Hammond Teaser ???

[niacin]

[video:youtube]

[AnotherScott]

Nice Rhodes comparison here... not definitive as a comparison by any means, since the Nord actually has a bunch of different Rhodes sample sets you can load into it... but the Hammond at least has a nice, competitive Rhodes sound. Hopefully it plays pretty nicely from its keys.

 

[video:youtube]

[MikeT156]

So what did Hammond do, borrow Nord's sample Library? Aside from being my usual sarcastic self, this unit offers more than the recently released Yamaha organ clone. Color screen and more controls. A mono synth? Two different models. Of course this is priced higher than the Yamaha.

 

Its nice to see that manufacturers are still catering to live players with new equipment.

 

 

Mike T.

[AnotherScott]

Here's another video focussing on the non-organ sounds.

 

The pianos seem to have the same timbre whether played quietly or loudly, making me think they have only a single velocity layer, unlike the EPs which show the expected timbral differences from soft to loud. I find that a little surprising, though not too bothersome, considering this would be most people's idea of a go-to board for a piano-centric gig, and it is pretty likely to be used above another board which would probably have a better piano sound anyway. And for a lot of gigs these pianos sound perfectly adequate regardless. It's just kind of unexpected in a pro board in 2021. Unless maybe there's something else in there.

 

[video:youtube]

[AnotherScott]

I said above, "considering this would be most people's idea of a go-to board for a piano-centric gig" and of course I mean it would NOT be that. (Ironically, similarly based on its design, features, and marketing, the Vox Continental would not tend to be seen as the choice for a piano board, and yet as discussed in the Vox thread, it's a surprisingly strong piano board... and a surprisingly weak clonewheel!)

 

Meanwhile, here's another nice video that's been posted, the organ-sound companion to the one I posted above:

 

[video:youtube]

[kwyn]

When are these expected to be available?

[Dave Bryce]

We're hoping to have Jim A. do a Gearlab on the new unit for us.

 

dB

[engineerjoel]

Picking up from the previous post, here is my prediction of how the SK Pro, YC61, and Nord Stage 3 will stack up (won't know for sure until I can play an SK Pro in the flesh)...

 

Organ sound:

1. Hammond

2. Nord

3. Yamaha (at least based on its current rotary sim)

 

Piano sound:

1. Nord

2. Yamaha

3. Hammond

 

Strings/Winds/Brass sounds:

1. Yamaha

2. Hammond

3. Nord

 

Analog-style Synth sounds:

1. Nord

2. Hammond

3. Yamaha

 

Action:

1. Yamaha

2. Hammond

3. Nord

 

(The feature differences have already been discussed and largely listed in the comparison chart I posted.)

 

 

I think you have added "Leslie Sim" to your list....as in:

1. Hammond

2. Nord

3. Yamaha <--- way, way last

[MikeT156]

It all depends on your criteria for buying a new instrument. There are a number of factors. What instrument(s) do you play the most? What type of gigs do you do? What does it WEIGH? How many keys do you need? How"s the action? How extensive are the Editing capabilities? Will there be regular updates? How much it cost? Bonus points for a lot of variety of sounds, but the other criteria would be more important to me. The other thing is.....reliability. I lean toward Yamaha for most of my equipment because every piece of equipment I ever bought from Yamaha still works. Some of my equipment is from the seventies. It still works. If I was an organ player, I would be looking at the Hammond. But I'm not. Piano is my main instrument.I used a number of Rhodes sounds on my Motif ES8 when I was player Private parties and Veteran"s clubs, because I was my own roadie and I only brought one KB to a gig. The Motif work station handled everything. I used the 16 track recorder to play my sequencer for my classic rock show, used Yamaha"s sample Library for sounds not on my Motif, and was able to load sound effects from the Internet via a USB drive and save those sounds into different songs. The Motif ES8 paid for itself several times over. The User interface was a BEAR to learn It did what I needed and it worked

 

Nord has a vast sample Library, but I was never a big fan of Nord. The Hammond sounds are somewhat generic, but I would guess that it covers most sounds that would have to be covered. Soloists may not agree. So how many different sounds DO you need? We can be picky, and we"re all spoiled.

 

Bonus points for Hammond's Connectivity options. LOVE having a connect to a REAL Leslie. Organists would demand that in a Hammond

 

 

Mike T.

[FatFingers]

When are these expected to be available?

 

I ordered on Jan 11th and was told to expect shipping by mid to late March. I read on another forum that someone who just ordered last week received an expected shipping date of early to mid-April.

[dfcas]

The owners manual is up now.

