Mike Kent

Congratulations. It's looking great.

I don't think I have ever used the Jazz organ.

I owned the VK-7 (bought in 1997). My brother still owns one. I now have VK-8 (2002) and VR-09 (2012). After all those years, I know them well. The VR-09 is based on the VK-8 engine, not the VK-7. Side by side in my studio. Same sound.

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll be checking it out tomorrow.

Here it is when I was building out the insides. Then the pedal unit attached. Sustain pedal wires go up. Coming down through the umbilical is a single power connector and stereo outputs. I left room to add other footswitches or expression pedal.

For me it is convenience. This is my church rig. It sits on the stage with all the audio, MIDI, pedals, lighting, speakers and power wiring permanently connected. Every Thursday rehearsal and every Sunday I walk in with 2 keyboards and my iPad. Setup time is cut from 20 minutes to 3 minutes. I think it also looks way cleaner, neater on stage than all the cables going everywhere.

Nice!! A great idea, making the mockup from foam. Here is mine. All kinds of mess is hidden in the cabinet including a Yamaha MG06X mixer, class-t amp and tiny stereo speakers, power bar, charging for phone and ipad, and a host of cables. The top is on a piano hinge to make it easy to work inside. I put in moveable blocks, stuck down by velcro, to make it easy to adapt supports for different keyboard combinations. The top keyboard is usually the FA-06 or VR-09. Inside is most often Nord Electro 6HP, but sometimes the VR-09 or YC61. My Sledge and VK-8 have sometimes been in there. The little Roland controller keyboard adds a 2nd manual to any of them.

Yep. Why is my VR-09 still relevant after all these years? Mainly the best organ+rotary speaker. Usable sounds all around*. Dependable Roland build. The light weight is a big win for me. And I know this is a silly thing, but I have a music rest for it so I can put my iPad there without having to take a music stand. *Piano is barely passable and made worse by the key action.The key action sucks. And I am not picky about key action. Velocity between white and black keys seems way off. Subtle is not possible. Registration system based on Atelier organ thinking, so access to programmable patches sucks. I have a YC61 which is better than the VR-09 is almost every way. But the VR gets used way more based on the superior organ+rotary. Maybe a Hammond or Crumar would suit me. But it's impossible to play those at any local store so it would be a big gamble to try one.

Yes. The show seems to be healthy and perhaps growing. I will be going.

I'm pretty sure they did not buy CME. As I understand it, they only took over the xkeys range of products. CME will still sell their MIDI and Bluetooth interface products.

I own Moog System 15 and Roland System-100 software synths. I used to own the original hardware System 15 and System-100 for 20+ years. I appreciate having software versions, but mostly out of nostalgia, at a fraction of the price. The Moog System 15 and Roland System-100 are emulations of synths that sound beautiful but are somewhat limited as compared to larger system or particularly to the more widely variable eurorack modular available today. I also own Cherry Audio Voltage. It is more capable like eurorack hardware, with a lot of available modules and more esoteric function choices. I also have a eurorack hardware system with about 30 modules. In terms of software, I tend to enjoy the Moog and Roland more, perhaps out of a combination of simplicity and familiarity because I had the hardware originals for 2-3 decades. I generally don't need the more esoteric functions available in Voltage, just as I find that I use my hardware eurorack modular for pretty simple things. I do like the 3 discussed above. But to be honest, I'm not a big user of softsynths, modular or otherwise. I generally prefer hardware. I also don't record anything very often. So my opinions and experience might not be particularly useful to anyone that lives in a DAW with plugin synths.

Don't you know who I am?

On latency: The choice of devices does influence the overall latency. Some combinations are better than others. A CME device to another CME device has 3-5 ms latency. Very good. These stats are a few years old and I hope I remember them correctly, but I think are still valid: Any device connection to an iPhone or iPad has 14ms latency, based on the service interval provided by iOS. Any device connection to a Mac has 11.5ms latency, based on the service interval provided by MacOS.

The free grand pianos that show up on FB marketplace are usually Yamaha, although not exclusively, are basically all scams.

Nils Landgren Funk Unit - Dancing Queen