Roland Fantom 0 - Hammond organ/Leslie

[MrVegas]

My trusted Korg CX-3 has bitten the dust.  I use in on Sunday morning worship sessions in about half of our songs.

 

I recently purchased a Fantom 06 for messing around and realized it has a decent tone wheel organ with lots of customization ability.

 

Curious if any other players are using the Fantom 0 series for Hammond sounds.  I'm not sure about the on-board Leslie sounds, I might have to put a brake on them and use my Ventilator.

 

Thoughts?

[Mike Kent]

I have the FA-06 and I am reasonably certain the Fantom-06 has the same organ engine and same rotary simulation.

 

I play a lot of organ and have numerous devices for comparison:

• I used a Hammon C3 with Leslie 122, but that was in my first band years ago
• I own Roland VK-8 organ (same organ and rotary engines as Fantom)
• I have a Nord with organ and rotary simulation
• I have a Yamaha YC61 with organ and rotary simulation
• I have a Yamaha Reface-YC (not as good as the YC61 engines)
• I have a Roland VR-09 with organ and rotary simulation
• I use the organs in the FA-06 from time to time
• I have several organ plugins, but do not use a computer when playing live.
• I have a real Leslie 245 (solid state version of 145), mostly used with the VK-8
• I have the Hammond Leslie simulator pedal

I have never used a Ventilator.

 

The Roland organ engine is my favorite, better than Yamaha or Nord. So the Fantom Organ is really good. But simulating the Hammond is probably easier than simulating the Leslie.

 

The Roland Leslie simulation is better than the 2) Leslie pedal, 2) Yamaha, 3) Nord, 4) Reface (roughly in order)

The Roland Leslie simulation is better into a PA system than the sound of my real Leslie with mics into a PA system.

 

The Roland Leslie sim in the VK-8 and VR-09 sound great in Stereo or Mono. The rotary simulation in my FA-06 has one serious limitation - it does not collapse to mono well without a lot of tweaking. I assume the same might be true for the Fantom-06. I assume that when using the FA-06 in mono, the synth does some mixing of left and right and the result (some phase cancellation?) for the Leslie sim really sucks. The VK-08 and VR-09 sound basically the same as my FA-06 in stereo, but don't suffer the same problem when mixed to mono. Did Roland fix/change that in the newer Fantom-06?

 

I was able to find settings in the rotary sim that mostly overcome the mono-mixed problem. It's still not as good as the VK-8 or VR-09, but at least as good as the Nord.

 

Mike.

 

[SonicKeysII]

I find your comments interesting.  I have a VR-09, Roland FA-06 and a Yamaha YC61.  I never got on with the FA-06 live and have hardly ever used it even though on paper it is a decent baord.  I love the VR-09.  Originally, I thought it was a toy but it isn't.  Bought the Yamaha YC61 to replace it and the VR-09 still gets top billing for Hammond organ clone duties and a lot of other sounds.  As a top board, my VR-09 beats the YC61 for my purposes.  Hence, the YC61 sits mostly in the basement.  I thought of getting a Fantom 06 and you are suggesting sort of that I stick with what I have in the VR-09, at least from the Hammond organ clone perspective.  I play strictly in mono with my band.  The Leslie isn't perfect on the VR-09, but overall I like it.  

[AnotherScott]

I think the FA lagged behind the VR09 and Fantom-0 in the clonewheel department. For one thing, IIRC, the FA implementation lacked C/V. Also, IIRC, you couldn't combine the best rotary with a good overdrive, you had to sacrifice one place or the other.

[Mighty Motif Max]

If I don’t have my SKpro on a gig for organ, I’ll use my Fantom 7. With some editing of the Leslie, it’s really quite good and puts my other gear to shame. Honestly, for a lot of band work, and even some exposed stuff, it’s surprisingly close to the SKpro through most PA’s.

 

To hear it in a relatively exposed context (organ/guitar/drums trio with a vocalist), skip to about 4:10 in this video and listen to the song that starts then. That’s an edited Fantom VTW patch, with an electric bass layered in the last octave or two.

 

 

[Konnector]

Some people say the Fantom 0 series organ is improved over the FA series. I haven't tried one to compare.

 

I find the Roland FA series organ sounds rather lifeless compared to my Hammond clonewheel. I have a Vent pedal, which I tried on the FA out of curiosity. It improved it a little, but there's something missing in the organ sim itself. Don't know how else to describe it other than "lifeless". Now maybe through a real Leslie you wouldn't notice too much of a difference, but that's not an option for most people these days. (No vibrato/chorus on the FA organ either which is really dumb.)

 

My Hammond clonewheel through the Vent sounds many times better than the FA. I also have VB-3 and B3-X, so my FA is used for synth duties only...Which is fine for me because that's what I got it for. 

[Shlynn55]

I tried the Neo Vent with my Fantom 07 and I didn’t like it.  The built in Rotary Roland affect is better.  Plus I often layer other sounds on the Fantom and the Vent or a real Leslie speaker sounds bad affecting those other sounds.  To me the Vent is for just an organ keyboard and even then you’d have to disable the onboard built in rotary affect in order to use the Vent.  The key board can control which zones get the affect.  Vent can’t.