 

http://www.hammondsuzuki.com/download/om-skpro-3f884f5a-edb4-411d-b06d-8d3b83ebbb8a.pdf

 

I'm a little disappointed the "rotary out" is menu controlled and the transistor organs are routed thru the Leslie.

[musicbysterling]

When are these expected to be available?

 

I ordered on Jan 11th and was told to expect shipping by mid to late March. I read on another forum that someone who just ordered last week received an expected shipping date of early to mid-April.

I was told by Hammond April 1st....

[AnotherScott]

Some miscellaneous bits of interest from talking to a couple of dealers and someone from Hammond, and also items I found of particular interest from the manual...

 

* It's supposed to be shipping 2nd or 3rd week of March, but early allocations from Hammond are sold out, so availability will depend on how far down the waiting list you are at a particular dealer who already has an order in. For new orders that dealers place from Hammond today, there are a few 61s that may still ship in April, and 73s not until early May.

 

* There were some comments/questions earlier in the thread about the effects implementation. It looks like the two multi-fx available for each of the four sections are structured this way: Multi-effect #1 can be your choice of tremolo, wah-wah, ring modulator, or compressor. It is implemented before expression pedal/overdrive. Multi-effect #2 can be your choice of auto-pan, phaser, flanger, chorus, or delay. These are placed after expression/overdrive. All the effects are highly editable, and I'm pretty sure you can select different effects for each of the four sections. Each of the four sections also has its own EQ (plus there's a master EQ). There's a master reverb with separate send levels for each of the four sections, and you can also select a different type of reverb for the organ compared to everthing else (e.g. to put a spring reverb just on the organ). As mentioned earlier (I think), for the organ, the reverb can be placed before or after the rotary effect. So yeah, the effects capabilities look to be generally quite a bit more versatile than those on the Nord Stage 3 (though the Nord still supports some effects combinations that are unavailable on the Hammond). In fact the overall tweakability of practically every parameter of the board is pretty impressive... including the fact that it looks like the interface presents all those options in a manner that is still highly understandable/usable.

 

* About that "mystery video" early in the thread that was obviously recorded with a live mic in the room (leading some of us to wonder whether we were hearing it through a real Leslie)... it is actually the direct out of the board, with the addition a mic in the room just to pick up the ambient sounds.

 

* It has 4x the memory of the original SK1 (which should make it 128 mb for its non-organ, non-VA-synth sounds). As of now, at least, the sound library is fixed. It includes "higher resolution" (higher sample rate? less compressed?) versions of most if not all the extra voices that are available for download into the SK1.

 

* It uses the same action as the SK1, but in a surprise bit of info (to me), the SK1 action itself was apparently improved a few years ago. I've only played older ones, I'd be curious to know how it changed.

 

* The factory combinations, user combinations, and favorites are all also selectable via MIDI Program Change.

 

* The mono synth sliders/knobs don't send regular MIDI CC, they use NRPN, unfortunately making them more complicated to use to control external sounds.

 

* Although there is a screen that shows what you've assigned to the Favorite buttons, it looks like it shows only 5 at a time (there are 10 Favorite buttons). It will not stay up while you select Favorites, but it can be navigated to quickly.

 

* A cool feature is that, with the shift button, the 10 Favorite buttons can be used to navigate directly to favorite screens, so you don't have to keep menu diving to get to the screens you keep wanting to go to.

 

* Some questions that I still have after reading the manual...

 

... the distinction between combinations and bundles--and how that relates to Favorites--is not entirely clear to me.

 

... there is an editable organ parameter called "matrix level" but I don't know what it does... I'm guessing it is related to leakage/crosstalk.

 

... use of an external board as a second manual could use some more clarification. Specifically:

 

--- I might like to split the SK Pro to have bass guitar on the left portion and drawbar organ on the right, while the lower manual is set to play a piano or whatever. I don't know whether this is possible. If it is, I'm not seeing the distinction between allocating a section to the lower portion of the SK Pro and allocating a section to be played by the external lower manual. There are some references to "Lower - Split" vs. "Lower - Real" but only in the section on zoning, and it's not well explained there, and I can't tell whether or not it's relevant to the scenario I'm describing.

 

--- I might like to use one Favorite button that makes the external board a piano, and another Favorite button that makes the external board a lower organ manual. I'm not sure how (or whether) that can be done. That kind of routing of the external keys is kind of referenced in the section on MIDI templates, but it is unclear as to whether that is the function I need for this (and if it is, whether that assignment is somehow storable as part of a Combination/Favorite).

[AnotherScott]

Two more points of interest...

