The most useless, disappointing keyboard you ever bought?

[rainbird]

PAIA STRINGZ & THINGZ!!!  What memories THAT brought back. I built one from a kit while stationed in Japan in the Navy a few lifetimes ago. I had much more fun building it than I did trying to get useful musical sounds out of it. It actually worked - mostly - which was gratifying. But it made a few extra noises that PAIA never intended, and I gave it to a friend when I transferred back to the States. I hope he had some fun with it, or at least was more successful troubleshooting it than I was.

[DrEsophagus]

17 hours ago, RandyFF said:

Yeah, never understood the love for the DX7, there are very few sounds I like, though at the time it offered a lot compared to dealing with expensive and out of tune analog synths

It's fun to fiddle around with I guess but really, unless you're doing retro-wave or EDM it's more or less useless these days, the sounds are so dated and dialed into the 80s it sticks out like a sore thumb, its sound is almost too identifiable. Just like the D-50 is too tied into the late 80s/early 90s sound.

 

Whereas a Rhodes sounds very 60s/70s it still sounds really cool.

[DrEsophagus]

On 3/15/2022 at 7:31 PM, Old No7 said:

Yamaha MX-61 for me...

 

Bought too quickly, didn't do enough research to realize it was a ROMpler -- soon after replaced it with a Yamaha MODX6 that I don't think I'll ever fully investigate or master, but I'm trying.

 

Old No7

The MODX is a helluva unit, it has really helped me with arranging the songs I've written in a way nothing else has ever done. Especially since that update. 

 

It's quite a leap up from the MX-61

 

 

[sunspot]

On 3/16/2022 at 1:09 AM, Synthaholic said:

Useless: Sequential Six-Trak

 

The Six-Trak did some things very well, like synth bass and MIDI implementation, but it was a one-trick (trik?) pony. Not a single lush sound to be found.

 

It's amusing for me to hear you say that, because I bought a Six Trak for like $230 about 25 years ago, and man these days that thing has got some MO. JO.  Probably because all the capacitors are toast and need to be replaced, so the oscillators drift around, but in a good musical way.  After power up, I always have to run the manual tune procedure before playing it.  I'll be sad the day those caps finally give out and have to be replaced, then it will probably sound like your version was.  Long live analog!!!

[JKS111]

The PAiA Stringz n Thingz was all we could afford in my first cover band. We had a strangely good time with it (it did a mean “I Ran” if I recall correctly) - all we had to compare it to was a Magnus chord organ so it was a pretty low bar. A friend built it just for kicks and loaned it to me until it was stolen from my car. I replaced it with an ARP Omni that we didn’t enjoy half as much  given it’s weight and general flakiness .

[Synthaholic]

I just remembered another old keyboard that I bought with so much excitement, only to be extremely disappointed:  Moog Opus 3

[Justin Havu]

Another one that came to mind for me was the Ensoniq SQ-2.  Got a used one back in 2006 for around $200, and I remember the sounds being very lackluster and uninspiring, compared to the TS-10 that I traded for almost 8 months later.

[AnotherScott]

I wouldn't call them useless by any means, but some disappointments come to mind.

 

The Korg Radias module, where the LEDs around the knobs had led me to think they were endless encoders when they weren't, and the sounds and operation never gelled with me anyway, I preferred the earlier Micro-Korg/MS2000 VA approach.

 

Kronos was about as far from useless as you could get, but it still also disappointed me, in its operation/ergonomics. Somehow, whenever I use it, I feel like I'm operating a computer rather than playing a musical instrument. The front panel control surface is uninviting, and the interface is often clumsy. Not just computer-ish, but dated computer-ish, like it could be Windows 98. And remember those early ads, with the 9 blocks showing the 9 engines? THAT's what I wanted and didn't get. I wanted a screen like that, where I could tap one of the 9 big buttons to call up that engine, and explore that engine within its own parameters. I always thought it was a missed opportunity that there was no mode that presented itself that way, that you had to find your way in to that kind of stuff.

 

The Jupiter 50, which I really wanted to like (and in some ways, really did), but seemed to keep putting up stumbling blocks to doing what I wanted, the way I wanted to do it. Discussed in more detail in the second part of my post at https://forums.musicplayer.com/topic/182136-roland-introduces-juno-x/?do=findComment&comment=2895778

 

Hammond SK Pro, only because of the awkwardness of some of the interface. It's still the best organ I've got and isn't going anywhere.

