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borntohang

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About borntohang

  • Birthday 11/30/1999

Converted

  • hobbies
    Plotting the inevitable fall of capitalism.
  • Location
    The North, The North
  1. Hi I am new here having only just found the forum, but am very intrigued by the editor that franky46 has put together. I bought the VR-09B when it came out (I preferred the colour scheme!) and I bought it pretty much solely because of the Transistor Organ. I am playing '60s garage and psychedlia and have been looking for a good reliable Farfisa (so I won't get an original then!). Unfortunately the built in Transisitor organ really doesn't cut the mustard; I can't get the lightness of the Vox Continental or that drone and drive of the Farfisa. Can this software help me, or do I leave the VR on ebay and use the funds for a new Vox Continental? Thanks in advance. The software will give you more editing options, but if you've already explored the menu options and are still not enjoying the organ I'd say you're better off looking for a secondhand Nord Electro or similar. The NE has a fairly excellent Farf, Vox, and a bunch of simple interface FX to get psychedelic with.
  2. I actually got rid of Slow on some of my patches by setting the Slow speed for both High and Low to 0 and leaving the Fast speeds as normal. I felt like the slow spin was getting lost in a full rock band, you can still get some movement using the C/V and the ramp up is a bit more dramatic.
  3. Sounds like WesG might be on to something here ^^ If the transpose light wasn't on and it carried between patches, then I can't see the software glitching so disastrously and yet ONLY affecting the transpose settings. Someone in here has done a pitch.mod replacement before so might be worth looking into.
  4. Partly to sell stands, partly to cover their ass in case of accidents I suspect. You put it on a cheap stand; it collapses and the VR09 breaks because it's made of plastic; you complain to them and they point out they did warn you not to use other products apart from the ones they can specifically confirm are rated to their standards (ie. theirs). The same goes for power supplies - if you use a third party supply and it damages your gear then it's only your fault.
  5. I found FS Brass and StackTP to be the most useable layering too; I sometimes dropped one an octave for a really big sound. If I'm only using one layer I tend to go for FS Brass but haven't put a lot of thought into it. Lucky enough to play with a section anyway so it's mostly just for thickening the sound out.
  6. That UHL looks fantastic on top of the Roland. How are you finding the sounds? Considering picking one up to go with my VR-09. I just wish the RD came with more vintage looking sidepanels; I would kill for a 61 waterfall/61HP setup in a single retro box.
  7. I use the preset registrations for everything but I did work out a trick for certain songs to get two sounds on a single reg button: Set your big Dual or Split sound (Piano [1] and Pad [2] for example) as the registration. Hit 'EXIT' to remove the Split/Dual and you get the [1] sound with your FX tweaks still in place for verses; hit the registration and you get your big sound back for a chorus or solo. You're still limited to 4 Registrations but means I can effectively have 8 different sounds to play with on each bank, which is useful as I'm single-boarding at 99% of my gigs.
  8. Had a bit of an equipment failure halfway through my Emerson impression last weekend, but we got through. http://i.imgur.com/Xgsefp1.jpg
  9. Quick question for anyone who has installed the 'Cover Band Collection' registration pack available on Roland's website: which registrations do these install to as default? I already have a bunch of custom ones I don't want to set up again in the user patches and don't want to overwrite them.
  10. Nope, up to V1.03. As far as I can tell it doesn't play the previous sound, but the held notes are triggered in the new sound. Only noticed it once or twice live.
  11. It's listed as 'Tonewheel Brake' so entirely understandable. I do miss having it there; use the RT-20 myself and there's a part in one track where I hold a chord with V1 and then spin the rotary down to brake so the subtle vibrato 'fades' in that just doesn't sound the same without it. I always have the option of using the XM-1 for that, but that defeats the point of having a single board. Might just have to set up a registration for that part. The other quirk that I've noticed is having to be careful about switching registrations between verses/choruses. If I'm sloppy with the sustain pedal I get the awkward triggering as I switch. Something that's been raised in this thread already I think. I can live with it and suspect I will get used to making the changes eventually. I'm already allowing too many of my technique flaws to dictate the way I play so perhaps it will help with my discipline.
  12. Might be misunderstanding you there but the 'brake' setting on the D-Beam is actually for the Tonewheel Brake, so you get the Emerson Divebomb sound. There's no way to put the rotary on stop without setting the slow speed to 0, which does work if you're ok with just having two speed Fast/Off. I've done some playing around with different patches and it can be useful; particularly setting the slow woofer to 0 but keeping the tweeter like the old memphis sound. I think it must just have been an oversight on their behalf because they seem to have included everything else you could want in the way of weird noises like divebomb and spring shocks. It's a shame they haven't considered putting it in an update but I doubt it will happen now V3 is out. Normally I would be able to live with it but the tonal change is so obvious it puts me off; if you set the keyclick high enough to be noticeable when the rotary is on it becomes horribly overpowering when you turn it off. C'est la vie. Edit: Slight afterthought perhaps but I'd like to say how helpful this thread has been since I bought the board. I've enjoyed reading the reviews, positives and negatives alike, got a lot of tips out of it that have encouraged me to tweak the deeper settings and I'm a lot happier with the sounds than I originally was.