 

* It can use high trigger on organ when organ is playing alone, though not when organ is split/layered with other sounds. (I don't know whether it sends high triger over MIDI.)

 

* The multi-contact implemetation is switchable between two modes... high trigger, where the multi-contact effect is random, and velocity-based, where you lose the high trigger.

[Pa Gherkin]

I have the same questions about using an external board to play the SK"s voices. If the rotary sim heard in post #3077450 is the internal sim it"s really impressive. Would also like to hear a good demo of the overdrive.

[Moonglow]

...If the rotary sim heard in post #3077450 is the internal sim it"s really impressive.

For sure. Happily surprised to hear this.

[stoken6]

I have the same questions about using an external board to play the SK"s voices.

+2. The ability to pull double-duty is an important part of a stage keyboard - particularly if you want to schlep two boards (one piano, one organ action, say) but not three. This board seems to be very strong as an organ (obviously), pretty good monosynth, and delivers better-than-expected ROMpler capabilities. The AP sounds weak to me, but EP is pretty good. There's a lot to like here...

 

Cheers, Mike.

[AnotherScott]

I was looking over the list of SK Pro Ensemble patches and its waveform list, and comparing to the stock and downloadable Extra Voices for the SK1/SK2/SKX. It's a tricky thing to compare. In some categories, there are a lot more different sounds in the older sets... but, keeping in mind that those instruments did not include editing functions, a lot of these sounds could be edited versions of the same sounds/waveforms (particular effects parameters, different EQ, different layered combinations, etc.) so the lack of those exact sounds in the SK Pro as factory presets does not mean that you might not be able to easily create them. But there are some areas where it does look like the underlying selection is scaled back, probably most notably in the strings. In the downloadable Extra Voices, Hammond had Chamber Strings, Backing Strings, Chamber Strings 2, and Symphonic Strings, which between them seemed to provide a good variety of different size ensembles and numerous articulations (e.g. Marcato, Staccato, Pizzicato, Tremolo, Arco). The variety of selectable string presets on the SK Pro (or waveforms from which to create your own combinations) seems substantially smaller.

 

I suspect that most SK1/SK2/SKX owners are not heavily invested in the Extra Voices, but I thought it was worth noting. If you're thinking of upgrading from one of those models to the new one, yes, most of the stuff seems to be there in some form, but you may want to check to see if any particular favorites are in there. In my case, I was actually pretty fond of some of the stock sounds in the SK1 "wind" section, and I'm glad to see it looks like those have all been maintained in the SK Pro.

[BenWaB3]

I suspect that most SK1/SK2/SKX owners are not heavily invested in the Extra Voices, but I thought it was worth noting. If you're thinking of upgrading from one of those models to the new one, yes, most of the stuff seems to be there in some form, but you may want to check to see if any particular favorites are in there. In my case, I was actually pretty fond of some of the stock sounds in the SK1 "wind" section, and I'm glad to see it looks like those have all been maintained in the SK Pro.

 

I don't have the SK1 anymore but almost all the shortcomings that led me to sell it seem to have been addressed in the Pro. One of the main concerns was how the Rhodes/Wurly sounds were on the new model. The videos shown around 14-15 posts ago plus the supposedly more extensive editing capabilities have me leaning towards (yet again) switching the keyboard lineup. IMO the Hohner sound on the SK1 was really good so that should carry over to the Pro as well. As it seems though, with all new products coming out they always seem to have at least one flaw that drives you nuts. Referring to Another Scott's post about 6 or so back, having the auto pan and delay both in the effects II slot is my particular peeve. At certain times I like to be able to have both going on the Rhodes. On the SK1 the delay was in the reverb section so maybe they'll include one there in the Pro as well.

[AnotherScott]

Referring to Another Scott's post about 6 or so back, having the auto pan and delay both in the effects II slot is my particular peeve. At certain times I like to be able to have both going on the Rhodes.

I think there may be a solution to this. Since I think you can have different effects on each of the 4 sections, you should be able to put the same Rhodes sounds in both the Piano and Ensemble section, layer them, and set the first one to have auto-pan, and the other the one to use delay. If you set the delay parameter to 100% wet, the second sound will only have the delays, and will not audibly duplicate the initial strike.

 

This is similar to a suggestion I made to Jim Alfredson in a facebook post, after he commented that he didn't see a sforzando brass patch. I suggested that he might be able to layer two instances of a brass patch, have one set with a filter/amp envelope that quickly diminishes, while the other starts quiet and gradually fades in the louder/brighter sound which can take over after the first one decays. The possibility of layering two instances of the same sound with different settings (effects, envelopes, whatever) would seem to open up a bunch of possibiliies.

