Every Organ player laments with the same comment: How do I get the B-3 sound without carrying all that weight? Well, you can stop complaining. The XK-3 gives you that classic tone-wheel sound by utilizing 96 Digital Tone Wheels! The new VASE III Sampled Waveform now makes it possible to reproduce all of the characteristics of the vintage Hammond B-3.
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Summary: Finally! My permanent Hammond. Comment: I've owned more Hammonds than I can count. I always thought I had a good reason to sell them at the time, and I was always wrong. I won't make that mistake with the XK-3. It's simply fantastic. Despite having been sent back for repairs within 24 hours of receiving it. And waiting nearly a month to get it back, I love it. My most recent sale of a real Hammond was my 1959 B-3. Yeah, I know. I had my reasons. I then tried a Hammond XB-2, then Ensoniq, Casio, (yes Casio) Nord... Bottom line: If you cut your teeth on a Hammond, with drawbars don't try to play anything else. No matter how good the sound, there is as much going on with those drawbars as any other aspect of the Hammond sound. With the XK-3, it's 95% like PLAYING my old B-3. Since you sit in front of it, not on it, nothing is really quite the same, but... The sound is uncanny. The percussion, perfect. Vibrato, amazing and accurate. The Leslie sim is far more than I thought possible without something spinning. And while no one usually tells you this, but ANY midi keyboard can be the lower manual. Even better, you can use whatever sounds are in the other keyboard, and access the lower manual drawbars at the same time. With some practice, the veocity sensitivity of your other keyboard allows you to pretty much gain control over what comes out of the amps. Either or both! It's far better than buying that vastly over-priced ($2000) lower Hammond manual. (It's a bloody controller! Nothing more!!!) Hammond made a big mistake there. So little, for so much money. And they're probably sitting on tonnage of those lower manuals and stands. Good for them. Greedy buggers that they are! In any case. Buy an XK-3 if: You have 2 G's to spend. You want real Hammond sound and feel. You don't want to lug a Leslie. You feel you need drawbars. I have nothing but good things to say about the Nord Electro, but I missed the drawbars. Other clones are good. (Be honest. Does that drunk at the bar even CARE if you have a real Hammond?)But none have the true Hammond sound because no other drawbar organ has the Hammond logo on it. Like it or not, THAT... is part of the experience. Almost forgot... You can play an XK-3 like it doesn't have all those "parameters". Forget displays and options, and how many time you have to push buttons. I've been playing Hammonds for more than 40 years. I never used pre-sets then and I don't use any now. A fast left hand and the drawbars are all I need. The XK-3 gives the same control, with no knowledge of anything more than playing a 1st generation Hammond.
Sorry for any typos... the XK-3 gets a *5* Customer Rating: Summary: Thank you God for the XK-3 Comment: Up until I bought the XK-3, I was using a Casio VZ1 synthesizer as a controller, midi connected to an Emu B3 rack mount simulator for the organ portion of my stage setup. I then ran them through my Motion Sound KB-R. This arrangement is decent! And, with the VZ1 touch sensitive keys, I could create an excellent "clucking" effect and also a "palming" oriented "whomping" effect.
I then went shopping for a new Organ. The Nord Electro, the Korg CX-3 and the Hammond XK-3 quickly became the final contestants.
Despite some preliminary doubts, I thank God I bought the Hammond XK-3. First of all- Forget the presets! I basically did some keyclick,tonal,reverb and percussion adjustment on each of my new preset settings. I then bypass the internal Leslie and utilize the venerable KB-R. After getting used to the non-touch sensitive keys, I can now only tell you that whether I am recording or on stage.. the sound is incredible! I also now use a Midi connected CME Controller to utilize the lower manual drawbar set and the Xp-100A pedal. I know some other raters don't give much credit to the internal Lesie, But I made some pretty impressive stereo recordings with it. And yes, The Motion Sound works very well with the XK-3.
Customer Rating: Summary: This is it. Comment: Feature descriptions abound, so they won't be repeated here. Comparisons with Korg CX-3, Roland VK-8, even the Hammond XK-2 showed XK-3 to be the best "clonewheel" yet. It has all of the depth, body, and grit of the vintage tonewheel organs along with the ability to model several generations of Hammond organs; you can even similate coil-to-wheel adjustments. While nothing can really take the place of a real Leslie moving real air, the on-board Leslie built into the XK-3 is very good (worlds better than the XK-2's). Take it from someone whose home organ rig is an RT-3 through a 145: If you want true vintage Hammond sound that travels, get the XK-3.
