resigned

I recommend the QuickLok M-91 "Monolith" for sitting or standing with the SK2. Very stable, quick and easy setup, plenty of room for pedals. I played the SK2 under near-worst-case conditions last night: we were hit with a thunderstorm that caused a quick series of power surges while we were playing. Of course we quickly killed power and took a long break until the power stabilized... once we turned everything back on the SK2 worked perfectly as usual. It has never locked up on me, no issues of any kind to date (since mid-February).

http://media.houseofsound.ch/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/Q/u/Quik_Lok_M91_the_monolith__1.jpg I use the QuikLok M-91 "Monolith" with my SK2. Sturdy, easy to transport, plenty of room for pedals.

Thanks for the help with installing the firmware update release. I was able to get it to install with no problems on my first effort by following the advice given by JMcS and removing the sloadV1003 from the usb drive after it loaded the first time. The new synth strings are welcome and fill a crucial gap in the SK library. Also very welcome is the new "Stereo GP Pad2" patch which the library needed. But I still miss a certain fidelity in the quality of the SK library sounds, including the newest... honestly, these sounds are not on par with most of today's keyboards. Oh it's nice to have them but in an era of 192k recording and HD everywhere it seems like the SK download sounds are stuck in the 70's. I know: limited internal memory blah blah. I'd prefer to have the SK read directly from larger flash or solid state drives and give us better quality sounds if memory is the issue. But I can make use of the new ensemble strings and piano/pad patch so thanks H/S. Can you do something about the organ overdrive now?

Submitted February 15th.

http://bborgan.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/s/k/sk2bag.jpg And BTW, I recv'd the free carry bag for my SK2 today from Hammond/Suzuki's promo in February. Not for demanding use but sufficient for light gigs. Free is good... I see it selling for as much as $239 online.

http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s320x320/306269_3226826183454_1804019965_n.jpg Finally got the CU-1 half-moon Leslie switch for my SK2 (they were back-ordered from H/S). Some thoughts about it: first, I like it... I thought it might get in the way of my playing but it doesn't. Much easier and faster to switch speeds with the CU-1 rather than reaching up to the top panel. The CU-1 mounts easily via two thumbscrews (see Pg. 20 of SK owner's manual). Looks like I have to attach/detach the CU-1 every time I move the organ. I'd rather leave it in place but that could be a liability. The CU-1's attached cable is a little too long so it dangles under the organ - unless I rig up some kind of cable management under there. The cables for the expression pedal and damper pedal are too long also so I may mount some small cable clamps under the SK2 anyway. Also the CU-1 is a little pricey compared to a simple footswitch but it's solid and "authentic" I guess.

Agreed. The EPAmp overdrive sounds more authentic than the Tube overdrive, but not by much. The overdrive simulation remains the weakest area of the SK and I sincerely hope that Hammond/Suzuki releases a future OS update that improves on this. So much to love about the SK and only one real sonic flaw: the overdrive.

The new Choir & Vocal library is interesting. Decent quality and realistic patches. Several patches seem to evoke caroling. Again it feels like HamSuz is continuing to develop the SK's sound library for the worship market, which is fine, but I hope they expand beyond that with some sounds that have broader application.

It's not that crazy but I had a guy tip me $100 to stop playing the piano for an hour. He wasn't being rude nor was I playing poorly - he was a famous NBA star and he was signing an endorsement deal just a few yards from where I was playing.

I'm tired of admiring the fine craftwork of some of my guitar buddies axes - exquisite and rare woods lovingly sculpted into museum-quality musical instruments. We keyboardists get plastic. I would like a controller with a real wood cabinet, not too heavy but weight isn't as important as style and function. Something as splendid to look at as it is to play, built by a craftsman to not just create art but to be art. The refined finish should rival custom shop guitars for beauty and attitude. Wood graded-hammer action keys of course, and I'd also like it to have a matching stand option that just dwarfs anything currently made for sexy sawhorse to rest the dream machine on. Maybe such a thing exists - if so, please share. And maybe we could do a lovely wood rack for a beefcake Receptor too.

OK, my last worst load-in story ever... It was the hottest day of the year in Savannah Georgia: July 31st. 110 degrees in the shade with 90% humidity... every heat warning is out in spades. I arrived at the gig before the rest of the band to setup, which turned out to be at a doctor's waterside home... and by coincidence the doctor was a friend of mine. The band roadie was setting up the gear and PA in the back yard facing the water - in direct sun, no trees, no hope of shade or even a passing cloud for an afternoon gig. The gear is already too hot to touch. It's a wedding reception and noone is venturing out of the air conditioned house. Turns out the band was hired as a "wedding present" by a guest who wasn't even going to be there. So my doctor friend comes up and asks me to play solo indoors and he would call the guy who hired the band and explain - the band would get paid anyway (he had the band check). I said certainly. So I call the band leader with the good news - they get the day off with pay and no heat stroke. He flips out... what the hell was I doing renegotiating the gig without him? I tried to explain that it was common sense, the host requested it, noone lost a dime over this - it was a total win-win. He was not buying it and was about to come do the gig regardless. I went so far with this and then cut to the chase: I was sending the roadie home with the gear and the check and I was playing alone in the nice cool house, screw it. The gig went perfectly and I quit the stupid band a few days later. A lot of my gigs were solo after that.

