eric

Wow, 40 years ago! It doesn't feel like it was that long ago. My first exposure to the DX7 was around 1985 when a friend in HS let me borrow his for a while. I used it with my Roland JX-8P playing in various HS garage bands. I eventually got the DX7IIFD when it came out in 1987 and used it for quite some time. I don't have any DX instruments now, aside from the PLG-DX board in my S90, if that counts. If I found a minty DX7 or DX7IIFD I might consider getting one, mainly for nostalgia. Also, the keyboard plays really nice.

I've used the same basic pedal board for over a decade, probably longer as my gear has had the same needs all of that time with mild fluctuations based on capabilities of the gear. I have a custom rolling keyboard stand with the pedalboard on wheels and the stand bolted onto it. I have each pedal more or less permanently mounted to this board, with cables running into a junction box that allows for multi pin snakes - one from keyboard to pedalboard and one from pedalboard to offstage rack. All cables are neatly bundled and I have to thank my friend @vonnor for doing all the multi pin snakes/soldering magic. I'm going on seven years with the same snakes and pedals on this version and it all works flawlessly. Picture below - I have my Vent fast/slow switch on the bottom left - I have been using my left foot to toggle Leslie and Leslie sim speed via pedal dating back to at least early '90s, so this is my muscle memory location for sure. Then I have a Yamaha FC7 for organ swell, a sustain pedal, and a second Yamaha FC7 that has varying control pedal uses. I have this some configuration on a rehearsal version of the rig, so it is all very consistent.

I've found it quite practical to do all of these things standing! LOL.

Killer rig! I love seeing these kinds of photos. Did you regularly move this around for gigs? How did you protect and move the gear and what kind of vehicle transported it? Roadies? Thank you for sharing.

I've always stood for every gig dating back to the early '80s. It's just part of my thing and as some know, I do use a rig that pretty much requires standing, LOL. I am going on 35 years with some form of rolling/tilting keyboard stand, I think I'm on at least Version 10 of this stand over the years. I don't remember ever giving much thought to sitting to play and have done the standing/moving around thing for so long that it is just part of what I do. I also love using a sit/stand desk for day job work, typically standing in the morning hours and usually sitting in the afternoon or when I'm doing very detailed work. Cheers!

The key to avoiding this in the first place is to use high quality cloth gaff tape first, applied to keyboard. Then put the velcro on the gaff tape. Has worked well for me over 2-3 decades, as the gaff tape is easily removed.

Great thread! I am 99% IEMs since 2011, so I don't really use keyboard amps nowadays, except for the very occasional sub gig where IEMs aren't well-supported. I have used MANY different keyboard amps since I first started playing live band music in the early '80s. My history... Peavey KB300 was my work horse for nearly a decade or more, starting in 1985 when I got one along with my Roland JX-8P. As others have mentioned, that thing was HEAVY, though it could definitely crank and keep up with loud guitars and drums. I thrashed mine all over the place and it served me well. Multiple Motion Sound units. KBR-M, which was the combo of rotary and fixed speaker in the same cabinet, with the ability to lean back like a monitor. Really liked this for a few years! I also used a pair of KT-80s and was pretty happy with these. I have the KP-500 in my music room used for monitoring keys alongside a Leslie for my Hammond. I still have the KT-80s (need to sell those at some point). I was always happy with Motion Sound and remember meeting the guys at NAMM many years ago. I have photos somewhere. I lost track of how things are going there, as I seem to recall the business may have been sold along the way? The last few years before going IEM, I was using a pair of QSC powered speakers. I had a K10 and a K8, both of which were great! My soundman also had some extra K12s that I would use from time to time. I had a few other random things like a Roland Cube 40 and Cube 60 that were acquired along with other gear purchases...those were actually way better than the more recent crop of Roland keyboard amps. My recommendation would be looking at Motion Sound and also whatever pair of powered speakers are useful to you, whether QSC, JBL, or others. Good luck!

I don't have a real Yamaha FM synth now, sadly. I do have a Yamaha PLG-DX plug in that's inside my S90, though that's in my gear closet and I hardly use it these days. The best I can get is loading samples into my Nords. I'm pretty happy with the one I have from a catalog of DX samples I purchased some time ago. Great stuff! Thanks for sharing! When I get my sound ready, I'll post some tidbits of it. Just heard the tubular bells very prominently, listening to the Band Aid song "Do They Know It's Christmas."

I have a very vivid recollection of the first time I ever played an original Yamaha DX7. One of my HS band mates who was a trombone player somehow ended up with one, as his parents were encouraging him to learn piano. He loaned it to me for an extended time and I used it for some early back yard parties along with my Roland JX-8P. There was a preset called TUB ERUPT that is basically the iconic DX7 tubular bells sound, made very famous by Harold Faltermeyer in the Top Gun soundtrack, and also quite frequently heard on the Taco Bell commercial. The "erupt" part of the sound would only happen when you sustained the sound and it would blossom from that clear chime to a synth pad. I remember being very drawn to this sound, though I know it was also very much overused in the '80s. Recently I have been learning the Bon Jovi song "Livin' on a Prayer" for a new cover band (first time I've ever done this song) and I hear this sound on the chorus. So I've loaded up a sample in my NS3 and have been going down memory lane with it. Do others know this sound? Where else was it heard? How do you like it? Happy Thanksgiving!