HX3 module, earlier version... Based on what others have said, I'm sure it can sound great, but I didn't have the patience to tweak to get it there. WIthin my limited time with it, it just never wowed me, and my expectations had been pretty high (which is usually the source of disappointment...)

 

Casio PX-330, an unusual Privia disappointment, I ended up sticking with my older ones, without the third sensor, but better feeling action nonetheless.

 

In the old days... the EML Syn-Key. It was wonderful at the time for actually being a synth with recallable user presets, but the sound was entirely lackluster. I got a decent amount of use out of it, but was not sorry to see it go.

 

Similarly, although not terrible, I never missed the Yamaha CS-60. It turns out that half a CS-80 electronically is a whole lot less than half a CS80 in practice, (Nice pitch ribbon, though.)

 

I loved the sound and action on my Korg DSS1, but I was disappointed to find the programming beyond what I could deal with. It was a bit of a tank to move,  too.

 

Oh, and how could I forget, my actual Fender Rhodes. It was never fun to play. Heavy, rubbery action. Some Rhodes can feel great. Not mine, though.

 

I'm sure there are others. Luckily, most of the stuff that disappointed me, I managed to not buy (or return, which I count as not buying).

 

[funkyhammond]

5 hours ago, AnotherScott said:

Hammond SK Pro

 

I wasn't expecting to see this one. Are you trying to convince me not to buy it? Yes, I know, best organ, yada yada.. 🙂

 

5 hours ago, AnotherScott said:

Oh, and how could I forget, my actual Fender Rhodes. It was never fun to play. Heavy, rubbery action. Some Rhodes can feel great. Not mine, though.

 

Also a bit of a surprise, but I understand the gripe with the action. Are you checking out the Rhodes MK8 by any chance? Keybed by Steinway & Sons. 😁

[AnotherScott]

3 hours ago, funkyhammond said:

 

I wasn't expecting to see this one. Are you trying to convince me not to buy it? Yes, I know, best organ, yada yada.. 🙂

It's frustrating, because the SK Pro has so much potential to be great. But I just never feel like working on it because it feels convoluted, and I have enough other quality tools at my disposal that I'm not motivated to put in the time to really wrap my head around the ins and outs of it. It justifies its presence for me by simply being the best lightweight organ available. It's nice to know that if I ever needed it for something else, it could fill other roles... and if the operation were more inviting, I might give it a shot... but as it is, I just haven't felt the need to dig in. I mean, for anything other than organ, I probably already have something in the rig that does what I want better AND more easily, while still providing me organs that are "good enough."

 

That said, who knows, if the Hammond had wowed me with its non-organ sides, maybe I wouldn't have bought the YC73 or the Fantom-07 that I have bought subsequently. So while everything I said in the previous paragraph is true today, it wasn't necessarily the case when I bought it, when I did have higher aspirations for it. I was thinking it might be the best board above my PC4 (or later, PC4-7), and for some people it still might be, and if I had immediately gelled with its interface and if it had been a friendlier LH bass board, I might have been content and not bought those other boards. But I didn't, and it wasn't, so I wasn't, so I did. ;-) But that's why it's on my disappointment list, even though I really like it... I expected it to be more useful to me than it has ended up being. I'm glad I have it, but I do consider it an extravagance, because I expect I will rarely gig with it. Probably just on those very rare prog rock gigs where I bring 4+ keyboards.

 

3 hours ago, funkyhammond said:

Also a bit of a surprise, but I understand the gripe with the action. Are you checking out the Rhodes MK8 by any chance? Keybed by Steinway & Sons. 😁

Nah, I don't care enough about Rhodes to ever want one. I got mine when it was the best "piano" of any kind you could get that was portable (albeit barely).

[niacin]

46 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

It's frustrating, because the SK Pro has so much potential to be great. But I just never feel like working on it because it feels convoluted, and I have enough other quality tools at my disposal that I'm not motivated to put in the time to really wrap my head around the ins and outs of it. It justifies its presence for me by simply being the best lightweight organ available. It's nice to know that if I ever needed it for something else, it could fill other roles... and if the operation were more inviting, I might give it a shot... but as it is, I just haven't felt the need to dig in. I mean, for anything other than organ, I probably already have something in the rig that does what I want better AND more easily, while still providing me organs that are "good enough."

