niacin

yes True. I assume the limitation is due to the way the fx routing is coded. It would be great if you could select whether the mutli-fx apply to each of the four sections in the same way you can select sustain pedal to function or not for each section. I've found that with the baked in effects (tremolo or phaser or chorus or drive) on various electric piano presets, and with delay being separate from the mutli-fx, it would work fine for me if the multi-fx was just for the key/layer section, but that may not suit everyone.

Yes you're right. So if you want an effect on one sound and another effect on another you have switch between presets, not within a preset, although if you have one sound with fx and the other without you can just turn it on or off when you switch. The baked in effects are particularly good imo for electric pianos, so I can have a wurli with tremolo (that can actually be switched on or off using the mod pitch lever) and strings with no multi-fx on the other side of a split. The board was really designed to be basically monotimbral so you find workarounds for layers and, since the OS update, splits, but the choices such as the baked in effects have been really well thought out imo and make the board's limitations less of an issue.

I've never had any issues and if a keyboard isn't set up on a stand then I've got it standing on it's end in a case or a cupboard, but iirc there were issues with Korg boards with the RH3 action.

Their choice to put the controls on the end, as much as it may irk you, is no doubt a result of the same reasoning that underpinned the Roland RD64: you want to put another keyboard on top and still be able to access the controls. In Roland's case they had pics of a VR-09 over the RD64 and it made perfect sense. Not of course for your purposes. And hey, who am I to stand in the way of a good fish slapping. [video:youtube]

This: https://dexibell.com/prodotto/vivo-s1/?lang=en/ [video:youtube]

You can try re-setting everything, the initialize all function is explained on p.99 of the manual.

Alesis Andromeda, though I never owned one. I walked into a store that had a Korg MS2000 and a few Waldorf boards as well as the latest Korg/Yamaha/Roland romplers, and I played them for a while until finally I plugged my cans into the Andromeda sitting on the bottom of a 3-tier stand below the MS2000 and one of the Waldorfs. Oh, right, that's what a synth can sound like. Way out of my price range (AUS$8k), but at least I knew where things stood.

[video:youtube] From 3:43 it's cheese of questionable quality, but up until then there's some great sounds.

Sure, I'll do that soon. And maybe I'll change my handle to "Stable Genius." ;-) Oh, he is the very model of a modern stable genius. (I can't post politics here or I'll get banninated but it's on youtube).

This is Yamaha's version, 2 x 30W + 60W subwoofer, stereo mini jack in, regular power supply option: https://au.yamaha.com/en/products/audio_visual/sound_bar/ats-1080/index.html#product-tabs

[video:youtube] The mono synth section starts at about the half hour mark and he spends a fair bit of time there. You'll need some patience as it's an unedited live stream and a lot of talking in Japanese, but at 1 hr 20 mins long there's plenty of playing too.

I certainly see the benefit. But the Vox drawstrips by their nature do eliminate the problem I mentioned of controls getting out of sync with their functions. That is, when you switch them from synth controls to organ, they automatically "move" to the right locations for the organ, and when you switch them back to being synth controls, all the sliders automatically "move back" to the right locations for the synth functions. At least I think they do. ;-) Yes they do. The YC61 drawbars plus LED strips would be ideal. Thanks for taking the time to reply to my posts, I've clocked up more than my share on this thread and I'm still on the fence but between Jim's demos, the Bonner's demo which is also really good, and your comments and comparisons there's a lot of good information to consider. I'm liking the Leslie ramp up and down on the Bonner's video. From Jim's latest video exploring the piano/ensemble sections I can see that the editing layout is exactly the same as my old FantomXr and will be a doddle to use. Still not convinced about the sound of the mono synth but looking forward to Jim's next video.

