Jim Alfredson

$3.15 a gallon for regular 87 octane in Lansing today. On my way to buy diapers, I passed two Citgos. One had the $3.15 price, the other had $2.94. I should've stopped, but I figured I read the sign wrong on the first one. Nope. Now everything in town is $3.15 a gallon. How does gas go up 20 cents in less than a few hours? This is insane.

Good to see Lazaro, Mike Scott and his lovely wife, and board member Big Deal at the gig last night! It was certainly a hot one (temps in the upper 90s) but it was a fantastic end to a great tour. Arno was a little drained by the humidity, so we had the opportunity to play some extended minutes as the trio and pulled out some old gems like "Decoder". My hands are aching and I have exactly one day off before another string of 6 gigs in five days! This month has been crazy busy, but that's a good thing. Gotta pay off this new rig!

I've never scoffed at the L-series. I've worked on one and it was a lot like an M-100, which is a spinet model with a dinky one-octave bass pedal set. If you're not concerned about learning the pedals, than a spinet model like the M3, M100, L100, etc. will probably be fine (although they are pretty hard to play left hand bass on as well, considering the keyboard doesn't go down very far). However, if you want to do the "hump", then you need an organ with full-sized pedals. Concerning McDuff having an L series in his basement, I have a Hammond CV in my basement and two M3s and funky Gulbransen organ in my garage. Doesn't mean I play them. The H-100 series can be found cheap sometimes and they have all the features of a B3/C3 etc. but no square-front keys. However, they do have a full 25-note pedal board and internal speakers. Good to practice on. Again, if I were you and I was looking for something to gig with / practice on I would buy a new Hammond XK-1 or XK-3. Leave the old tonewheel consoles at home.

They nailed the chorus/vibrato. In fact, not only did they nail it, but it is tweakable to match your personal taste. Under headphones, when I first got the XK-3, I thought it sounded great. But when I paired it with my 122, something was off. It just sounded... wrong. So I went into the menu system and changed the rate of the chorus (there are four options, each only a few 10ths of a Hz off from each other, but they make a big difference) and voila! It sounds like my B3 chorus now, which is what I'm used to. The other thing they finally did is make it so when you engage the chorus, the high-end of the organ gets brighter. No other clone I've heard does that. But my B3 certainly does! I will hopefully post some tunes soon of me playing the new rig. I think you'll be impressed. I'm telling you this from a man who hauled around a real B3 and Leslie for 10 years and I have the herniated disc in my back to prove it: Buy an XK-1 or XK-3. If you can find a console Hammond (like a C2, CV, BCV, B2, A100, etc.) cheap, then by all means buy it and practice pedals and such on it. But leave it at home. For gigging, use an XK-1 or XK-3. The XK-3 is the "brains" of the XK System, which can be pieced together as your income allows. There is also the XK Pro System, which is a bit cheaper. If you think you want to go that route, then it would probably be better to get the XK-3 now instead of the XK-1. But I'm telling you honestly... save your back. Get an XK-1 or XK-3 and a real Leslie (122 or 147).

Every gig has been a joy! We're at Gull Landing again tonight. Chuck... Lazaro... Mark... anyone else in the area... come on out!

JK, Save up for a Hammond-Suzuki XK-1. Click here for more information. They are brand new, just got a raving review in Keyboard magazine. In summary, it has the same sound generation engine as the XK-3 (which I am now using as part of the XK System and I have retired my B3... I do not miss my B3 at all playing this new digital organ) but less of the bells and whistles. It is light (under 40lbs) so you can gig with it, the onboard Leslie simulator sounds great so all you need is a powered speaker or an amp/speaker combo of some kind, and it sounds like a B3. I think they retail for about $1500. That seems like a lot, but the instrument will serve you well and unlike an M3 (which is a great organ), the XK-1 is lighter, more reliable, and has full bass. Again, I have retired my 1958 Hammond B3 that I gigged with for 10 years, and I'm now using the XK System (based around the XK-3 keyboard... the XK-1 that I'm recommending to you has the exact same sound engine). It weighs 300lbs less than a B3, but you cannot tell the difference. I have it going through a real Leslie (a 1960s 122) but the onboard Leslie simulator on the XK-1 is supposed to be very good. Go to your local Banjo Mart (Guitar Center) and see if you can play one.

I still fail to see the point of bringing this here.

All those who chimed in about losing posts on this thread have been fixed. Hans, your current total is what the database is telling me you have. Not sure what else I can do about it.

buy that new or second hand? does that use the hammond oil? i see the heaviest thing is the bass pedals @ almost 60 lbs I bought it new from Hammond Suzuki. I have an endorsement deal with them, but I did not get it for free. I did, however, get a substantial discount. The pedals are probably the heaviest item, but they actually weigh less than standard B3 pedals. The entire organ, with pedals, weighs about 125lbs. but it breaks down into four pieces: The XK-3 keyboard, which is the brains of the whole unit, the XK base, which includes the second manual, the stand for the XK base, and the pedals. It's very easy to setup and like I said, it's a joy to play. I do not miss my B3 at all.

I just got 31 after Chuck hipped me to this thread last night at the gig. Don't tell my wife.

