niacin

You should be aware that in split mode both sides are affected by the expression pedal, and the left side of the split is dry (no effects). Some of us are hoping that the former issue will be addressed in an O.S. update. You can select the damper pedal to affect only one side, but the setting for whether it sustains a sound or switches the leslie speed is in the global menu so it's one or the other regardless of the preset or registration you choose.

I'm not sure he'll really gain an impression of what the community thinks based on reading the extended argument between Craig and HammondDave. Roland have certainly provided updates for their gear, e.g. the Fantom-X went through a series of minor updates and then to version 2.00. Claims to the contrary seem to be unsupported. The BK series also recently went through a series of updates that not only corrected bugs but added functionality. Roland support can be easily contacted via the Roland website. My queries re the VR-09 have been answered helpfully and clearly within 24 hours. It is great to have them checking in on the forum. I'm really hoping the O.S. update makes the expression pedal on the VR-09 useable (assignable like the damper pedal, and with some more options re the curve, i.e. linear, scooped out exponential curve).

Craig, I've now used this at a series of rehearsals and one gig with a 9-piece funk band. Great board for a quick set-up when you're sharing the bill with other bands. For me the trick with the EPs was to adjust the room setting to 'carpet'. The default 'acoustic tile' is too bright imo. The Smallstone phaser effect is pretty sweet. Also adjusting the release time slider to about +4 adds a bit of body. I've fiddled with the wurli but am yet to find something I'm happy with on that front. Kevmo, I was going to respond but got sidetracked with another thread.. plus in the middle of renovations at my house.. This is a great complement for the VR-09! Mine has been packed up since my last gig, and I'm upgrading my Mojo this week so I'll probably be setting the VR-09 aside for a while.. So far I have successfully used the VR-09 as a controller/organ in my rig, along with my Kronos that I've used for all the AP/EP and other sounds.. my next step may be to try using the VR-09 in place of the Kronos on top of my Mojo.. this means that I'll be using the AP/EP and other synth and sampled sounds from the VR but likely playing most of them from the lower manual of my Mojo via midi (I always like to have my AP/EP sounds on the bottom manual).. So this will be an interesting experiment.. I don't expect the VR to sound quite as good as the Kronos, obviously, but the sounds are all still very good, and I think it will be very workable (like the VR drawbar organ).

The lack of a useable (linear or scooped out) curve for the expression pedal and the inability to assign it to the upper part only make the VR-09 absolutely useless in small group situations imo. The rest of it is not an issue for me. I need them to provide a menu just like the one for the damper pedal and provide a few more choices for the pedal response.

Hi Craig, The email from Roland US said that the organ doesn't respond to either CC#7 or CC#11, but will respond to sysex, and that it is in the midi spec, which I haven't checked yet. I may even end up getting a box from MIDI Solutions to translate the volume and drawbar sysex into CC#s so I can use it to control VB3 when I want to. I will say that I didn't find myself thinking about the key action at all during the 2 (funk band with horns) rehearsals I've used it for, which is a good thing, and would be more than happy to have it controlling VB3 when I'm doing a trio gig. The VR-09 organ is great in a mix, but as you're bandmate noticed it doesn't have the presence of VB3 and I don't think I'd be happy with the sound in a trio situation. Cheers, Peter Niacin, I appreciate your post on this.!! One quick question.. when I read the Midi implementation document it looks like volume is on cc9 but expression is on cc11... did you try CC11 and if so were the results the same? I'm just wondering if this makes any difference.. I suspect that the organ would be set up to respond to CC11 rather than CC9.. Is this something you could try?

Fairly early on in the mega thread on the VR-09 it was speculated that if you wanted to control the voulme of one side of a split with a pedal you could get a MIDI Solutions pedal unit and have it send midi CC#7 to e.g. channel 4 if you just want the right hand of a split to respond to the pedal. Well not quite. I set up my old Anatek midi pedal unit and then I sent the following email to Roland US: I want to control the volume of the upper part only when I have a split set up with organ assigned to the upper part. If I plug a pedal straight into the VR-09 it sends volume messages to both upper and lower parts. So today I got around to hooking up my Anatek MIDI Pedal unit to see if I could send volume changes to the upper part only. So I set the VR-09 up with MIDI Mode #2 and set the Anatek unit to send volume changes (cc#7) on channel 4 as per the VR-09 manual. I had just turned on the VR-09 so the piano patch was up, and I got a nice linear sweep through the volume range with the pedal. Sweet. But then I switch to organ mode and the pedal has no effect on the sound. Back to the clav and were all good again. Try a synth sound and its fine. But I cant get the organ to respond to midi volume messages. It's the same in split mode, any of the piano or synth sounds set to the upper part respond to CC#7 on midi channel 4 except the organ, which is what I need to control. Help. They confirmed this is indeed the case. The organ sounds will only respond to sysex. Shoot me. I will say that, in contradiction to suggestions on the other thread, the Roland US support guys were really helpful: they replicated the problem and then sent off a query to Roland Japan and had an answer for me within 24 hours. Kudos to them. The Japanese designers however have really crippled this thing. I am hoping they implement a volume pedal menu the same as the damper pedal menu so that in split mode we can choose which part the pedal effects, but I'm not holding my breath.

