James Fry

The more desirable Hammonds have smooth drawbars. You can even get conversion kits for the older models with ratchet drawbars to make them smooth! Or is that not what you mean? I doubt it - you get 10 preset buttons in the middle of the keyboard, but those are dual manual presets as you already know. It wouldn't be hard to program something on a PC/Mac, or a small microprocessor device, to generate patch changes on keypresses in that lower octave though I guess. I've never really seen it as something desirable though - I'd rather have 5 sets of drawbars and buttons to toggle between the two sets per manual!

From the Suzuki JP site: Choir and Vocal - 2012.02.16 http://www.suzuki-music.co.jp/dl/dl.php?dl=LibVL-SK006_100 Chamber Strings 1 - 2011.12.1 http://www.suzuki-music.co.jp/dl/dl.php?dl=LibVL-SK005_100 Hand Bell - 2011.08.30 http://www.suzuki-music.co.jp/dl/dl.php?dl=LibVL-SK004_100 Tublar Bell - 2011.08.30 http://www.suzuki-music.co.jp/dl/dl.php?dl=LibVL-SK003_100 Recorder Szk - 2011.06.30 http://www.suzuki-music.co.jp/dl/dl.php?dl=LibVL-SK002_100 Reed Organ Kasisr - 2011.06.30 http://www.suzuki-music.co.jp/dl/dl.php?dl=LibVL-SK001_100 Updater release 4 http://www.suzuki-music.co.jp/support/downlod/sk12Release4.zip Site appeared dead earlier, but is working (slowly) for me here.

The EXP50 has a larger arc of travel than the FC7? I have an FC9 (for controlling layered synth volume) and an FC7 for organ expression, and find them bordering on uncomfortable after using Roland FV-300L pedals for a number of years (an old version of my current floorboard setup for function band stuff is http://jamesfry.com/old.jamesfry.com/photos/board1.jpg - new version is on thinner black stained+painted ply) Anyway, My FC7 really sucks on the SK1 - any tips on configuration settings?

I should add that I've reinstalled the OS and sample libraries twice now using a decent USB sticks of 1GB and 8GB, but given that I can hear the same artifacts in the samples on the Hammond site, and on a third party site, I suspect these are features of the current hardware or firmware. Regardless, it is probably nit picking. My Korg DS8, Emu Proteus MPS, and Yamaha TX81Z have far more noise than that, and I seem to remember the Roland D50, D10 and M1 having their fair share of noise too! Anyway, it gets lost in the mix, and its far quieter than the breath noise in a trumpet or sax!

I will probably end up keeping it for now. On the EPs it isn't offensive, and for what I wanted the pianos for (rehearsals) it is fine, if slightly annoying. The Organ and leslie sims are very good though IMO, the overdrive is pretty good (if a little digital at high gains), and the playability of the acoustic pianos, EPs and clavs on the waterfall keyboard is excellent. I also like the ability to have a controller connected for 2nd manual and/or piano sounds so those things are probably going to sway me - until Clavia beat it I guess. I wonder if we'll see SK1 style piano/organ at the same time, pipe organ, etc in the Electro4?

Oh, and the more notes played, the worse it gets. So if you play big, thick chords (7, 8 notes), or make liberal use of the sustain pedal, the hissing gets louder and louder. Thats clear on the rhodes and DX7 in my original recording (jamesfry.com/sk1_pianos_eps_clav_pipeorgan.m4a) at around 2:30 - 3:00 (at 2:50-2:55 it almost sounds like a phaser effect) and 3:18 - 3:50. My Nord Stage doesn't do this. The SK1 is supposedly competing with the Electro 3 (its priced the same and has similar features) - the Electro3 has basically the same Piano engine as the Stage.