[Kurt W]

 

* It has 4x the memory of the original SK1 (which should make it 128 mb for its non-organ, non-VA-synth sounds). As of now, at least, the sound library is fixed. It includes "higher resolution" (higher sample rate? less compressed?) versions of most if not all the extra voices that are available for download into the SK1.

 

Does this mean that pianos, epianos and all other sounds share a tiny 128 mb in total?

[Al Coda]

I think there may be a solution to this. Since I think you can have different effects on each of the 4 sections, you should be able to put the same Rhodes sounds in both the Piano and Ensemble section, layer them, and set the first one to have auto-pan, and the other the one to use delay. If you set the delay parameter to 100% wet, the second sound will only have the delays, and will not audibly duplicate the initial strike.

 

This is similar to a suggestion I made to Jim Alfredson in a facebook post, after he commented that he didn't see a sforzando brass patch. I suggested that he might be able to layer two instances of a brass patch, have one set with a filter/amp envelope that quickly diminishes, while the other starts quiet and gradually fades in the louder/brighter sound which can take over after the first one decays. The possibility of layering two instances of the same sound with different settings (effects, envelopes, whatever) would seem to open up a bunch of possibiliies.

 

But then, these layered patches will eat twice the polyphony just only to get the FX done as desired. No ?

 

A.C.

[BenWaB3]

Referring to Another Scott's post about 6 or so back, having the auto pan and delay both in the effects II slot is my particular peeve. At certain times I like to be able to have both going on the Rhodes.

I think there may be a solution to this. Since I think you can have different effects on each of the 4 sections, you should be able to put the same Rhodes sounds in both the Piano and Ensemble section, layer them, and set the first one to have auto-pan, and the other the one to use delay. If you set the delay parameter to 100% wet, the second sound will only have the delays, and will not audibly duplicate the initial strike.

 

This is similar to a suggestion I made to Jim Alfredson in a facebook post, after he commented that he didn't see a sforzando brass patch. I suggested that he might be able to layer two instances of a brass patch, have one set with a filter/amp envelope that quickly diminishes, while the other starts quiet and gradually fades in the louder/brighter sound which can take over after the first one decays. The possibility of layering two instances of the same sound with different settings (effects, envelopes, whatever) would seem to open up a bunch of possibiliies.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, Scott. That should work!! Actually I do the same thing for the Rhodes on my Kawai MP6 but just couldn't generate the brainpower to think of it when contemplating the Sk Pro.As to Al's observation: it probably does. Since Rhodes chord voicings usually end up being more sparse than piano ones though it shouldn't become a problem, or at least I hope it wouldn't.

[AnotherScott]

But then, these layered patches will eat twice the polyphony just only to get the FX done as desired. No ?

Yes. But if all you need at the moment is a Rhodes sound (or a 2-layer brass sound, for my other example), you still have 64 polyphony for the that layered sound. (And if you're splitting/layering with an organ or mono synth sound, those don't impact that polyphony.) 64 is tons for a brass sound, and is even plenty for an EP.

 

I actually think concerns about polyphony are often over-rated. Yes, there are environments where it matters. If you're running a 16-sound multi-timbral sequence, polyphony matters. (The SK Pro can't do that anyway.) If you're playing piano on some of the Korgs, it can matter... I played a Kross with max polypyhony of 80, but their pianos can use 4 instances of polyphony per note, which lowered piano polyphony to 20, even before you consider, say, layering the piano with strings (a simple mono string sound would lower that to 16, so you may need to be restrained in your use of the sustain pedal). But on the majority of boards, playing only what your fingers can play themselves, I've rarely run into a situation where polyphony has ever been an issue, even using numerous boards with 64 or even 32.

 

Does this mean that pianos, epianos and all other sounds share a tiny 128 mb in total?

I believe that all non-organ, non mono-synth sounds total 128 mb, yes. Whether that is tiny is a matter of perspective. I think the Roland FA non-VA-synth sound set is 64 mb, not counting its handful of SuperNatural Acoustic tones (though you can add two SRX expansions which can add another 64, or maybe it's another 128, I'm not sure). I believe Kurzweil Artis 7 is 256 mb, of which 128 mb is a piano, everything else is in the other 128 mb. (I chose those models because they have organ engines, though not nearly at the level of the Hammond.) Of course, plenty of clonewheels have no other sounds at all, so they have zero megabytes. ;-)

 

But the real issue is what the quality of the sounds are. To the extent that you're implying that it's not likely to have something approaching a top-tier acoustic piano sound, I'd agree with you. But overall, I think it appears to have a good selection of very usable and (from what I've been able to tell so far) nice sounding "bread and butter" sounds. (128 mb goes farther when you're not trying to have a board cover every sound under the sun, and there's no attempt here to have a workstation-level scope.) Also, the SK Pro has extensive MIDI zoning functions, so you can easily add sounds from something like an iPhone or iPad if need be, much more so than you could with a Nord Electro 6, Roland VR, or Vox Continental. So taken as a whole package, I don't have any inherent issue with this, but I guess we'll know for sure when we get to play the sounds IRL.