I have used the Boss FV500 with mine and I don't particularly like it.. It's a nice big substantial pedal, which I like, but I don't like the expression curve, and I'm not sure if it's the VR-09 or the FV500 (but I suspect it's the FV500), I have tried different expression curves in the VR-09 but there are none that feel quite right. One other thing that I noticed, now and then, is that when you quickly move the pedal from full to zero and then slowly increase the expression pedal the volume will start to increase as you would expect, and than it just drops off completely and then begins increasing again.. which is rather weird.. Again don't know if this is the VR-09 or the FV500. If you look at the curves for the expression pedal in the manual they actually vary in how the volume of the rhythm section is effected compared to the volume of your keyboard sounds. The curves for the keyboard sounds don't vary much themselves. And there's neither a linear option nor a scooped out option, in fact the only variation on the main curve is the opposite of a scooped out curve, so that both available curves for the keyboard sounds give you a very small range to work with. Another head-scratcher of a design decision if you ask me.

The drawbars send sysex, not CC#s. You would need to get a processor from Midi Solutions in Canada and programme it to translate the data into CC#s for VB3. The SK-1 has the same issue. I would have purchsed a VR-09 pre-order if the thing didn't have so many of these scratch-your-head what-were-they-thinking issues.

If the Midi Solutions unit is powered by the midi out from the VR-09, you're also getting note on messages sent out? So you're sending a note on message direct to the intenal sound engine AND out the midi out, via the Midi Soultions pedal unit, and back in to the VR-09, which means the note will double trigger, no?

lol, yeh, but I did write "thin" not "shrill". Shrill I can tame, but if it's weak sauce I'm seeing maybe compression in the effects block but that's about it to get it beefed up, but if you've got it screaming ok I'm pretty hopeful. The expression pedal: if you have a split, the 2 parts are on different channels, yeh? So you set the Midi Solutions (or Anatek) box to send CC#7 or #11 on one of the channels and you're sorted, though you will need to have an external power supply for the midi box because you won't have anything coming in the midi input which also supplies it with power. No wonder you found the top drawbars shrill. Niacin, as Joe points out.. your shrillness may be a result of you having 2 higher drawbars than the rest of us... Seriously, with respect to the shrillness.. the VR-09 has several ways to control this.. upper and lower gain, a tone control, two different leslie types (one emphasizing the low to mids) and of course the drawbars themselves.. I don't find the VR-09 to be too shrill, and yet it does scream in the upper octave. To me this is always a balance and it's something that was typical of the Korg CX3.. it didn't scream in the upper octave it skrieked..!! Hence they came out with the Version 2, and all of us CX3 owners still ended up buying tube preamps. I don't see the need for this with the VR-09. Between the internal leslie sim and the tone/gain controls, you can create a very mellow sound, or a very bright sound, and store both as registrations. Being a classic rock guy, I haven't explored the jazz organ yet so I can't say what the difference is between the jazz and the rock organs.. but there may the Jazz organ may be quite a bit mellower (or not) we'll see. So I don't think you need to worry about shrillness on the VR-09.

Thanks Craig. My concern about the sound isn't the leslie, it's the top drawbars. I had a VK7 for some years, I never warmed to it but I couldn't afford a CX-3, Hammond-Suzuki has never had a presence here, and the Electro hadn't hit the shelves, so I put up with it. I thought the bottom drawbars are fine, the top drawbars however sounded thin. I'm playing mostly funk, alot of 800000006 and 86000000008, and it didn't really cut it, so that worries me. I guess they'll start showing up in retail stores here shortly, but I'd be interested in your impressions in the meantime. The rest of it sounds very promising.

PM sent Craig

I sent Roland US an email last week regarding the midi spec and asked about the drawbars. So, FYI: "the drawbars are assigned to System Exclusive data addresses". They kindly sent me the midi spec sheet, which is not in the manuals and which they have only just received from Japan, so if you have any specific midi data questions feel free to ask.

