New Appreciation for Transistor Organs

[EricBarker]

I just joined a 60s psychedelic throwback band. Mostly new original material by a bunch of young guys who are crazy about old 60s psychedelic and garage rock. The few covers we do are by The Fugs and Smoke, and more recent throwback bands like King Gizzard (love). It's great cuz all I need to bring is my trusty Mojo61 and an analog delay pedal. In the past I've always poo-poo'ed transistor organs, particularly Vox Continental for being too harsh. But obviously it's perfect for this stuff. So I'm pounding away having a ball, and suddenly, I have a new appreciation for the instrument. It definitely cuts through the mix like a razor blade, gets the job done, so its utility is extraordinary. In quieter rehearsals I'm always backing off on the "IV" drawbar, but live I'm finding I can go full open. I switch to Farf for slightly less piercing sound. I haven't yet really learned how to work the draw bars very well, and it's slightly awkward working from Hammond drawbars, since I have to remember to ignore the last 3 and they all do different things.

I know it's just nostalgia, but it makes me smile!

[SamuelBLupowitz]

Isn't it fun when you find something that sings for an instrument or sound that normally didn't resonate with you? I had to go through that process with synthesizers in general when I was younger (I associated most synths with "when my favorite 60s/70s artists got boring"), but I also find that every now and then a transistor organ is exactly the right balance of aggressive and weird to do "the thing." Every now and then I sit in on piano/organ with an alternative rock band, and when they cover Violent Femmes, that Farfisa bite is just right.

[CyberGene]

I love hearing transistor organ sound thrown in for color here and there but I'm not sure I can listen to an entire concert where the keyboardist is using only a transistor organ, except maybe if it was The Doors.

[HammondDave]

I own a Vox Continental, Farfisa, and a Gibson G101. My fav is the Gibson. 

[EricBarker]

3 hours ago, CyberGene said:

I love hearing transistor organ sound thrown in for color here and there but I'm not sure I can listen to an entire concert where the keyboardist is using only a transistor organ, except maybe if it was The Doors.

 

Exactly. Even for this band I'm switching it up. Transistors on some (I'm even switching between Vox and Farf), B3 on some, and lots on Rhodes/Wurli, even some Clav. I just wish the Mojo had a better AP. I play skank piano on one fast punk song, but the Mojo's AP is so bad, I can't listen to it for long. I'd actually rather listen to a gig full of Vox than Mojo AP! lol

[EricBarker]

Which reminds me, this is the second keyboard I love where I can't stand the AP. I played an Alesis QS for years. Fantastic Organs (for their day), solid EPianos, some great synths (though limited programming)... dismal Acoustic Piano. I really should have bought one of the piano cards, but I was young and broke at the time, and also had both slots filled with a huge SRAM card, and a sample card (though I probably didn't need to use that one much). Ironically, there are tons of late-90s, and early-2000s records with QS Piano on them, I can recognize them a mile away.

Considering Piano was my first instrument, it's always a bummer when your board doesn't sound good in that area. I've thought about getting an external sampler just for piano out of the Mojo, but the setup would be a drag. So if I can, I get away with Rhodes in a band setting.

[CyberGene]

28 minutes ago, EricBarker said:

this is the second keyboard I love where I can't stand the AP

Correct me if I'm wrong but the piano in the Mojo is a modeled one. So, it's understandable, modeled pianos are love or hate. I can't stand modeled pianos: Pianoteq, Roland V-Piano and SN modeled, Arturia, Viscount Physis... They all make me sick. It's a well-known phenomenon on piano forums which has been discussed to death and is always one of the best subjects for a heated argument 😀 Sampled pianos are so much better to my ears.

[EricBarker]

12 minutes ago, CyberGene said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but the piano in the Mojo is a modeled one. So, it's understandable, modeled pianos are love or hate. I can't stand modeled pianos: Pianoteq, Roland V-Piano and SN modeled, Arturia, Viscount Physis... They all make me sick. It's a well-known phenomenon on piano forums which has been discussed to death and is always one of the best subjects for a heated argument 😀 Sampled pianos are so much better to my ears.

 

I'm probably in the minority here, but I've never liked PianoTeq acoustic pianos. While they're MILES ahead of the Mojo AP, something about it (particularly the attack) just seams wrong to me. That said, I've been very impressed with many modeled EPianos. Lounge Lizard is still one of my favorite Rhodes/Wurli VIs, and it's modeled. I think modeling works better if it's already going to be processed by an amp/cab, as EPianos and Organs are. Raw, acoustic pianos are just too exposed.