 

Yeh coming from an SK1 there were some head scratching better read the manual moments, I think "convoluted" is fair given the way combinations and different areas of the memory are set out, but by the time I'd programmed a few sets worth of songs I was flying around the interface.  Like anything with deep editing you need to spend some time to get over the learning curve.  My bar for "organs that are good enough" is higher than yours so there were no alternatives at the time and as such I was motivated to get my head around it. Though the YC leslie update might get it in the ballpark now, as it is I'm very happy with the SKpro.

[funkyhammond]

11 hours ago, AnotherScott said:

It's frustrating, because the SK Pro has so much potential to be great. But I just never feel like working on it...

 

Yup, that's how I felt after two sessions and a total of several hours on it in the store. 

 

11 hours ago, niacin said:

Like anything with deep editing you need to spend some time to get over the learning curve. 

 

You have a point, and I do tend to learn how to get around my more menu driven boards quite well. I guess my expectations for the friendliness of the more real-time functions of the interface are higher when it's supposed to be a contemporary "stage keyboard" (that's what Hammond calls it) at that price range. 

[Pa Gherkin]

I really understand the frustration with the SK Pro having spent months working with it. I did find that perseverance and patience pay off greatly.  I love the thing but access to simple stuff can be convoluted. This is coming from someone who has been programming synths since the mid 70s.

When I first encountered the 600 plus page User's Guide I wondered if I had to read War and Peace just to play organ. Answer:Yes I find the sound and feel are worth the effort although there were moments early on when I would debate that statement.

[AnotherScott]

23 hours ago, niacin said:

I think "convoluted" is fair given the way combinations and different areas of the memory are set out, but by the time I'd programmed a few sets worth of songs I was flying around the interface.  Like anything with deep editing you need to spend some time to get over the learning curve. 

 

Yes. And if I spent the time, I might end up really enjoying it it. The thing that most puts me off is the awkward patch navigation... which leads to the sense that, even if I put in the time to really get fully comfortable with all the rest, I still wouldn't easily be able to quickly get to the sounds I want when I want them. (And I am scroll-averse!) It makes me think of last century, when I had cheat sheets taped to keyboards to tell me which digits to punch in to get to the sound I wanted. I've become really spoiled by the improvements in patch navigation in recent years compared to the old days, on numerous boards. Maybe there's something I've yet to discover on the Hammond in this respect as well, that will help. But if I were comfortable with all the basic patch navigation, I'd probably be more motivated to dig in. 

 

BTW, I have this same issue with the Nord Stage 3! Patch navigation is a weakness.  But it wasn't an impediment to learning how to do more, because, at least to some extent, doing more was so easy. It's still the board I can most quickly set up a patch on, that's its saving grace. The Hammond has a similar drawback, without that offsetting saving grace. Though in the end, I've rarely gigged with the Nord and will probably sell it, largely because of this weakness. I also never totally gelled with its VA synth design. Gee, maybe I'll have to add NS3 to my list of disappointments!

 

23 hours ago, niacin said:

My bar for "organs that are good enough" is higher than yours so there were no alternatives at the time and as such I was motivated to get my head around it. Though the YC leslie update might get it in the ballpark now, as it is I'm very happy with the SKpro.

 

Yes... for the rare prog rock gigs, I have a higher organ bar and will want a dedicated clonewheel (and these days, it would indeed be the SK Pro), but for most gigs I've done this century, I've used rompler organ sounds! Talk about low bar. So anything with a clonewheel engine is nice a step up. I did recently get a YC73 (after once returning a YC61 largely because of the Leslie), and yes, it's now good enough to be a keeper... but it's still not as good as the organ of the SK Pro. But I think it will fit into my typical gig workflow better (and its organ can easily be triggered over MIDI from my non-hammer board above it).

 

 

 

11 hours ago, funkyhammond said:

I guess my expectations for the friendliness of the more real-time functions of the interface are higher when it's supposed to be a contemporary "stage keyboard" (that's what Hammond calls it) at that price range. 

 

Yes, I think expectations is definitely part of this. The Hammond is deceiving because it looks like it's going to be simpler than it really is. Nicely, it's also got more depth than you might have expected, but some pretty basic things are unintuitive or more complicated than they should be. To put this in some additional perspective, deep editing on the Kurzweil is not friendly, but we know that going in, we're not surprised. In fact, the deep editing that you CAN do on the Hammond is much easier than doing comparable things on the Kurz, kudos for that. But the basic stuff, like the patch navigation I was talking about, is putting up barriers, that stuff is actually easier on the Kurz.