The manual is online, there's a link earlier in this thread, it includes neither midi message nor sysex information, so unless someone contacts Roland we'll just have wait until it shows up in the stores.

The effects chain is fixed as follows: Compressor - Overdrive - MFX (Multi-effect) - Rotary - Tone - Delay - Reverb The split point isn't saved with the registration/performance if that matters to you, like the damper pedal it's a global setting. But you don't need me to tell you this. Read the manual.

Thanks. From the manual: "If youre playing two sounds (split or dual) (p. 27), the settings will determine which sound is affected. When using Dual: The same effects will apply to both sounds. When using Split: The effects will be applied only to the upper part (except for reverb). However if youve assigned organ sound to the lower part, the same effects will apply to all parts." So if you wondered what was cut, given the price point, there it is. Phased Rhodes and Hammond? No. RH piano LH Hammond? Not unless you like your piano Leslified. Wah Clav and Hammond. Sorry, no can do. And the manual has no MIDI spec. So I have no idea what the drawbars transmit in the way of CC#s/HEX.

Lol, yeh, 10 minutes he wouldn't get back. Hell if they'd just send one to me I'd do my best impression. It just bemuses me that you get guys like Joey D and Dr Lonnie Smith and other jazz greats doing organ demos for Studiologic and Hammond-Suzuki, but of course their style of playing doesn't involve constantly tweaking drawbars the way Medeski does, it's generally just set and forget, so it demonstrates little about the sound of the board and lots about how they can blow, but buying the board isn't going to get me Joey's chops, so what's the point?

Wish they'd just get John Medeski in and let him put it through it's paces, it'd take all of about 10 minutes and we'd know where it can go soundwise.

Thanks Craig, appreciate the info, I did download the brochure and am keeping an eye on Roland's site for the manual to be posted. I'm pretty much ready to preorder one, but there's a few issues like this that will be deal-breakers if they're not implemented properly. Thanks for the quick response.

Can anyone who has downloaded the iPad app tell me about the effects routing? Say I set up a synth bass/organ split can I route the organ through Overdrive and into the Rotary effect, and route the synth bass through the Compressor? Or are the effects 'global' in the sense that every sound is routed through all the effects from left to right? Or how does the routing work?

WTF is it with these demos where they just pull out the first 4 drawbars. I can get that sound with a f#^*ing rompler. He did get rid of some of the fast leslie beating by tweaking the speed slightly, so that's promising. But honestly, can't someone do 860000000 and 800000008 and 008500000 and maybe mess with the top 3 drawbars a la Caravanserai, and just hold a chord and switch the leslie speed and the chorus settings and the drive and give us some idea of how the thing is really going to sound on an organ gig.

Thanks guys, I don't own an iPad but can borrow one for editing the VR-09, but I'm really liking the possibility of just having to bring the VR-09 and the EV. Good to know the options though, samples are increasingly a part of what the funk trio does.

Ok, so I played a Juno Di yesterday, and the key action isn't horrible, much better than the original Juno G, not even semi-weighted, but the key travel is shallow and doesn't bottom out hard. Fine for organ. I've never been hung up on waterfall keys - the first Hammond I played was an L-100. So this is now on my shopping list as a perfect rehearsal board for what I do (funk trio and disco-dance-pop-trash covers bands), and maybe I can finally go to jams and sit in, VR-09 under one arm, EV ZxA1 under the other. Played a trio gig last night, lug in up a flight of stairs with a few U-turns, would have been so much easier with this thing and I reckon I probably could have gotten away with it vis-a-vis my current set-up, which is alot more complicated and time-consumung to set up and pack down (controller keyboard that doesn't have an expression pedal input - B4d drawbars - Anatek midi pedal input - Midi Solutions midi merge - 3u rack: V-Machine running VB-3, Fantom Xr for Rhodes, vibes, bass and samples). The few samples I use are just single shot and I think I might even be able to use the VR-09 usb audio facility to play them, fingers crossed. I'm not expecting it to sound as good as VB-3, but now I've just gotta hope the organ has been improved enough from the VK-7 to keep me happy.

I don't need aftertouch, but it would mean that you don't feel like you're playing a table. The Juno G felt like playing a table, to me anyway. Is the Juno Di action any different from the original Juno G?

Thanks for pointing that out, I'm actually pretty hopeful this thing will sound fine, and all the real-time effects tweaking is a real plus, it's really the key action that concerns me: Juno-D/G no aftertouch = plays like a table. Maybe those who played it at NAMM could comment on whether this is the case or not. If it plays ok I'm probably sold. Drawbars sending regular CC#s would be a bonus (I have VB3 running on a V-Machine), but the manual isn't up on Roland's website yet.