I've always been a fan of H&O and this show as well. Perhaps my favorite is the Cee Lo Green appearance and "I Can't Go For That." I now have copied this arrangement in two different bands and it's KILLER! As for the Tilbrook performances, I really enjoyed them as a long time fan of Squeeze. I am with those that are curious about why the keyboard player isn't playing on better gear.

I agree - it is pretty nice looking for a slab stage keyboard. My addition of Bolivian Rosewood side panels in place of the boring brown MDF helps a bit as well. The more I think about the future of my S90, the more I want to keep it indefinitely. It has been with me for over 20 years at this point. Sorry this is a little bit off topic for the thread, LOL.

My S90 (Classic) was one of my most productive purchases and I still am holding onto it. I used it prolifically in a wedding/general business band for a decade, with various clonewheels up top, and it just got the job done so well. Such as great action, form factor (mod/pitch wheels ABOVE the keys), killer Master mode, PLG expansions, and more. It really was a beast. I even had the S70XS for a bit and never liked it as much as the original S90. Here's a very old picture of that S90 rig.

I remember joining one of these when I was in my early teens and it was really exciting to pick those initial albums for a penny. My parents were unhappy with me for doing this (I guess I intercepted it in the mail, LOL), and then we did have a period where it felt like if you weren't totally on top of things, new items would arrive unexpectedly. I believe the one that I joined had a requirement to buy 2-3 regularly priced albums within a year or something. I somehow got a little behind on tracking the mail back indicating "don't want this" and so things would arrive that I hadn't picked. Chalk all of this up to being a youngster, and this was how these companies would hope to make money. Not sure if it's completely predatory or deceptive, given that I was definitely a minor at the time and likely outside of the purview of their contracts. My parents started watching the mail a lot more closely after this and I was forbidden from signing up for anything else. Good times.

Tracks are a mainstay in most every major touring act (big stadium type things) and have been for a long time. Sometimes they are just a backup crutch to help with vocals and sometimes they are replicating most every instrument on stage. If it's a well-produced show and tracks are hard to detect, I tend to let it go. As a musician, I can pretty much always tell and some of my friends will ask me to critique the equivalent of "what's real and what's Memorex?" LOL. When I see a local bar band doing really cheesy obvious tracks in place of a keyboard player, I'm a bit less forgiving and like @elsongs I will tend to walk away and not choose to listen to it.

Same here! Saw this tour in DC at The Anthem, which is a pretty epic place for a show like this. I loved Trevor as the opening act and enjoyed him as Seal's bass player as well! He played and produced some iconic music and I look forward to checking out this album for sure.

Cool thread! I never made the commitment to chop a Hammond. There was about a 1-2 year period where I was carting a Hammond M3 to gigs and the studio in the earliest days of my original ska/reggae/pop band. I had my tech friend help me install a 1/4" output on the M3 and I added wheels to it. We carted it around to as many gigs as possible, along with a Leslie 145. It was kind of a beast, so it was mostly replaced by first an analog Korg CX-3 and then Hammond XB-2. This was around late '80s into very early '90s. Here's a picture of it in the studio for I think our second album around 1991. We had talked about chopping the lower half with speaker and pedals to make it more portable. I don't know if that would have done a whole lot. I see some pro Hammond players (even without roadies) that do wonders moving A and B console Hammonds with dollies plus Leslies on wheels. There's a guy Todd Phipps (not sure if he's on this forum) who plays all his gigs with a console Hammond and two Leslies! He has a transit van with ramps and makes easy work of it. That's dedication to the cause!

Thanks for the shout out! I am very happy with my cabling and I thank @vonnor for helping to make this happen. Here are a few more recent gig photos I don't think I've shared on the forum. @Stokely you have a very cool/minimalist rig, similar to what I aspire to do. My rig for the longest time has focused on a single board (either NS3 or NS2) with two Yamaha FC7 swell pedals, sustain, Vent fast/slow switch, and an offstage rack with Radial KL-8, Vent, wireless IEM gear.

I love all of Herbie's music, particularly Headhunters, Thrust, and Fat Albert Rotunda. I can get lost in the music. One of my very early experiences, as cliche as it sounds, was playing Chameleon in HS jazz band, early-mid '80s.

Depending on your budget, you could get the Nord Electro 6D (61 or 73 keys) or a Nord Stage Compact (NS4 is the newest, the predecessors NS3 and NS2 are still great).