 

9 hours ago, Pa Gherkin said:

I really understand the frustration with the SK Pro having spent months working with it. I did find that perseverance and patience pay off greatly.  I love the thing but access to simple stuff can be convoluted. This is coming from someone who has been programming synths since the mid 70s.

 

Bingo.

 

9 hours ago, Pa Gherkin said:

When I first encountered the 600 plus page User's Guide I wondered if I had to read War and Peace just to play organ. Answer:Yes I find the sound and feel are worth the effort although there were moments early on when I would debate that statement.

 

I hope I will feel motivated to spend some more time digging into it, because I have a feeling that, ultimately, there would be rewards.

[niacin]

5 hours ago, AnotherScott said:

Yes. And if I spent the time, I might end up really enjoying it it. The thing that most puts me off is the awkward patch navigation... which leads to the sense that, even if I put in the time to really get fully comfortable with all the rest, I still wouldn't easily be able to quickly get to the sounds I want when I want them. (And I am scroll-averse!) It makes me think of last century, when I had cheat sheets taped to keyboards to tell me which digits to punch in to get to the sound I wanted. I've become really spoiled by the improvements in patch navigation in recent years compared to the old days, on numerous boards. Maybe there's something I've yet to discover on the Hammond in this respect as well, that will help. But if I were comfortable with all the basic patch navigation, I'd probably be more motivated to dig in. 

Part of the reason it is convoluted is that it does provide for changing the upper side of a split with the push of a single button without affecting the lower side, but at the same time you can go into the combi menu and set different split and points and transposition for each of the 4 patches, and indeed further into the menu of the non-Hammond non-monosynth sounds and edit the key range and octave for each partial.  So I have a partial for each of the 4 elements of the machine sound effects that opens Pink Floyd's Welcome to the Machine set to one of the top 4 keys of the keyboard and saved as a single patch and then in a combination 3-way split with Hammond organ and Solina strings.  And you have 10 banks of 10 favourites you can access at the push of a button.  The SKpro encourages you to pre-program your combinations but then allows you to keep your left hand happening while you switch the sound played by the right hand by pushing a single button, so with the push of a button I can add a piano layer to the Hammond for the synth solo in Shine on You Crazy Diamond Part III.  You can set up a simple split from scratch on the run, but anything more complicated and you're into menu diving.  I think "convoluted" most applies to the saving process where each of the 4 patches needs to be saved separately before you save them as a combination.  In contrast to those manufacturers who have gone in the "you're always in combi mode" direction, with the SKpro you have to keep in mind that, like many older boards, there are 3 levels to a combination - the combi, the patch and the partial - with a simple split function layered over the top, and when it comes to saving you need to consider 2 levels - the patch and the combi. The most frustrating thing I find about the SKpro is having to save a drawbar setting at the patch level and then as part of a combination, but I have become used to it.  If you prefer something different then it may not be for you, just as the Nord with its fixed split points or the Kronos with its 8 instead of 9 faders just wouldn't work for me.

 

It would be nice if it had a screen that showed the current bank of favourites, like the Kronos.

[AnotherScott]

1 hour ago, niacin said:

Part of the reason it is convoluted is that it does provide for changing the upper side of a split with the push of a single button without affecting the lower side

This is exactly one of the functions I like to see in a board, to better facilitate LH bass playing. But the implementation of this in the Hammond is still pretty limited, IIRC. If your bass is one of your piano/ensemble sounds, the only things you can one-button switch your RH sound to would be a pre-defined solo synth sound, a pre-defined organ sound, or one other pre-defined piano/ensemble sound, right? And while you can bring up a screen to navigate to additional sounds in any of those categories, you can't scroll through those sounds to get to the one you want without selecting each sound along the way (again, IIRC). So the LH bass functionality it looked like it could facilitate turned out to not be what it could be. You'd probably be better off setting up different LH+other Favorites and assigning them to the 10 buttons. But (again, IIRC) even then was complicated because sometimes a switch would happen seamlessly and sometimes a sound would cut out. I'm not sure, it's been a while since I played with it, but it seemed like every LH bass approach a tried left me stymied in one way or another. Not that that's a deal-killer for the board, it won't matter to lots of people (e.g. who either don't do LH bass or would do it on their other board of a pair), but it does mean I probably wouldn't suggest this as a board for someone who was looking for a multifunction clonewheel that was also strong for LH bass.

 

 

1 hour ago, niacin said:

The most frustrating thing I find about the SKpro is having to save a drawbar setting at the patch level and then as part of a combination, but I have become used to it. 