That's the first thing I noticed. The Leslie on the other videos got me interested. Very Interested, but yeah, this didn't sound like that. A little disappointed. .I thought that too and just assumed they had it running through one of their Leslies, but videos including teaser #4 which was the first tonewheel organ demo and the one that grabbed my attention are here: https://hammondorganco.com/products/portable-organs/skpro/skpro-details/ and on that page it says: "Recorded direct into an Audio Recorder-No Leslie Cabinets were used". I'm not sure what "teaser #4" or "demo #4" refer to, but I assume it's the one that first grabbed the Leslie attention in this thread, at post #3077450. And I'm pretty sure that one is NOT on the page where it says no leslie was used. And yes, you can tell that that one was not simply recorded direct because you can hear his fingers hitting the keys. Yes it was the video at post #3077450, and lo it's been removed from the SKpro page on Hammond's site, presumably cause it shouldn't have been there in the first place, so yeh the original conclusion that it's a real Leslie in that video that some of us got excited about seems reasonable. Which set of front panel controls (fx or synth) is more valuable is an interesting comparison point. I would say synth, because with effects, each control is really its own thing, whereas with synth, the setting of one control can actually alter how you would want to set another control, so having them all available at once is more of a benefit, making going back and forth among some number of controls a lot less painful than if you had to navigate menus. The other reason I think this comparison benefits Hammond is that, while you don't have the front panel effects controls, you do actually have (presumably) all those controls available in the menus, whereas the Hammond's synth functions are largely not available on the Yamaha at all, not even in the menus. All you have is the one knob (switchable for EG or filter) and a non-intuitive set of options you can set it to control, with no way to access all the parameters individually. (Plus there's an additional filter control implemented as an effect.) Admittedly, having the effects in menus on the Hammond is not as convenient for live performance, but for effects, I tend to do the setup in advance and rarely need to tweak them in performance (except maybe reverb, which has a front panel control on the Hammond anyway). So I'd rather have full effects I can set up in advance and full synth parameters available to tweak simultaneously and in the moment, rather than having effects parameters I can tweak simultaneously and in the moment (less useful to me) and almost no editable synth parameters at all on the panel OR in the menus. Thx, I hadn't seen the reverb knob. Jim mentioned that you can choose one reverb type for the Hammond and another for the other voices so not sure what the knob is tied to, but it's actually the Hammond spring reverb that I'd like to be able to adjust on the fly. 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. Interesting idea. It would add some complication (e.g. in combining or alternating between organ and mono synth sounds, where I'm assuming that you'd normally be able to return to a synth sound you had just played/altered and its controls would be in the "right" places with the sound still in sync with where you had left them, though that's an assumption), and it also runs counter to the "dedicated controls per function" concept, but clearly, it's also something that could be useful, I like the idea. Assuming those controls send MIDI CC (and Hammond has generally been good about that kind of thing), I imagine that, at a minimum, you could take the MIDI Out, filter for those 9 CCs and change them to the CCs for second manual drawbars (using a MIDI Solutions Event processor or iPad app, for example), and feed it back into the MIDI In to get your 2nd drawbar controls. I also had the idea that the 9 sliders could be used to edit the similar parameters for sounds in the piano/ensemble section. Some of the same issues might apply. I'd really have liked a second set of drawbars where the sliders are with a switch that enables you to choose to use them as drawbars for a lower manual or as controls for the synth, like the Vox but drawbars instead of touch strips. I have my SK2 drawbars mapped to my Gemini module in this way. I will say it's nice to see we're at page 9 of a Hammond thread and it hasn't been derailed yet, and a big thankyou to Jim for providing some of the best product demos I've seen.

Thanks for doing the spreadsheet, it's a great start point to narrow the choice down according to certain criteria that matter to each of us. I wouldn't bet on more total effects on the SKpro though until either Jim gets back to your question (above) or the manual is released (still not up). I suspect the multi-effects are just 2 blocks with separate sends for each of the 4 sections. And the choice I'm looking at is an SKpro versus a YC61 MIDIed up to an HX3, which I currently have, and the glaring difference from a performance point of view is what do I really want accessible from the top panel: on the YC61 it's all the effects controls, while for the SKpro it's the mono synth, and atm I'm really not sure. An SKpro2 or SKXpro or whatever they want to call the 2-manual version I would preorder tomorrow. This, not sure yet.

The Fatar TP-8O is in the Nord Electro/C2/Stage Compact, the Hammond SK1/2/x/pro, the Numa (obviously) and the Mojo, but none of them are cheap so I'm wondering what you're referring to when you wrote: "a lot of boards that are much cheaper" ???