  13. I've dabbled with the gain boosts, found the leslie model had more effect to my ears. With the overdrive as it is it can be really easy to boost into an unpleasant flabbiness with only a bit of bass. Would have liked a two band EQ on the front a la Nord Combo Organ, but the tone works nicely for quick adjustments. Maybe 'flat' was the wrong adjective to use, 'polite' might be more suitable. Even with the leakage up high and overdrive on it seems fairly restrained, and then flips straight over into unusable after a quarter of a turn on the drive. It's a work in progress getting used to the settings right now, so maybe it'll grow on me. It's not that bad really, I just do a lot of looping and would have liked to be able to lose the pedals if needed. Have found a use for it by recording a phrase on piano and leaving it playing through the PA while I wander round to check the sound. The rock piano has had some use but the basic Grand cuts quite in this five piece lineup. Sounded great for recording last weekend. I do play with a full latin band with horns et al so may try something different for that. The filter sweep can act like a tone control just to cut and boost the edge on the top end too. Gives you a bit more control in conjunction with the Tone dial for mids. EP isn't one of my favourite sounds in general, but I do like the Pure EP model in the V3 update. I know I criticised some of the FX but the panning tremolo is a lot of fun with a stereo setup. Not really delved into the Wurlys much, found the tip about setting up a rotary patch with 0 movement really helps to give it more of an amp feel. I can certainly live with them. Adjusted to it fairly quickly but then I never had chance to get used to a hammer action anyway. The edges of the keys are kinder to my hands for smears than my previous MIDI controllers too. Roughly the same as my thoughts. Lucky enough to share a studio with a Nord Combo 2D, with the drawbars, but while that's a beautiful sound it's too big and limited for what I do. Trying to avoid moving to a 2 manual setup for now, unless I drop the guitar altogether.
  14. Done a few gigs with my VR-09 now and thought I'd share some thoughts. I'm a distinctly mediocre keys player (mostly coming from the organ side rather than piano) and I'm doubling up on guitar for a funk/pop/reggae band at the moment, using the VR as my single board. In that respect it's perfect for my needs - it does a lot of sounds reasonably well, it's light and portable and the learning curve is pretty shallow. I have a fairly portable guitar setup so I can do my entire rig in two trips from the car now. - The organ sounds are just OK, bordering on flat at times. I'm comparing it to the Hammond XM1 and an analog Elka X50 clonewheel. The sounds on the Hammond are far more editable and realistic; the X50 sounds chunkier and grittier, and the key-bed is so far beyond the VR-09 it's barely worth comparing. That said, the XM-1 means bringing a second controller board and the X50 weighs about 3 times what the VR does, so I'm comparing apples and organs there maybe. I'd like a more useful overdrive and leslie simulator with a brake function, but the on-board sounds are great within the context of a band. Disappointed the combo organ sounds aren't slightly more aggressive but they're mostly an afterthought for modern boards at the best of times so I'll take what I can get. There seems to be a faint hint of the top footage at all times regardless of how you set the leakage or drawbar settings. It gets more noticeable with distortion and Type 1 Leslie but I've only really heard it through headphones so I can live with it. - Piano sounds are adequate for my purposes and I'm not a connoisseur by any means. Found the basic grand piano sound can be a bit dull so I set up a dual layer with the same sound an octave above; I keep this low in the mix and bring it in and out for sparkle as I feel. - I'm not as put off by the keybed as I thought I would be. I miss the waterfall keys for percussive passages and smears but have got by so far, even in the bubble-reggae parts. I think the high trigger action helps in that respect. I've never been much of a piano player and have terrible technique on non-organ boards so can't say I miss the hammer action. The compressor balances out my jerky dynamics a little, and while I don't want it to become a crutch for bad technique it's nice to have as an option. - I'd like more control over the effects and delays, even if it had to be through a separate interface like the iPad synth. Doesn't have to be complicated and depth/rate options would be perfect for my needs. At the moment the phasers and auto-wah are quite flat sounding to the point of being useless. - The looper is a toy, useless for live performance. Only 20 seconds and if I want to set up a new loop I have to jump through eleventy button presses to come out of looper and reset a fresh one. It's ok for setting up a rhythm vamp to practice over. - Using the VR-09 with a second controller board is a bit of a mixed bag. I've got a stage piano in the studio that I have hooked up as a second controller, and while I liked being able to do an organ/piano split I didn't like not being able to play layered sounds off the hammer-action board. I have some pianos set up with dual octave sounds and it would be nice to have the option of choosing which action I want for different registrations. I'm going to investigate into this further but don't think it's possible. - Setting up splits is a pain. It's not difficult but in the heat of the gig I always seem to end up with the sound I wanted on the bottom instead of the top because I pressed the buttons in the wrong order. Not a deal killer because of the registrations, but I'm wary of trying to set up a split in the middle of a show and resent that slight impedance to spontaneity. We aren't an improv heavy band but I like to switch things up according to how we're playing, so having functions and FX available without menu diving so I can play it like a self-contained instrument rather than just a soundboard is important. Overall I'm pretty happy with it. I'd consider upgrading to a Nord Electro at some point as I feel it would cover my organ needs better and I love the big red cheese look (probably because I also have one of the Yamaha combo organs in that colour scheme) but it's more than I need right now.
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