Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Best organ keyboard?

Hey folks! I'm posting this thread here, and not in the organ section because;

Digital Pianos - Synths & Keyboards (427 viewing)
Organs - Electronic (B3 etc.), Pipe & Theatre (3 viewing)

If it's not okay that this thread is in this forum, feel free to move it to the organ section.

Anyway, here's my situation:
I'm a 16 year old boy playing mostly boogie woogie and blues, but also a little bit of funk and jazz. I recently ordered a Yamaha Motif XF8, but it was a major fail because of several reasons:

- Too advanced for me
- Horrible sounds for my style of playing
- Keybed not suited at all for organ
- Paying for 2000 sounds I'll never use
- Too heavy
- I like to sit down and start playing quickly, not possible with this monster

So I called my seller, and I decided to switch it to a Nord Piano. I decided to get the Nord Piano because of;

- Simple interface, perfect for me
- Perfect sounds for my style of playing
- No unneccessary sounds I'll never use
- Light and sexy red

Anyway, when I play I mostly just use the Piano sounds, and sometimes the organ, but because of horrible keybeds on my keyboards which was never suited for the organ, I never use the organs either actually. Therefore my plan was to get a DP dedicated to ap/ep/clavinet sounds (the NP88 obviously) and get a keyboard suited for organ later with a proper keybed.

So my question is; what keyboard is the best keyboard for organ sounds in your opinion. I'm thinking hammond sounds, not church organs. My budget will probably be 900-2700$. I'm looking for playability (keybed most importantly), drawbars, sound and lightness.

The options I've come up with so far are:

- Nord Electro 3
- Hammond XK1
- Roland VK-8

What are your opinion about these? Do you have any other suggestions? There's no hurry, I won't be buying this before late summer most likely.

Let me know if I forgot to put in some info.

Thanks for your time!

Cheers

Electro 3.

The waterfall action is arguably too light for serious AP playing, but for everything else it's the perfect gigging board.

Oh, and don't forget the awesome gig bag with the cycling-friendly back straps!

James
x

I can't comment on the VK series but I have owned a Hammond XK-1, and currently own an Electro 3.

Out of these two, the XK-1 wins for straightforward organ playing. The drawbars make a huge difference if you're a player who likes to shape the sound as you play. Some people can manipulate the Nord's "drawbuttons" with ease - I am not one of those.

Sound is a very personal thing. The Electro 3 has a full-bodied sound with a little more bite in the top octave. It doesn't quite capture that electromechanical grind and zing, but if you're not a purist that shouldn't matter too much. The Electro is modeled, whereas the Hammond is sampled. This gives the Hammond a very slight advantage in authenticity of tone, but it also never quite shakes off its digital presence, and lacks that visceral kick as you head for top C.

The Electro, in 61-key form, is very trim and light. The Hammond weighs twice as much and is physically bigger. But both are within sane bounds for portability. The Hammond's bigger brother (XK-3c) is quite a bit heavier still, but gives you a tube preamp which, according to users, adds a lot of warmth and muscle to the sound.

The surprise contender here is the new Studiologic (Fatar) Numa Organ. I played one recently for a very short while, and I was impressed. It's lighter than the Hammonds, has drawbars and uses the KeyB engine. It sounds quite a bit more authentic than both the Electro and the XK-1 and also sports a better Leslie sim. The only downside seems to be that the EQ is weak in the bass area - I don't know how much adjustment there is, or whether it was a fault specific to the one I played. And speaking of faults, it's an untested product and no-one knows how problematic it's likely to be over the long term. Also it's rather expensive for what it is.

The biggest bang for the buck out of these three has to be the Electro. The addition of excellent APs and EPs plus a range of effects and sample capability - and practically no menu-diving - means that it can cover most vintage keyboard bases. For strictly organ use, I'd probably pick the Numa - as long as I had $2,000 to burn on a one-trick pony.

One other possibility would be to get a Nord Stage 2 (88) instead of a Nord Piano. Unlike most weighted actions, Nord's actually seems quite good for organ too (at least based on the Stage EX). The Stage 2 would give you everything in the Nord Piano (plus a new piano feature, selectable release), as well as everything in an Electro 3, and quite a bit more. A Nord Stage 2 would cost less than buying the combination of a Nord Piano and an Electro 3, and would give you a lot more capability.

If for whatever reason that doesn't work for you...

... the Electro 3 would be the lightest, and has additional non-organ features you may find useful

... the Hammond has real drawbars and more ways to tweak the organ sound to your taste, and it's less expensive, but weighs double the E3

I haven't played the Numa organ that was mentioned, but it is the lightest that has real drawbars.

