niacin

Seen Dave Sancious using a regular office chair, but yeh make sure the castors aren't crap.

I tend to go to the New Orleans piano playbook, similar to country piano, b3 slides up to M3, 6th is prominent, everything else is fair game depending on your lines, but for chordal riffs and licks this is my go to.

I think for a synth like this all it will take is for someone like Nick Batt to strip everything back to a naked saw wave, open the filter, tweak the resonance, and we'll know whether it might be worth the hoopla. Pan the voices across the stereo spectrum, play a triad, and we're done. Either it sounds awesome, or it's the little engine that couldn't.

I really enjoy Jacks playing and most of his videos, but not always. His Vox Continental vs Roland VR730 video was rubbish because he hadn’t spent an time before recording it finding his way around either board. Why anyone would want to push all the draw bars in at the same time when you have an expression pedal is beyond me. Love his electric piano playing, right up my alley, but if hasn’t spent time working out how to tweak the sound he’s not telling me much about the board. A Hammond or synth player he is not. So Yeh I usually enjoy his videos, but I wouldn’t judge a keyboard by them, and that goes for the UB-Xa, even if, to his credit, he did a pretty fine job of going through the features. OTOH maybe holding down a pad just didn’t do it for him so he didn’t go there, we’ll find out when it eventually hits the street. I do wonder if the OB-X8 release has pushed Behringer to roll it out before it’s properly cooked through?

Part of the reason it is convoluted is that it does provide for changing the upper side of a split with the push of a single button without affecting the lower side, but at the same time you can go into the combi menu and set different split and points and transposition for each of the 4 patches, and indeed further into the menu of the non-Hammond non-monosynth sounds and edit the key range and octave for each partial. So I have a partial for each of the 4 elements of the machine sound effects that opens Pink Floyd's Welcome to the Machine set to one of the top 4 keys of the keyboard and saved as a single patch and then in a combination 3-way split with Hammond organ and Solina strings. And you have 10 banks of 10 favourites you can access at the push of a button. The SKpro encourages you to pre-program your combinations but then allows you to keep your left hand happening while you switch the sound played by the right hand by pushing a single button, so with the push of a button I can add a piano layer to the Hammond for the synth solo in Shine on You Crazy Diamond Part III. You can set up a simple split from scratch on the run, but anything more complicated and you're into menu diving. I think "convoluted" most applies to the saving process where each of the 4 patches needs to be saved separately before you save them as a combination. In contrast to those manufacturers who have gone in the "you're always in combi mode" direction, with the SKpro you have to keep in mind that, like many older boards, there are 3 levels to a combination - the combi, the patch and the partial - with a simple split function layered over the top, and when it comes to saving you need to consider 2 levels - the patch and the combi. The most frustrating thing I find about the SKpro is having to save a drawbar setting at the patch level and then as part of a combination, but I have become used to it. If you prefer something different then it may not be for you, just as the Nord with its fixed split points or the Kronos with its 8 instead of 9 faders just wouldn't work for me. It would be nice if it had a screen that showed the current bank of favourites, like the Kronos.

Yeh coming from an SK1 there were some head scratching better read the manual moments, I think "convoluted" is fair given the way combinations and different areas of the memory are set out, but by the time I'd programmed a few sets worth of songs I was flying around the interface. Like anything with deep editing you need to spend some time to get over the learning curve. My bar for "organs that are good enough" is higher than yours so there were no alternatives at the time and as such I was motivated to get my head around it. Though the YC leslie update might get it in the ballpark now, as it is I'm very happy with the SKpro.

If you want modelled rather than sampled Rhodes Wurli and clav in hardware with a pretty fine Hammond emulation thrown in check out a Crumar Mojo 61. Definitely my favourite Rhodes emulation.

basic timbre? attacks? releases? how they respond to your playing? yes, all of the above. I find the loss of character in the SKpro clav a head scratcher but I'm not the only who's commented on it so I don't think I'm dreaming. I suspect it's the release noise which appears to be randomly triggered in the SK1/2, which is where most sample based clavs fall down.

