I have joined the Hammond club :-)

[Baldwin Funster]

Anvil is owned by Calzone. The only real difference is rivetted angle construction (which is more expensive) or glued in double angle construction like every other case company, including my employer Scorpion Case Mfg uses. You dont need rivetted angle on music gear cases and it would cost 20% more.

[The Real MC]

Anvil is owned by Calzone. The only real difference is rivetted angle construction (which is more expensive) or glued in double angle construction like every other case company, including my employer Scorpion Case Mfg uses. You dont need rivetted angle on music gear cases and it would cost 20% more.

 

If you want ATA compliant cases, then they have to be riveted.

[Baldwin Funster]

I dont intend to argue with you other than to say that ive been building, designing,and selling, roadcases professionally since 1992 now i'm in management of the company. That spec is very old and the rivetted angle portion of it has been ignored for decades. Anvil (and Scorpion if requested) is pretty much the only case company that uses that technique. Since the actuall wording of the spec does require rivetted angle, tecnically you are right. However that rules out at least 7 or 8 major case companies including the rotomolded cases like Hardigg,Storm and Pelican from calling their cases ATA. No airline or truck carrier or air freight company has ever refused to transport our cases or pay damage claims because our cases werent ATA compliant. Rivetted construction, if done right is marginally stronger but you are going to PAY for it. Now, lets get back to talking about Hammonds.

[The Real MC]

Anvil isn't the only company building riveted cases, I know of two others in the LA area.

 

Back to Hammonds.

[Mark Schmieder]

I'm a little confused: was it a bait and switch, and/or was there a price difference or simply less quality delivered for the same cost?

[Mark Schmieder]

As the ProTec bags and hybrid cases are no longer available, I went ahead and ordered the Yamaha Tyros bag that is a very close fit to the XK-3c (and even the XK-1):

 

http://www.andysmusiconline.com/products/yamaha_ybs761.html

 

My XK-3c should arrive by 1 October. I lucked out and found an unopened new one for just under $2K.

[Mark Schmieder]

I just received a PayPal notice that my order was refunded. I was put on message machine when I called Andy's Music (after being forwarded to their on-line service number), but as Sweetwater lists this gig bag as being out of production, chances are high that Andy's website was out-of-date and they didn't actually have any left over in stock.

 

The only other site listing this bag is B&H Photo Video, so maybe they still have some left in stock. No other bag comes close to fitting either the XK-1 or XK-3c, of those that are still made. The economy has been hard on keyboard bag makers.

 

Oops: Nevermind; B&H lists this as a special order item.

 

Why doesn't Hammond-Suzuki clean up on this market with the usual after-sales accessories markup?

 

Update: Just got off the phone with Andy's Music, and they apologized for not updating their website. They cleaned out their last remaining stock of this bag a few months back.

 

The woman who called was very friendly and commented that there are quite a few keyboards right now that don't have appropriate bags or cases. She said they are taking calls constantly from customers trying to find something for their Hammonds, in particular.

[bhodaway10]

Mark I have that bag for sale if you are interested.

[Mark Schmieder]

PM sent. :-)

[Mark Schmieder]

OK, it's official: The XK-3c has some serious balls!

 

I've probably spent eight hours on this beast since it arrived around 6pm last night, and I've been grinning from ear to ear ever since. :-)

[Steve Force]

Very, very cool!

[Mark Schmieder]

Also, it's a funny thing about the keybed action, as the XK-3c is definitely lighter, but the first thing I notice is the pivot point, which just feels more "real" to me than on the XK-1.

[Steve Force]

Also, it's a funny thing about the keybed action, as the XK-3c is definitely lighter, but the first thing I notice is the pivot point, which just feels more "real" to me than on the XK-1.

 

Oh, yeah..

[DanS]

OK, it's official: The XK-3c has some serious balls!

 

I've probably spent eight hours on this beast since it arrived around 6pm last night, and I've been grinning from ear to ear ever since. :-)

 

[JMcS]

OK, it's official: The XK-3c has some serious balls!

 

I've probably spent eight hours on this beast since it arrived around 6pm last night, and I've been grinning from ear to ear ever since. :-)

 

Now find some old 50's/60's era tubes to swap with the stock ones and really start to smile.

[bhodaway10]

OK, it's official: The XK-3c has some serious balls!

 

I've probably spent eight hours on this beast since it arrived around 6pm last night, and I've been grinning from ear to ear ever since. :-)

 

Now find some old 50's/60's era tubes to swap with the stock ones and really start to smile.

 

I gotta swap my tubes out......

[Mark Schmieder]

Long night -- I wanted to capture the best of Native Instruments B4's presets since that software won't be available to me anymore once I get my new Intel Mac later this week.

 

I actually didn't care for that many of B4's presets, but as some of them are for specific songs I might play, I transferred those, with improvements. And they ARE better than the XK's presets.

 

I sacrificed the Default, Theatre, and Demo Song banks, as I felt those were overall the worst.

 

Intro 1 and Intro 2 would have been up next, except I didn't find any other B4 settings worth transferring, except maybe some of the Vox and Farfisa patches, but I was too tired to investigate how to access those custom tonewheels in the XK-3c and never felt B4 did a good job of combo organs anyway.

 

Actually, I do like the Church and Tibias banks in the XK series, but that's about it -- my own custom presets and those ported and refined from B4, have more life. I think part of the problem with the factory presets is that so many of them are soaked in Hall Reverb.

 

At any rate, I think I have good coverage for a lot of styles now, in terms of starting points. Obviously, the drawbars themselves will generally get used as real-time controllers, but it's nice to have a selection of preset combinations of different tonewheel sets, distortion types, even reverb types, and percussion settings.

 

The genre that I felt I still hadn't covered very well is jazz. I fiddled with EQ and other settings, but probably I just don't have enough intimate knowledge of how good jazz organ tone is produced.