Used Hammond organs are available. Real ones made in the 1950's with vacuum tubes. They are very heavy and take at least two people to move. Here in California I see a few for sale most of the time. prices are all over that map. I got a defective one for $50 and I've seen good ones in you budget range.

I forgot to mention that the keybed on both the Hammond and Electro work very well for organ (haven't spent long enough on the Numa to comment). When playing organ, the Electro triggers early in the key travel and so feels "right". The XK-1 feels quite like a traditional Hammond.

One thing I noticed with the B4000 clonewheel in my Plugiator module is that it seems to use the velocity sensors in the controller keyboard to trigger the top drawbar or the percussion slightly before the rest of the sound, so as to try to emulate a buss bar's staggered contacts. The Electro doesn't do that, and I don't recall that happening with the XK either.

voxpops, I wasn't aware that the Hammond boards use sampling rather than modelling. I wonder how this is achieved given the adjustable drawbars - surely they don't sample every possible drawbar combination, do they?

Regarding the Electro3, I have been experimenting with the different AP sounds over the past few days. It's good fun, but a rather time consuming process - uploading/downloading the 'large' sized patches takes several minutes (at least, it does on this little Dell netbook).

Cheers,
James
x

They sample the 96 underlying tones that are available to make up each note in any drawbar registration.

i.e. -- with just the 8' drawbar out, a real Hammond can generate 61 possible raw tones; the 4' drawbar adds another 12, etc. There are a total of 96 possible tones (or, looked at from another perspective, there are 96 physical tonewheels inside a real B3). Each time you adjust a single drawbar, for a given note, you are adjusting the level of one of those 96 tones. So just like an old tonewheel organ, the Hammond clones allow you to use the drawbars to recombine a fixed set of 96 tones in different combinations and at different levels to generate all the different possible organ tones.

(As an aside... wikipedia says that only 91 of the 96 physical tonewheels actually generated sound. But Hammond's lit refers to "96 digital tonewheels.")

See anotherscott's excellent explanation above. The drawbars mix the underlying virtual tonewheel samples proportionately according to their position. They don't have separate samples for every combination.


No instant gratification there! It would be great if the Nord Sound Manager had a preview function.

XS has terrible sounds...

yeah,for sure.

anotherscott, many thanks for the excellent explanation - what a great forum this is!

voxpops, I see you're using the Bosie sample on your Electro3 - I gave it a quick try on my new 73 the other day, really lovely open sound. I swapped it out to try the other pianos, but it's a little awkward doing proper A-B comparisons with the limited 180mb partition. As fun as the Melotron stuff is, I think I'd prefer to use that memory to store another decent piano patch - especially given the time taken to upload/download samples. Those XL-sized patches must take forever to transfer to the NP88...

Also, don't you find it odd that the Wurly is stored in a separate category to the other other EPs, even though there's (currently) only one sound that can be used. Man, it'd be great if Nord made an aggressively voiced Wurly patch available...or even a Pianet.

Cheers,
James
x

I'd go for the Nord Electro 3. In fact, I may add an NE3 later in the year for organ/synth playing. I know I'm always talking up Nord, but as a relative newcomer to the brand, it's such a departure from the rest of the brands, and they've just got such a usable, playable vibe. All of their products kick a$$!

I transferred both the large Bosie and the small Studio 2 (and dumped the harpsichord). These two pianos have very different characters and complement each other nicely. I suppose one could make a small sample of each of the pianos and load them into the Sample section on the Electro to do a side-by-side test - quite a bit of work, though.

Yes, I don't really have a need for Mellotrons etc., but I do find some of the synth pads available for download quite good. Lead synths are problematic due to lack of pitchbend/modulation control.

I suppose that Nord has made very sure that the Electro 3 doesn't cut into their new Stage 2 sales.



Yes, the Wurli seems a little orphaned. Of course, you can tweak it a lot by using the amp modeling - and get it to sound very aggressive. As a result, I don't think it necessarily needs voicing differently (the original was less "voiceable" than the Rhodes), but I would like the option of a larger sample with more layers/dynamics. I suppose, since one is likely to use different effects from the Rhodes on the Wurli, it makes sense to give it its own category.

I love the idea of having a Pianet! I think I read somewhere that a user was creating a sample to load into the sample bank. Whether he/she'll make it available for download, I don't know.

I just played a gig yesterday on my NP88 and used the Wurly most of the time. I tweaked to get a real 'raunchy' bite, and man does that Wurly sound good. Those compression amp models are great and the effects tuning really gives you a lot of flexibility.

