1 software update and the way I solved them, hoping this can be useful to anyone else encountering the same situation. The afternoon I received my SK-1 I tried to do an update with the latest version downloaded from Hammond's site. During the update something apparently went wrong (I'm still not sure why) and the end result was that my system was up-to-date with all the menus working fine, but I could hear absolutely no sound. The keyboard was OK because I could control an external synth, the music player was OK as well, but nothing could be done to play drawbar sounds or extra voices out of my brand new SK-1... Not even a reset to default settings could change anything. And when re-applying the software update the gear simply reported that there were no software update available. I was stuck... I contacted the european support, a very nice guy in the Netherlands (thanks Jan!) who sent me an old version of the software. So what I did was a *downgrade* of the software (fortunately the SK-1 allows software updates towards both newer and older versions -- but not to the same) to version 7, which put my gear back to a working state, and then I applied another *upgrade* to the latest version, which completed flawlessly and lead me to the latest software version at last! Just a couple of recommendation in order to make software updates a success story: - check out the doc on Hammond's site, "supplement - using the USB port" and the useful suggestions in this thread: https://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/2600408/Re_Hammond_SK1_73 - follow the procedure as thoroughly as possible - in particular stick to the USB stick brands recommended by H-S; buy a new one, it is worth the 5 bucks/euros - format it on the SK-1 - keep a safe copy of the old versions just in case you need to make a downgrade - never upgrade your software the day before a gig... Hope this helps!