It is most clear on demo4 (they've got copy+paste errors on the links) but it is present in all the Piano and EP recordings there. Demo 4 URL should be http://www.hammondsuzuki.com/download/cd-sk-demo-04.mp3 I have taken the last couple of seconds of the clip and normalised it. This is purely to illustrate the problem - so there is other background noise there too. http://jamesfry.com/cd-sk-demo-04-end-normalised.m4a There is clear noise, which slowly reduces to almost square wave (quantisation effects?), before abruptly cutting off. This is what I hear on my SK1 on headphones, and it is also present through my gigging speakers, but not quite as noticeable. On sounds that use the EQ and/or use stronger effects (eg phaser, chorus) it is more pronounced. However, one can more easily ignore that since we are used to hearing EPs through awful stomp boxes, noisy preamps, wahs, etc.

So, it seems the noise I can hear (quantisation/digital compression/whatever) is part of the instrument and not a fault on my unit. It is clearly present on the samples on the hammondsuzuki.com website. Ah well!

It makes no difference where the volume is set. You can hear the hissing (actually, I think this is quantisation / compression noise from a bad sample compression algorithm) at any volume. It is especially noticeable at low volumes when playing sensitively (surprisingly, I found this quite easy to do on the SK1 keybed). The more notes you play, the louder it gets. Any effect tends to make it worse because it modulate the hiss too - eg phaser, chorus. My recording clipped at a couple of points when playing (mainly due to switching between patches and the overdrive settings ending up with a higher level output, eg the clav bit), but the hiss is present on all of the sample based instruments. It is not present on the Hammond/Farfisa/Vox organs (though I didn't play that on the recording). The question I still have is whether it is a major issue or not - I wont be playing it in a large band situation until the 9th Jan, so I'll see then, but I suspect I'll end up despising it in the same way I despise my Korg Triton for it's awful piano samples.

I can hear the hiss loudly enough to annoy me when playing the EVs at normal playing levels, either through Sennheiser HD25 headphones, JBL EON 15G2s, Behringer B210ds (don't laugh), or the Mordaunt-Short system that I use with my disklavier. It is far worse when playing quiet passages, and with large chords, but it is still there all the time, and it is clearly evident in the recording I made (which was straight out of the SK1 into a Zoom H4n). I think this rules out something in the external signal chain or impedance matching issues. I will be contacting Hammond when I return home in a week or so about this issue. I regret buying from a small independent (but fairly local) store; if I had bought from a large chain I would not hesitate in returning it and get a Nord (or possibly a Kronos, but I don't see any deals anything like as good in the UK as the one mentioned here!). Another sticking point: there is also clicking in some of the loops, eg Rhodes 1 near the bottom of the 61 key keyboard has samples that click, and there are higher up notes that have tremolo effects because of bad loops. Then there is the trigger point on the organ. Yes, you get used to it - kind of - but it still trips you up, and it is *really* annoying from a keyboard sold as an Electro competitor. It makes squabbling, smooth slurred runs, palm taps, alsorts of things harder than they need to be.

It's not a "hiss" that's always there. It comes from playing samples. To show it at its worst: 1. Use headphones. 2. Turn volume up to a fairly high setting (or maximum). 3. Select the "Bright Acoustic Piano" preset (22?) 4. With the palms of your hands (or arms) play as many notes as you can as gently as possible, such that they only just sound. 5. If your machine is anything like mine, you'll get a large amount of digital artifacts that largely manifest themselves as hiss, before slowly fading out as digital noise to silence after a few seconds. For all of this I had EV at maximum volume, and master EQ flat.

Mine is nothing like as bad as in that previous clip though; I'm currently running: Main 1.084 Sub 1.012 System Information: 1.012 DSP: 1.007 Boot: 1.000 Preset: 1.007 Panel: 1.000

I've got an SK1 too, and I had noticed the noise but not really studied it. It is painfully evident on some of the samples, even on the EPs, and it is more noticeable when going through effects such as chorus and phaser. I'm still running the stock software though, will be trying an upgrade shortly. Demo of the issue on multiple sounds: http://jamesfry.com/sk1_pianos_eps_clav_pipeorgan.m4a End of the first snippet it is painfully clear, as it is on the 2nd. The pinultimate clip is of the pipe organ lag (exaggerated by performing a gliss), followed by the same gliss on the Hammond sound. I almost wish I'd waited for an Electro4 now, or sold the Stage76 and got a Stage2 compact instead!