Jim Alfredson

No. Strange things like what?

Any Hammond emulation involves compromise. The trade-off for the lack of drawbars is the extremely light weight and small form factor. I still own my XK System and for larger gigs (ie, gigs that involve more money and more "prestige", for lack of a better term), I will still use it. The SK2 is perfect for gigs where the backline is less than optimal and/or I'm flying to the show. At 35 lbs, I can put it in an ATA case, which will add another 20 lbs at most, and check it on any flight for a small fee. With that out of the way, the SK2 arrived today! I've been playing it almost non-stop. My initial thoughts: 1) It sounds far better than the XK3. Better percussion, better chorus/vibrato, better Leslie sim, better key-click. 2) The action is quite different than the XK3. It's going to take me a bit to get used to it. 3) It is so small, but still feels solid. Here's an example I did this afternoon. I took a song that organissimo recorded as a sound-check / mic check / warm-up for our latest CD, muted the real Hammond track, and recorded the SK2 direct. No compression, no EQ, no special effects (except for a bit of reverb to help put the SK2 in the same "space" as the rest of the band). Just direct off the outputs, using the SK2's Leslie sim. http://organissimo.org/pub/mp3s/SK2_001.mp3 I'm really excited about this new instrument. Videos and more to come soon.

Here's a screen shot of how I have my View New Content page set. Notice the magenta highlights over on the left side.

Currently you can ignore signatures but not avatars. There is a third party plug that allows ignoring avatars. I'll look into it to see if it's safe / stable / etc. To ignore signatures, click on your name at the upper right top of the page, you'll see several options. Choose "Manage Ignore Prefs". You can globally ignore signatures by checking the box at the top "Ignore all signatures when reading topics" or you can choose individual member signatures to ignore. You can also ignore individual's posts, messages (private), or chats.

If you want to see the most recent post, click on the icon (usually a star or circle) at the left of the topic title, not on the topic title itself.

When you hit "View New Content" and the page loads, you'll see a menu on the left hand side. Whatever is highlighted in magenta is the option currently in use. It deafults to "Content I have not read yet". Since you made a new post, it assumes you've read it. Pick "Past month" or "Past year" and you'll get threads you've already seen as well as threads with unread replies.

BTW, most browsers these days have built-in spell checking (I know Google Chrome does, which is what I use), so that feature was removed due to redundancy.

Yes, the album above is fantastic. Winwood is an incredible musician and still at the top of his game.

The main reason for the upgrade was because the old version was no longer supported. Keeping on top of security updates is a must in this modern internet-fueled world. I was finally able to re-open the registration system with this new version. The old version had a backdoor hole that allowed spambots to bypass all the security checks and we were getting inundated with fake accounts. That alone is worth the price. Like anything else, when it's new it seems strange but after a week we'll all get used to it.

Yes, that was the one thing I was not happy they took away (the second title lines) but it cleans up the database, which when you have 1.2 million posts is not a small feat, and does lead to a cleaner, more stream-lined look.

Yay! Been worried about you, Volkher. Glad you're doing better.

No, it has not happened yet. They did mention they had a backlog of update requests in the queue, so it appears they haven't gotten to us yet. If you look at the very bottom of the screen on the right, you'll see the version number, which is IP.Board 3.1.4. The newest version is 3.4.0. For a preview of what it looks like, check out he community forum at the Invision website. http://community.invisionpower.com/ Hopefully they'll get around to it today.

I've played an organ about that size... very poorly, I might add. The SK2 is 35lbs. To put that in perspective, the Hammond XK System I've been happily using the last 6+ years is around 150lbs all set up. A real Hammond B3 is around 400 lbs. What an amazing time we live in.

Oops. Sorry. Today. Nov. 8th. Should be around 9am EST but might be a bit later. I assume the board will shut down for a bit. Invision (the software makers) are handling the upgrade.

Tomrrow, Nov 8 2012, 9am EST the board will be upgraded to the latest version. This will induce some changes to the layout (much cleaner, imo) but should not result in any issues otherwise. The board will probably be offline for a short while, no more than one or two hours at the most. Thanks!

I'm purchasing a Hammond SK2 organ soon which will replaced my XK3 / XK System on most of my gigs. I'll be doing a detailed review after posting some first impressions. I'm also getting the XPK-200L bass pedals. I will most likely run it through my Leslie 3300 on most gigs but might do some smaller jobs with the internal Leslie. I will certainly test it through the 3300, with it's internal sim, and with the Neo Instrument Ventilator. More soon!

Yes, we lost everything posted in the last few days, but it's all working again. Whoo hoo! Now the question is whether to upgrade to the lastest version of the Invision forum software. We will lose the secondary topic titles but it is much more streamlined, easier on the eyes, and features tight integration with social media. I think it's worth it. Plus the version we're on is technically unsupported.

Very sad. RIP to a true artist. Great photo by our own Mark Sheldon:

I will look into that but I'm not making any promises. As Chuck said, they are quite expensive. Thanks again to everyone who got on board! Really looking forward to getting this release out there. I think you're going to love the sound, too. I've been working very hard the last four years since 2008's Groovadelphia to refine my humble home studio. I think this recording is my best in terms of engineering. The drums sound fantastic and I'm finally happy with how I captured the Leslie. Guitar is easy.

BTW, we have 24 hours left if anyone wants to get in on the action!

My original plan was to have the new album out by next month but due to not knowing whether this was going to be successful or not (the Kickstarter), I did not book any studio time for mixing / mastering nor did I book the photographer for the cover art. All that will have to wait until I return from my final tour of 2012 with Janiva Magness. I leave tomorrow and will be back Nov 3rd. I now have the studio booked for the week of the 12th. Photo shoot will hopefully be soon after I get back (have to schedule it). Also, our radio promo guy is suggesting not to release it for radio until after the new year. Not sure why (need to talk to him about that). But regardless, I plan to have the CDs in hand by December. And I also plan on sending them to the backers way before we send them to radio. So yes, I hope to have the box sets and the new CD out in time for Christmas. The fees are about 10% (5% from Kickstarter, 5% from Amazon for processing the money).