 

All this said, if I'm not mistaken, I believe the Mojo piano is actually sampled, and that's part of the problem. The rest of the instrument is mostly modeled, and they never put much memory on the unit, but they snuck a very low-overhead sampled AP in there as sort of a bonus (it wasn't even listed in the original instruction manual). This is a case where probably a modeled one would have been better for this particular instrument. But I bet the QS Piano could fit on here too, and as much as I JUST bitched about it, I'd take that any day over the Mojo Piano.

[CyberGene]

According to their website:

Quote

To complete the experience, the last sound is an hybrid (sampled / modeled) Acoustic Piano

Not sure what exactly is modeled and what sampled (usually they model the resonance) but it's also possible that they put short samples in it, it's an organ board after all.

[EricBarker]

In my mind: "Hybrid" = Sampling. All modern samplers use a fair amount of scripts these days. Developers often use that as a way of making their largely-sample-based products sound exciting. Unless we're talking "SWAM" or "Sample Modeling" level scripting (absolutely insane), I'm just gonna go ahead and assume it's sampling with small bit of scripting to smooth things over. In this case, I suspect very-short piano waveforms with no attack/decay samples, only a few velocity layers. And then a fair bit of filter envelope to make up for it. LOL, sometimes "Hybrid" basically is the hip version of describing an early-90s "rompler".

I don't mean to rag on Crumar, this wasn't their main objective, in fact it was practically an Easter egg that required a hack to access in the first few firmware versions. When I first bought the board, I had no intention of using it for anything but B3. But it felt so damned good, and it's Rhodes/Wurli are so great that I started using it for more and more things. Then on smaller gigs, I started ONLY bringing the Mojo, to find out that the only thing I hated was the Piano. They created too good a board for their own good!

[Doerfler]

16 minutes ago, EricBarker said:

 They created too good a board for their own good!

This is the exact same problem that existed in the original Nord Electro. Was never supposed to have an acoustic piano, Clavia included one anyway.

I would bet it increased sales, but there were mountains of complaints about the AP. 

[synthizen2]

I love the transistor organ sound when used on TexMex Border/Tejano music (like the stuff from Sir Douglas Quintet in the 60s/70s).

 

In fact, Ray Manzarek was digging that sound in the latter years ('70-'71) of The Doors. The song "Love Her Madly" is essentially a take on that TexMex style.

 

Funny thing: Just over the weekend I was watching an old favorite movie, "Cicso Pike" from 1971 starring (or "introducing") Kris Kristofferson. There's a scene in the movie where he goes into a studio to make a drug deal, and meets up with Doug Sahm (leader of Sir Douglas Quintet) who was recording in there. I love Doug Sahm's comments when talking to Cisco (Kristofferson's character in the movie)... Kris asks him, "When are you gonna get out of that Border shit?", and Doug replies, "Man... I'm just not into that San Francisco psychedelic stuff, this TexMex stuff is where it's at, man, like... (and does an 'air guitar' gesture)... funny as all hell.

 

My country band currently does "Oh Lonesome Me" by the Kentucky Headhunters... in which I get to get my TexMex on. Fun stuff!

[Rofox]

Sorry, I can't share your appreciation of the Continental.  I started my band career in 1966 with a Continental 2 and upgraded in '71 to an Italian Continental 300 which added percussion, reverb, presets and a tilting stand. All the time I found them both harsh and reedy despite adding a wah and phaser but tolerated it because they were the best of the portable keyboards that

I could afford/carry at the time. It didn't take long to embrace a Wurli and clav, both of which I still have.

Every year or so I call up a Vox program on my synths and shudder at the memory.

[EricBarker]

LOL. Yeah, if that's *ALL* I had for a few years, I'd probably have PTSD too.

[Bobbo Fett]

20 hours ago, Doerfler said:

This is the exact same problem that existed in the original Nord Electro. Was never supposed to have an acoustic piano, Clavia included one anyway.

I would bet it increased sales, but there were mountains of complaints about the AP. 

I have an Electro 3, and actually LOVE the sound of some of the uprights......as long as I'm in stereo, and triggering from a weighted board (in my case, a Casio Px5S). Trouble is I NEVER gig in stereo (there's not a single sound guy around here who works with a stereo rig) so my enjoyment of the E3's piano is relegated to the practice room.....on gigs where the E3 is the only board I bring, I stick to B3/Rhodes/Wurli/Clav and maybe endure 1-2 tunes playing the AP sound....Oh, to pull this "on topic", I owned and played a couple of Farfisas back in the 70's. I was REALLY lusting for a B3, but had neither the budget or transportation to make it happen. Even running through a Leslie 145, I HATED the sound of those things, and have zero desire to revisit the experience....ever. Just one hack's opinion.....