I don't think it was as calculated as you make that sound, considering that the E3 has been out for almost two years and the S2 has just started to ship. The focus of the Electro has always been replication of electro-mechanical keyboards which, themselves, did not have pitch bend or mod controls.

You may be right, but I would imagine individual keyboards are planned well in advance, and that they fit well into the overall range - existing or anticipated.

I agree about the original focus of the Electro, but with the E3 that has shifted a little. The ability to record, load and play different samples is a new departure. The fact that Nord themselves supplied a wide variety of samples from their own synths has given the E3 a wider potential beyond simply vintage keys - but with serious limitations. You just can't play those synth patches with expression (even via midi), and you can't play more than one sound at a time (even via midi) - cue the Stage 2...

I agree, that's what the Stage 2 is for. I just don't think that necessarily means they left the features out of the E3 in order to not impact S2 sales. For one thing, that would imply that they could add pitch bend, mod wheel, and multitimbral capabilities to the E3 without raising its manufacturing cost, and I really doubt that's the case.

Well, in the end, only Nord knows their own strategy, and I doubt they're going to tell the likes of us!

Thanks for all the replies folks!

@voxpops:

It seems like it's pretty split here for me...I got the AP/EP sounds I need on my upcoming NP88, so I don't really know how useful those will be on the NE. At the same time I really like the weight of the board and the thought of matching my NP. The drawbuttons probably aren't as good as real drawbars, but they're probably more than good enough for me since I'm a hammond noob.

The Hammond seems nice because it's cheaper (I don't pay for something I don't need) and the sound is more like the real thing. But they don't sell it here in Norway it seems, I'll have to ship it from abroad which I don't like at all.

"This gives the Hammond a very slight advantage in authenticity of tone, but it also never quite shakes off its digital presence, and lacks that visceral kick as you head for top C"

This means that the NE can actually be more brutal (although, a little less realistic I suppose) than the Hammond?



Playing Boogie Woogie on the XF is a terrible project.



Oh how I'd love to have a real Hammond, but they're too impractical and heavy, as well as too expensive. 10000$ is a normal price here, hah. Also I want to take it to band practise and stuff, I really don't wanna rent a movingcar everytime.

Cheers

U.S. prices:
Nord Piano $2,699 + Electro 3 $1,999 = $4,698
Nord Stage 2 = $4,199

For $500 less, musically, the Stage 2 does everything the more expensive combination does, and a whole lot more (selectable release for pianos, improved C2 rather than C1 based organ, synth functions, more sample RAM, aftertouch, pitch stick, mod wheel, splits and layers, better patch selection functionality, MIDI control functions, and more).

Although you gain many advantages that way, there are some functional trade-offs, since having two separate keyboards also has some benefits:

1. you have a backup at a gig if one fails

2. you can easily allow your right hand part on one board to cross your left hand part on the other, without worrying about running out of keys or needing to set up splits and octave transpositions in advance

3. you can quickly go back and forth between the sounds, each over its full keyboard length, without having to push a button to change a preset

4. in general, it is better to play organ on a less weighted keyboard than what you use for piano. However, in this particular case, I'm not certain that organ plays better on an E3 than on a weighted Stage. The Nord weighted action (at least the EX that I played) is surprisingly good for organ, and the E3, while good, is not quite a first rate organ action itself.

So my inclination would be to get the Stage 2, and if those other advantages are important to you, put the $500 savings toward a different second board completely.

This is key: The MIDI functions of the Stage 2 allow you to easily play one of its sounds on its own keyboard while playing another of its sounds from another keyboard. So even if you don't care about anything the Electro 3 offers except organ, you are still better off using a Stage 2 and some other keyboard rather than adding an E3 to a Nord Piano, because the organ sound in the Stage 2 is slightly improved over that in the E3. Simply toss any keyboard above the Nord Stage 2, use it to drive the organ sound, and you'll have something better than an E3. You might find you use that second keyboard a lot... or you might find that you prefer using the Stage 2 keyboard even for organ, and may only go to the second keyboard occasionally, mostly just wanting the comfort of "knowing it's there" if you need it for purposes 1, 2, or 3 above.

For a second 61-note keyboard at low cost, new, you could look at the E-Mu Longboard (under $500, so actually saves you money), Yamaha MM6, Roland Juno-DI, Korg PS60, or even a Korg Microstation if you are okay with the mini-keys, which are surprisingly playable. Or you can look for something used. (Another possibility would be to get a soundless MIDI controller, but then you wouldn't have the first listed benefit of having a backup sound source at a gig.)