Regarding the electric pianos, I'd take Nord for the Rhodes and the SKpro for the Wurli. The Wurli on the Hammond is much closer to a real 200A in its basic tone and response, though yes the split points are obvious though I should get into the menu and set them to respond better to my playing. The Nord is thinner and imo not even close in its basic sound. The various Rhodes available in the Nord sound library, by contrast, give you some pretty sweet options and I think they sound great. The SKpro's Rhodes are rather lifeless and one dimensional. There's an interesting Youtube video of Jack Duxbery of Anderton's in the UK listening to another guy playing Jack's 200A and a Nord, a Korg SV1 and a Yamaha. The Yamaha wins on sounding closest, but to me sounds lifeless where the Nord does have some dynamic variation and responds when you dig in, which I think is what people like about it. It just doesn't sound much like a 200A. Nord really should update their wurli and clav samples.

Another vote for an expression pedal input. Actually make it 3.

That the pianos actually sound pretty good played from a weighted action keyboard has been noted by others. I think the clavs on the original SK1/2 beat those on the SKPro and the YC61 hands down. On the Hammond FB group its been suggested you can fatten up the electric pianos by layering them with a sine wave. Yeh the monosynth is actually even more limited that might first appear. Can't split the oscillators 2 octaves. The lfo can only sweep the filter through half the range. And so on. It has its uses, but given they could've squeezed a Roland/Studio Electronics SE-02 into that space for relatively few $$$ it's imo disappointing and I'd have preferred a second set of drawbars. YMMV

There's a photo on that Etsy ad now.

Korg Vox Continental. I almost sold it a couple of times until I got over the limitations of the clone wheel section and realised how damn good it is at a whole lot of other things. the synth section still surprises me with how flexible it is and how damn good it sounds.

tool pro case, bought for flying with my Hammond SK1. https://www.supercheapauto.com.au/p/toolpro-toolpro-safe-case-long-black-1335-x-405-x-155mm/566671.html#q=Case%2Btool%2Bpro&lang=en_AU&start=3 Not sure why music cases are so much more expensive than gun or tool cases, but I no longer look at SKB or Gator. The only hard case I’ve ever had fail was an small SKB rack case, probably dropped on the tarmac at exactly the wrong angle (thanks Qantas) and one of the latches split.

Great video, at 6:45 he demonstrates the Timeline swell delay - mix set to 100% wet - that turns the Rhodes into a pad monster. Love that sound. Big Sky is awesome too, but notice he says it's for the studio and great for soundtrack and TV scoring, I wouldn't buy a reverb for live playing.

I've tried a range of things over the years, tremolo, more than a few phasers, but the effects in keyboards are generally pretty good these days. The only fx pedal I have now is a Strymon Timeline that has the Rhodes and Wurli in a GSI Gemini rack running through it. Synths is a different kettle of fish, Strymon Big Sky is a popular option especially for ambient stuff. Remember to consider mono v.s. stereo and keyboard line level v.s. guitar level signals when you're shopping for pedals.

with the Radial K8 I can send a stereo signal from my keyboards to the K8, set the mains send to mono and take a stereo out from the headphone out. You could do the same with your keyboards, main mono out to the desk, headphone out to you.

I went the pedalboard route, diy colour coded cable tied snake to each keyboard, cut my set up time way down.

I've had no problems using the mini jack input, suggest you contact Hammond-Suzuki.

Ricky Gervais' response. For those of you short on time the punch line is at 2:05

Bach, 2 part inventions, my very old Allens Australia Imperial Edition has fingering notated not for every note but where it's not obvious which finger to use at first glance, often just at the begining of a phrase or where your fingers cross over to facilitate something further down the line. Honestly if you're concerned about manual dexterity and developing good fingering there isn't afaik anything better. If you can maintain the enthusiasm Hanon is actually designed to teach those things, but with Bach you get to learn those things in the process of exploring supremely crafted music.

I bought one and learnt that my interest in poly aftertouch is limited and instead satisfied my desire for more control over sounds with an Enhancia Neova midi ring, but this is a pretty good showcase for the Hydrasynth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUnrwTMW08Y&t=0s

You don’t need a midi merge box, the midi out on the Midi Solutions Pedal merges pedal and incoming midi data, the midi input provides power, nothing extra needed.

Korg XVP20