My Nord Stage 3 has a synth section with 19 knobs (potentiometers) and in addition 15 selector buttons(SKPro has 3). I don"t see how you find the SK Pro synth to have «far more performance controls than a Nord Stage synth»? Thanks, sorry it wasn't clear, I was just looking at knobs/sliders allowing real time adjustment of the synth wave, i.e. amp envelope, filters, lfo etc, not overall volume, arpeggiator controls etc., not total number of knobs in the synth section, but yes Scott already corrected my initial assertion (a combination of my aging memory, a general lack of interest in the Nord Stage, and the physical space taken up by a bank of sliders): Hmmm... I'm not seeing that. True, its two envelopes have 4 full controls vs. 3-ish. But Nord seems to have more filter controls, more oscillator controls, more LFO controls. And, of course, it has both mono and poly modes. And of course the Nord has the morph function. If you post here much you'll get used to the snarky remarks especially on Hammond threads.

That's the first thing I noticed. The Leslie on the other videos got me interested. Very Interested, but yeah, this didn't sound like that. A little disappointed. . I thought that too and just assumed they had it running through one of their Leslies, but videos including teaser #4 which was the first tonewheel organ demo and the one that grabbed my attention are here: https://hammondorganco.com/products/portable-organs/skpro/skpro-details/ and on that page it says: "Recorded direct into an Audio Recorder-No Leslie Cabinets were used". So different Leslie settings, maybe different overdrive, maybe different EQ, who knows, but it's all the internal sim.

Yes. In the video Jim gives the example of hitting the 'ensemble' button and scrolling through the menu to select a piano patch and then assigning it to the right side of a split and a rhodes from the same menu but selected from the 'piano' button to the left side. So all the extra sounds (those other than organ or mono synth) can be found in the menus for both the 'piano' and 'ensemble' sections. I'm not sure I understand the effects options though. There's Leslie, overdrive, 2 reverbs with sends separate for each of the 4 sections. Then there are either 2 multi fx per section or 2 multi fx total with separate sends for each of the 4 sections? Probably the latter but it's not very clear.

Scott, so you finally bought one? Further thoughts?

There's the last video back up this page and a pdf, the rest is tease or speculation.

Hmmm... I'm not seeing that. True, its two envelopes have 4 full controls vs. 3-ish. But Nord seems to have more filter controls, more oscillator controls, more LFO controls. And, of course, it has both mono and poly modes. I'm looking at 13 knobs on the Nord versus 10 sliders and 5 knobs on the Hammond. But you can slice it as you wish. I'll take back 'far more' (memory failure probably due to the fact that I'm simply not interested in the Nord) and call it a draw. But then of course as you highlight the Nord will do poly. The SK (assuming it works like the SK1/2/X) will do internal and external layers and splits with key ranges and transposition as you wish. The Nord works quite differently. I'm not sure on what grounds you're expecting the Nord's pianos to be better as we have no idea about the Hammond piano and other sounds until Jim can post his videos. While the comparison is interesting and an obvious one to make on paper, I have no interest in the Nords because no matter how much I like their pianos (the 'Black' Petrof is just fabulous), the keys on the Compact are too tightly sprung, the limitations on split points won't work for me, and their basic tonewheel sound doesn't do it for me either, so it's just not in my headlights. YMMV. It's the total lack of fx controls on the SKpro panel that has me worried, but of course I have no idea what the screen offers. Hopefully now the brochure is out of the bag, H-S will just get on and announce it and we can stop speculating.

It's funny you should say that. I think simply asking what key they play Superstition in and would they be willing to do it in the original key would probably tell me everything I needed to know to take up or turn down an offer to join a covers band.

Kawai ES8, the equivalent of a little black dress, just enough curves:

I don't see the total absence of feature like loading user samples as a compromise, but in the context of making the obvious comparison with a Nord Stage I take your point. The brochure says 300 piano/ensemble factory patches so there's got to be a big sample library they've developed or acquired. Interestingly it also says: Piano/Ensemble section (which is where you're going to have to get poly synth sounds from): "component: 4; LFO: 2" and: "All Piano/Ensemble voices can be FULLY EDITED. Sample choice, EG, Filter, LFO and other parameters are now in your control and can be saved as a Patch".

VB3 II / Mojo / Gemini simulates 9 virtual key contacts. So your Mojo has it. Though no information yet about the SKpro implementation. Hopefully now the brochure is out they can release Jim from his NDA and we'll see a video soon. Having said that, I've been told by a distributor here that Fatar shut their factory for a while due to Covid and are way behind filling orders, so if the SKpro does indeed use a TP8O then we may have a longer wait than usual to see it in stores.