I did play at a college one time where water was an issue. Actually I was supposed to give a lecture on music technology, and the weather was so nice we decided to hold the lecture outside. I setup under the awning of the building and the students sat under the trees... the audience quickly grew. As I was playing on a DX-7, a kindly old woman slowly shuffled out and set a huge glass of ice water on the sloped front of the keyboard for me, then turned and left. You know what happened next. As I freed my left hand and kept playing with the right, I tried to grab the glass and set it on the floor, but it slipped from my grasp and the entire drink poured into the DX-7, which immediately sputtered and stopped working. A hush fell over the crowd as I unplugged the synth and poured the water out of it. I went into the lecture part of my presentation to let the keyboard dry. When it was over, I nervously switched the keyboard on and it worked fine. I quickly traded the DX-7 away on a new keyboard while it still worked.

Many of these stories are somewhat familiar, i.e. winding my way through a maze of corridors and through the kitchen with a ton of gear. Up and down stairs etc. But the top three worst for me are as follows (abbreviated for space): 3. Loading a chopped B3 into a snow-bound country club across ice and slipping, hitting my head very hard. No question about the concussion, and no gig either because it was a blizzard. The band was trapped for the night with the waitresses in the lodge for the party of their lives, and I was in total misery with not even an aspirin for relief. Got dug out the next day. 2. We packed the band's truck for a road trip that was to begin the next day and left it parked behind the club after a gig. Crooks hotwired the truck but only got two blocks away because it had no gas. So they broke into the back and off loaded whatever they could carry - guitars, keyboards, etc. leaving the truck stranded with the back open in the middle of a highway. Road trip was canceled, nothing was insured. 1. The load-in onto the gambling ship went perfectly thanks to high tide. When the ship returned it was an extreme low tide and humidity was 100%. No help and no sympathy - I was left alone at 2am to attempt to drag my equipment up a long steep wet aluminum gangplank. More than once I slipped and went back down the metal ramp holding onto my gear for dear life because letting go would mean it could slide all the way off the dock into the water. I had several nightmare events related to gambling boats/ships, including having to setup next to the engines and/or exhaust, voltages that went up and down with the engines, speaker stands falling over because of rough water... I swore ship gigs off.

I've been here a pretty good while but I don't think I ever introduced myself so... My name is Esh and 2005 will be my 35th consecutive year as a professional keyboardist. I've had other jobs on the side but I call those "occupations" and my music is my "pre-occupation" because it has always come first. I am currently a full-time muso again, which I have been most of my life, and I reside in beautiful Hilton Head, SC USA. It would take too long to do a detailed bio but I'm essentially a "natural" pianist and I've always been able to play anything I heard. My parents sent me to private tutors and by the age of 14 I was playing solo and in bands professionally. I was primarily an organist in my early days and was even kicked out of a church gig when they found out I moonlighted with local rock bands. My first synth was a raunchy Moog Satellite which I only had for a week before trading it in on a Minimoog in the mid-70's. I joined the USAF out of college specifically to be trained as a recording engineer and A/V specialist, and I traveled throughout the US and continued to play keyboards while in the service. After a full military tour, in the early 80's I won a prestigious talent competition in Georgia using various synths, drum machines and sequencers - this was pre-MIDI and I'd developed my own circuits for syncing different brands of electronic music devices together. I was noticed and asked to tour with several symphonies that were doing multimedia "Star Wars" concerts. About this time I also became involved with the people at Sequential Circuits who gave me the first prototype of a MIDI interface for the Commodore 64. To my knowledge I was the first person to use MIDI files in live performance. I later toured planetariums and eventually opened my own commercial recording studio in Macon, Georgia. I was featured in Keyboard magazine's October 1984 issue, and again in the "20 Years Later" segment in Keyboard October 2004. After leaving the commercial recording scene I played a lot of Holiday Inns for many years and eventually settled down in my favorite city, Savannah, Georgia to become a music technology specialist for music stores and eventually a computer/IT specialist. Today I live on a resort island just north of Savannah with my wife and have refocused my efforts on live performance and performing along the East Coast.