Benjie P

Eric thanks SO much, looks like MainStage is gonna be the way I go. I'm already kind of an Apple guy so it's the most sensible choice from what a lot of people contributed here, for $30 it's kind of a no brainer!

Wow thank you everyone for all of this GREAT information!!!!

Hi all, I'm mostly and old school hardware/B3/synth guy but have been really digging in on some of my plug ins lately and finally thinking about incorporating using plug ins on some of my gigs. What are people's favorite go to DAW host software platforms for live performance? Looking for intuitive, stable, user friendly....

The Roland GP690 is the only one in a traditional grand case, from what I"ve been able to find. The Yamaha N3X is shaped like a grand, but has a sleeker, more modern look. Between the two, the Roland is more fully featured and less money, but doesn"t have the true grand action. Sound-wise from what I"ve been able to tell from demos, the Roland still has that digital fleshy tone on the low end but the advantage of modelling is it has a lot more parameters to play with. The Yamaha may be more robust and in the long run may be the better investment, plus in a setting where many pianists may be sharing the duties, it has fewer bells and whistles to mess with and the action should keep the more discerning players happy. So if I"m the restaurateur and had the budget, I"d go with the Yamaha. At home for the fun aspects, I might like the Roland. Awesome thanks for the info!

Hi MikeT156 thanks for the suggestion but it's important to them that it's in the body of a grand/baby grand for aesthetics...

That is EXACTLY the situation, the manager is a music lover and wants to find the best, most practical instrument. She initially wanted a real acoustic but decided she didn't want to have to deal with tuning/maintenance, my hat off to her for wanting to put something decent in there.

Thank you!

Hi all, does anyone have any recommendations for best sounding/looking electric grand pianos? Restaurant in DC asked me to pick one out for them to purchase to have some live solo "piano" in their joint. It needs to have internal speakers, aesthetics are important to them of course so it should look nice, I used to do some restaurant gigs a few years ago where they had a Roland that was pretty decent but don't remember the model. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated thanks!

Hey Wes, kind of what I figured with the speed issue, and no was using the Leslie preamp pedal and sending a keyboard through via the 1/4" just to test it. Gonna take it in to a cat that comes highly recommended and have him get it to top form... Thanks so much for the recommendation, sounds like this was a good score even if I have to put a few hundred dollars in to it...

Thanks for those specs!

Great info Dave thanks so much! That's what I'm gonna do!

Hi Dennis this reply is exciting thanks so much!

Hi friends, just had a Leslie 51 come into my possession basically for free. It has a Hampton speed conversion kit installed and preamp pedal, spins on fast but not on slow and if you plug anything into it it's just crunch time. Haven't played through one of these extensively is it worth putting money into it to get it in top form?

Thanks for posting this! Gonna try that on a gig next week, left the vent at home for a gig yesterday and played with the sim again and I like it, I'm gonna revisit the overdrive as well, the sound of your recording was very encouraging. I'm using some Mackie Thumps and feeling like I might need to finally break down and invest in some QSC's to get a truer sound of the instrument live...

I've spent a lot of time fine tuning, tweaking the internal leslie sim in my studio and on gigs and have the vent. Vent still an ENORMOUS improvement. Thought I had the sim sounding great many times then plug in the vent and A/B them and the vent is just better. Plus the overdrive on the vent is waaaaaaay better than the overdrive on the SK. SK is still a fabulous instrument but the vent takes it to the next level.

I agree the EPAmp is the best onboard overdrive but it's still not "right" to my ears for the organ sound I want. I play it through the Ventilator and it immediately feels like a well miked tube leslie to me...Either way the instrument itself is great and carrying it with a Ventilator is waaay easier than carrying around my 300lb chopped A100

Leslie sim is killin', BUT overdrive is still unusable unless there's an update for the overdrive (I'm a couple updates behind) so much easier to just run it through the Ventilator to warm it up....

Wow so it really is THAT much of an improvement huh? Do I have to get all of the previous updates to get this Update 5? I think I got the first couple but think I'm a couple of updates behind...

I had a hard case made for my SK2 it is beautiful, $300 but you could fly with it and it would be safe, super dense padding all over the inside and the outside has corner guards etc, been gigging with it since December and it is serving me beautifully. The SK is so light that even with the case it's not that heavy. Company is Roadie 1-800-645-1707

I can dig it man, you're probably quite right. So, sorry to nag but still loving your SK2? I gotta live vicariously through you

Scott May told me that Hammond techs were creating one of those you should email him. Hey man, you're lucky you got your sk2 when you did, I'm now told I probably won't receive mine until end of September, oh the waiting...