[Al Coda]

Yes. But if all you need at the moment is a Rhodes sound (or a 2-layer brass sound, for my other example), you still have 64 polyphony for the that layered sound. (And if you're splitting/layering with an organ or mono synth sound, those don't impact that polyphony.) 64 is tons for a brass sound, and is even plenty for an EP.

 

I actually think concerns about polyphony are often over-rated. Yes, there are environments where it matters.

 

Well,- WHEN a instrument is multitimbral, I´d say polyphony in combination w/ lightning fast voice assign algorithm IS very important !

Don´t forget you´ll use the sustain pedal w/ the layered Rhodes patch too,- and because there are the 4 parts, you might want the rest sooner or later too in addition.

 

A.C.

[AnotherScott]

Well,- WHEN a instrument is multitimbral, I´d say polyphony in combination w/ lightning fast voice assign algorithm IS very important !

Don´t forget you´ll use the sustain pedal w/ the layered Rhodes patch too,- and because there are the 4 parts, you might want the rest sooner or later too in addition.

It's only 4-part multimbral... and only two of those parts have polyphony considerations. (My understanding is that the organ part has its own full polyphony, and mono synth part has its own single voice.) So in terms of its 128-note polyphony, that's for a mere 2-part multi-timbral scenario. However, each of those two parts, in turn, does allow you to split/layer/velocity-switch up to 4 parts. If you choose to layer, then you will use more polyphony. (I also don't know whether there are stereo samples that might use twice the polyphony.)

 

Rhodes by itself would have 128 polyphony. A double layered Rhodes as a second part as I suggested would reduce that to 64. You can turn on the 3rd and 4th parts (organ and mono synth), the EP would still have 64 polyphony. If you want to layer another component inside one of the two Rhodes parts (say, as string layer), polyphony would drop to 42, I think you'd still be fine. With a string layer, that alone would prompt you to lay off the sustain pedal some or, alternatively, possibly program the string sound to not respond to the sustain pedal or to fade out more quickly.

 

I guess I've just played so many boards with polyphony of 64 or less, this just doesn't phase me. ;-) (I also don't run sequences, or any kind of arpeggiation patterns etc., so my polyphony usage is strictly based on what I play with my fingers... and in the case of the SK Pro, it doesn't do those things anyway.)

[dfcas]

Well I was unable to resist the pull and preordered.

[Jim Alfredson]

I'm working on the Deep Dive. I'll have some videos with it as well that are exclusive to this community.

[AnotherScott]

Implementing {multi-contact emulation} over MIDI adds another layer of complication, since for a given key depression on a given MIDI channel, "Note On" (with or without velocity information) is only a single event. I'd be curious to know, on an XK5, if you play a note slowly such that you can hear the mid-point at which additional "drawbar contacts" are made, what happens if you record that MIDI into a DAW, and then send that MIDI back to the XK5. If the DAW only sees it as a single MIDI Note On event, the XK5 won't have the information it needs to fully duplicate that performance on playback.

For anyone else who was curious, the XK5 solves this by providing an option that sends/receives the MIDI data for the different contact points on different MIDI channels. (The SK Pro, not having the third sensor, doesn't have to address this issue since there is only a single Note On/Note Off event per keypress anyway.)

[niacin]

Resurrected this thread from page 8 so it's been a while, but my SKpro-61 arrived on Tuesday. Impressions so far, in brief:

 

Pros: the tonewheel and Leslie sound significantly better and I like the multi-contact implementation. The keys are less tightly sprung (the action is quite close to that on my Vox). For an organist these two make the price of entry worth every cent. Everything else is a bonus. Rhodes, brass, and strings are noticeably better. I never used the SK1 Rhodes but I"d happily use those in the SKpro. The mono synth sounds great, I lost some time happily messing with it, recurring ideas of adding a small RA/VA synth to my rig have gone.

 

Cons: no FX control from the top panel, but you knew that. Boot time is 30 seconds. The pianos might have 4 layers but I can"t hear much tonal change and if I didn"t know they"d been improved I"d actually assume they were the same as the SK1/2.

 

Summary: love it.