Something related that has so far frustrated me is, if I call up my favorite organ settings, but I want the drawbar sound to exactly match the current settings, I haven't found a way to do it. I assumed the Manual function would do it, but whereas I simply want Manual to behave as if the settings were what the front panel indicates, Manual seems to do that PLUS change all the underlying menu-based settings, to some mysterious default, which is not what I want, I want those left as is. If anyone has a solution to this, whether how to have Manual maintain my current deep settings OR change what default non-front-panel settings Manual invokes, I'd really like to hear it.

 

1 hour ago, niacin said:

If you prefer something different then it may not be for you, just as the Nord with its fixed split points or the Kronos with its 8 instead of 9 faders just wouldn't work for me.

 

Kronos has 9 sliders, but Fantom-0 only has 8.

 

1 hour ago, niacin said:

 

It would be nice if it had a screen that showed the current bank of favourites, like the Kronos.

 

Yes, another one of my biggest irritations, The screen can show what's in the first five, but it doesn't show what's in all ten. There are other screens that show the interface supports two columns of 5 entries each. That would be great to use here, even if it meant truncating some patch names to fit.

[bill bosco]

On 3/16/2022 at 7:51 AM, bill bosco said:

that would definitely be a Hammond XB-2 , even had a hard case for it , which turned out to be the wisest choice in the whole deal as it ended up packed away

for a few months with a pile of other equipment crammed against it . even the guy who came out from Manhattan to finally buy it  was disappointed in it but he was really

desperate for an organ to play on . was more interested in my C3 . my folks blessed me with a brand new Farfisa combo compact when i was still in school , i played on it probably every day learning what i could off of albums on my record player . bought me my first Hammond , a spinet , after high school and never touched the Farfisa again . never missed it , never use compact organ patches  , can't  even listen to them 

 

[AnotherScott]

23 minutes ago, bill bosco said:

my folks blessed me with a brand new Farfisa combo compact when i was still in school , i played on it probably every day learning what i could off of albums on my record player . bought me my first Hammond , a spinet , after high school and never touched the Farfisa again . never missed it

 

Yeah, I similarly had a Farfisa VIP 345. It served its purpose at the time, but being a Hammond guy, I've never missed it.

[David Emm]

PAIA again. When I landed my first synth (a Minimoog) and a few other small pieces, a friend and I pooled our gear to see what was what. It was a clunky mix of Moog, Korg and ARP, so we had constant triggering issues. Being newbies, our troubleshooting skills were still vaporware. His mixer was also a bundle of ass, which didn't help.

 

He had a fairly large PAIA modular, which spit and sputtered all the time. We sometimes fought like rabid chipmunks over his propensity to keep pulling cards out of the thing and fiddling with them, which brought the show to a halt. It took a while to make him see that it was best suited as a poor man's VCS3 for Hawkwind covers, heh. He had an MS-20, which was the next prize possession after our Moogs. We started enjoying it all more once I said "Plug your Odyssey & ARP Sequencer together and let's just noodle, for godssakes!" The PAIA was relegated to the background, where it found its ultimate purpose as a noise generator/solder stench emitter. 👅

[AnotherScott]

Geez, I forgot about PAIA. I have a box of their stuff somewhere in my basement, that I never used! One of those "eyes are bigger than your stomach" things.

[Tom Williams]

11 hours ago, AnotherScott said:

12 hours ago, bill bosco said:

my folks blessed me with a brand new Farfisa combo compact when i was still in school , i played on it probably every day learning what i could off of albums on my record player . bought me my first Hammond , a spinet , after high school and never touched the Farfisa again . never missed it

 

Yeah, I similarly had a Farfisa VIP 345. It served its purpose at the time, but being a Hammond guy, I've never missed it.

Wow.  Y'all just pegged the first two keyboards I ever had (other than a half-ton Story and Clark upright piano). 

 

The Combo Compact my parents gave me when I was 12 was what I learned my first Jimmy Smith riffs on; it got me my first gigs. I remember starting the vibrato in stages to simulate a Leslie revving up.  I also remember the ahead-of-its'-time multi-tone booster. 

 

Around age 16 my dad helped me buy a VIP 345 and Leslie 860.  Every once in a while I wish I still had those two, just to see if my 40-years-later understanding of drawbar registration would make 'em sound better than I did at the time. 

 

Although they're eclipsed by current technology, I never considered either of them useless or disappointing, especially at the time.