Cool video and comparisons. I have spent a lot of time on both Rhodes and Wurly, though I don't currently own either (sad face). When I was in HS back in the early-mid '80s, the school had a Rhodes Stage that I used in the jazz band and for all the HS musicals. Somehow I convinced the band director and chorus teacher that it would be ok for me take the Rhodes home during summer break - I did this three summers and had the best time taking that Rhodes around to various garage band parties and jam sessions. Around the same time, I found a Wurly 200A in the closet at church (beige model) and no one wanted it. I was given permission to take it. So I used it as my rehearsal piano at my college apartment. I ended up selling it to a touring jam band for what I thought was a nice sum at the time. I still miss it and would love to get another Wurly one day. I was able to get pretty much all of the references in the video. I'm a bigger fan of the Wurly sound if I had to pick one. It's more rock and roll and is a sound I use pretty often when I'm playing a song with my band that doesn't really have a keyboard part. I can usually find a good part on my own somewhere between organ and Wurly.

I had missed this thread earlier. We are really, really lucky to have people like Steve Nathan here. It's humbling that he gives us his wisdom here. Thank you, @Steve Nathan! As for how I navigate drawbar settings, here's my story. I first started working on my organ chops in the mid '80s when I was lucky to acquire a console A101 from the church where I grew up. They had one a rehearsal room and needed to get rid of it. We arranged to buy it for $500 and it landed in my childhood house living room for a couple of years, until I later moved it to my "adult" house. The dual manual organ with four sets of drawbars, all these other controls for C/V, percussion, presets, etc. was pretty overwhelming to teenage me. There was no internet back then, so I just experimented and sort of taught myself how to use it. I was never accomplished as a true organ player like Jimmy Smith or Joey D in terms of walking bass, pedals, etc. though I really dug deep into the drawbars. Fast forward a few years to late '80s when I joined a ska/reggae/pop band and realized that I'd need to have organ as my prominent sound for this. I got an analog Korg CX-3 that I used a few years (sometimes through a 145 Leslie) and then this was replaced by a Hammond XB-2 right when they came out around 1991-1992. I used the XB-2 with a Dynacord CLS-222 for a decade, and then I had a brief sting with some of the earlier XK models and the digital Korg CX-3 before I got hooked by the Nord Electro, Stage and others that would give me a bit more under the hood in terms of sound flexibility. The drawbar sound that really grabbed me for a lot of songs (this band started doing covers and moved to originals quickly) was 888000008 - this was a solid foundational sound with some sparkle from that top drawbar. Sometimes the sound person would tell me it was cutting a bit too much and I'd back off to 888000004 or thereabouts. This was what I considered "my sound" and used it a lot. Also, there was a variation that was 808000008 which was a more mellow and flutey sound...or 800000008 which was the "whistle" type sound great for doing reggae bubbles and so forth. Over time, I came to associate the second drawbar as the "rock and roll" bar and you can really hear it if you switch between 808000000 and 888000000. Even thicker rock and roll when you add in a bit of the fourth drawbar, whether full on 888800000 or some variation. I really liked using 686800000 or 686800006 which made the organ sound a little bit lighter in the mix and it would sort of float there when not using all those bars out all the way. These aren't the only settings I used, but it was how I got everything started and still find myself here nearly 40 years later using similar type settings.

Welcome back, Dan! I have enjoyed following some of your musical threads over on FB. You're right, Joe is a great guy! It had been a while, though was happy to reconnect with him at NAMM this year at the Buca hang. I believe the very first time I met Joe was about 15 years ago. I was in Houston on a business trip. Joe and Lori picked me up from the airport and took me out for some delicious BBQ and then we went back to play some keyboards at their house. Somewhere along the way, Joe bought a keyboard from me during a hurricane and the thing was destroyed while with FedEx in transit. We eventually sorted out the insurance and all of that fun stuff. Glad to have Joe as a friend through all of that!

I started using the original Vent in 2011 and permanently mounted it inside of my rack, where it still lives to this day. I use a remote footswitch and have the Vent in "set it and forget it" mode (like a real Leslie, LOL). I also built a rehearsal rack in the same way, with a Vent II that works the same way.

Fascinating thread! I use one of the Costco motorized stand/sit desks in my home office area. I acquired it at the start of the pandemic and it has served me well. This all reminds me of a keyboard stand that was on the market probably 10 years ago that was motorized and built like a tank (with the weight to match). I actually wrote a review of this for Keyboard Magazine back in the day. My old man memory is failing me and I can't find anything about it online. I'll have to look through my collection of magazines to find it. I seem to recall it being fairly expensive (over $1k) though the company had some smaller versions for less money. They were targeting the use case where multiple players might like to have different stand height while sharing the same stand (e.g. churches, schools). I used it for dramatic effect on a few gigs and it was pretty fun! I can't picture transporting something like that on a regular basis.

Thanks for all of the great comments and nostalgia about Yamaha's PLG boards - it is pretty wild to reflect on how long ago these were produced, and the modular capabilities of many of their instruments to host them! I had forgotten about the S80 and AN200, along with others. Here's a picture of my careworn S90 from when I had set it up in my daughter's apartment. I still love the S90 - it has an awesome action and one of the very few boards of its time to put the pitch and mod wheels ABOVE the keyboard, making it more portable as an 88 note board, due to the decrease in width. I had the S70XS for a bit, which was 76 keys with the wheels on the left side...so it fit perfectly into my S90 case, LOL. I decided I liked the S90 more and had some sentimental thoughts based on how long it served me.