I wish I could've seen Patton live and met the man. From all the great personal stories and anecdotes Soul Stream has shared, he seems to have been a very gracious and kind man. Happy Birthday, Big John.

I play organ/keys in Root Doctor as well as being the organist in organissimo. I'm a busy man! GregN is the guitarist in Root Doctor.

We haven't recorded that tune. Our discs have all originals on them, with the exception of "Tenderly" and "Peaches En Regalia" on our second album. We have sound samples up on our website (www.organissimo.org) on the music page and there are also sound samples on our CDBaby pages (www.cdbaby.com/organissimo and www.cdbaby.com/organissimo2 ). If you have a high-speed internet connection, we have a video up on Youtube of an original tune of ours performed at the Firefly in Ann Arbor. You can watch that at On this tour, we're playing a lot more standards since Arno is with us. He joins us on a few of our originals that featured tenor on the records (since basically those are the only tunes we have charts for) but otherwise we're playing the classics on this tour.

Yeah, I saw yiz guys names when I was there. We didn't do anything far out, just tried to sneak some of my tunes in and other things I liked. They didn't hate us but it was obvious that Ellington and standards would go over better, and we love those so shifted and had a ball. Like I said, at Gull's Landing we played for ourselves and still took requests. Don't feel bad. Root Doctor sells more because we have a great singer and people can relate easier to the music. So far, on the two gigs, I think organissimo has sold maybe 5 discs. So, whatcha gonna do? We're still having a blast!

Scully is a great guy, but he can be very bullheaded. That's ok... he takes care of business. I have no beefs with him. He does a great service to the music. SS1, I am playing the new Hammond XK system. All digital. The tonewheels are a thing of the past. In all seriousness, it's a wonderful sounding instrument and a joy to play and weighs 300lbs less than a B3.

This is kind of pointless. I'm not sure why we need to bring another board's dirty laundry over here. I've banned people from here, too, with some controversy. Again, everybody is entitled to their opinion. Kevin doesn't like Ricci. Chris doesn't like Lois. So what? I'm sure there are folks on the other boards that don't like me. You can't please everyone all the time. Good thing we have choices. Let's move on.

Deal!

Should be worked out. Time to change the sig.

Just to clarify: When I said I was having trouble recounting posts, that was for individual member posts, which is a server-intensive process and with almost 500,000 posts, takes quite awhile. The browser window kept timing out before the operation completes, which effectively terminates the query and the process stops. If I could find a way for the browser not to time out, I could compelte it in one fell swoop. As is, I have to manually do it to recount individual posts. The overall board posts, however, is much easier and quicker to determine and that has been reset many times. Again, no posts were lost in the database error, but it effectively set your post counts back to June/July 2005 levels, since your post count number is stored in the part of the database that was lost and had to be restored from the June/July 2005 backup. In other words, all your posts are there, but they need to be recounted and your post count rebuilt, which there is a query for, but that query suffers from timing out when I try to run it on all members at once.

Jim, I really don't care about my total. When I brought it up it was in relation to the total board statistics. The board statistics have been reset many times (ie, posts recounted, last member joined reset, total users online at once reset (although that probably needs to be done again, since 311 is mighty high). So I believe our post count is accurate.

Hmmm.... I'm trying to run the query from the admin panel to recount posts, but it keeps timing out after only getting through member 20 (of over 1300). So... if your post count is messed up and you'd like me to manually run the query, let me know. In the meantime, I'm going to try and see if I can get this thing to work without timing out. Chuck, is your post count better now? You are member 10, so the query should've run on you.

Joe and I just watched the DVD last night. We were rolling on the floor. I'll begin by posting a quote from the Muskegon Chronicle that Uncle Skid sent me: On the DVD they pan to the audience a few times and the poor kids are just bored out of their minds, waiting for Train. Eventually we won them over and actually had some asking for one more after our set. But they really didn't know what to think of us. It's not their fault... the state of music education in this country is so pitiful it's amazing that people even come to concerts at all anymore. Back in the day you'd have Miles with the Dead with Santana with Richie Havens with Led Zepplin with Weather Report, etc. Now it's "a jazz/funk group opening for a rock band?!? WTF?!?!"

Does this include the stuff "dropped" a couple of months back? I know I "lost" about 3000 in my tally. No posts were lost in the database problem. Your tally probably lost a bunch of posts due to you deleting posts over the years (since when you delete a post, your post count doesn't reflect that change). That combined with the need to recount the individual post tallies most likely accounts for the "lost" posts.

I don't know if whomever named the record was doing so as a tribue to Young. "Double Exposure" is a relatively cliche phrase and they probably named it without even knowing of the Muse date. Ludwig has been around a long time and is a very solid, funky, and grooving player. Does he do anything different from the majority of cats around in the 60s? No, but what he does is genuine since that's the era that he came up in. And he does it with skill and soul. I need to create a seperate part of the forum for organ-related discussions. If we're going to have a seperate forum for the "funny rat" discussions, then we need an Organ Forum!!!

Around here, $2000-$3000. So much for the idea of "renewing our vows". Chuck, that's for the masses that want "Mustang Sally" at their wedding. For you, we'd play for some vino and food!