Photo: Mark Ewing Hammond's 'New B3' was the best-ever digital emulation of an electro-mechanical organ, but at over 15,000 pounds, it didn't come cheap. Fortunately, the XK3 puts the New B3's sound engine into a much more affordable package. Two years ago, Hammond-Suzuki introduced the 'New B3' organ, which proved to offer the closest ever digital reproduction of the original Hammond B3 organ's sonic and performance characteristics (). Casio Cv 31 Download Firefox. Naturally, there is a lot of very clever digital technology involved in the New B3, but this is combined with some relatively crude mechanical switching techniques which were derived directly from the original Hammond keyboard design dating back nearly 80 years!

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This rather bizarre combination of old and new technologies was required because no other way could be found of replicating the unique multi-contact switching action and contact-click characteristics of the original. These factors have a profound effect on playing technique and are essential to reproducing the character of this fantastic keyboard instrument. The New B3 has been a success, and was widely acclaimed on its release by B3 aficionados including the late Jimmy Smith. It achieved what many attempts — by Hammond themselves as well as other manufacturers — failed to do, which is to accurately recreate the original B3's characteristics. However, because of the way it has to be made, the New B3 is inherently a very expensive instrument — £15,000 pounds in the UK. So although every keyboard player needing that classic organ sound would undoubtedly want one, it is priced well beyond the means of many. It is also very large, and, although a lot lighter than the original B3 and its stablemates, still a bit of a beast to be lugging around to gigs in the back of a car.

Enter the new Hammond XK3, which was launched towards the end of last year. This is an all-new single-manual performance organ following on from the well-known XB-series keyboards, but the XK3 is particularly significant because it embodies all of the sophisticated digital tone-generating technology of the New B3. Audiffex Gallien Krueger Amplification 2 Pro Serial here. However, instead of the complex, expensive and bulky multi-contact keyboard design of the New B3, the XK3 controls the sound-generating electronics with a much simpler standard MIDI keyboard design, and the organ is housed in a more easily portable package. So if the playing characteristics have been compromised slightly from a purist's point of view, the result is a greatly reduced price and a far more convenient package for the gigging musician.

However, from a sound point of view, this new keyboard has to be the best-sounding single-manual Hammond yet, and by quite some margin. For the intricate details of the digital technology I would recommend reading the earlier review of the New B3, since the underlying VASE digital technology is identical. To briefly recap, though, the system digitally emulates two complete sets of 96 independent tonewheels (to provide independent upper and lower keyboard configurations), complete with controllable amounts of 'leakage' (crosstalk) and different settings for foldback (the duplicated notes at each end of the keyboard which play an important part in the characteristic Hammond sound). The rear panel of the XK3 (shown here still attached to the XKL3 dual-manual expander underneath) features the MIDI I/O sockets, the Compact Flash slot for data and patch storage, and the connections for a standard footswitch, an expression pedal, and the traditional Hammond EXP100 pedal. In addition to the standard stereo line out and headphone jacks, there are also send and return connections for use with outboard effects, as well as the traditional 11-pin Leslie connector. The XK3's internal valve can be seen glowing away through the grille on the right. Photo: Mark Ewing Instead of switching the individual outputs through multi-contacts below each key, the XK3 employs a much cheaper digital switching arrangement, coupled to a sophisticated and configurable key-click generator to create something close to the multi-contact glitching of a real tonewheel organ.

Furthermore, this 'standard' keyboard incorporates note velocity facilities to control external keyboards or sound generators via MIDI. The keyboard is a traditional 'waterfall' design with flat-fronted keys, and has the familiar reverse-coloured preset keys in the bottom octave — although these are not the heavy latching switches of traditional console Hammonds (or the New B3, for that matter). While the New B3 was designed for use with the XB122 Leslie and its integral valve power amplifier, the XK3 has a clever valve preamp built in to provide genuine tube-amp overdrive and distortion effects. In fact, the valve preamp is configured as a dual-band affair to ensure the harmonic clarity and detail is retained even when being heavily overdriven. The XK3 also employs the same DSP-based scanner-vibrato system as the New B3 organ to provide the complex chorus and vibrato effects unique to tonewheel Hammonds, but takes this signal processing a step further by also incorporating a DSP-based reverb and Leslie simulation as well.