Jim Alfredson

I recently read in Spirit magazine (the inflight magazine on Southwest flights) that the average grocery store has over 47,000 items in stock. Can you guess what the most purchased item is here in America? Yep, soda. I rarely ever drink the stuff. Especially since it's all corn syrup and artificial dyes. No thanks. Since I'm already on my soapbox, one of the reasons that 1/3rd of American adults are now overweight or obese is because of how much soda we drink. It's literally cheaper than any other drink you can buy at a store. I see mothers giving it to children that are so young they can't even talk or drink without a sippy cup. I think our obsession with it is disgusting. But to the OP, I agree with Rooster that it's still probably cheaper to just buy the crap in bulk. Unless you want to start experimenting with making your own flavors.

Thanks, Mike.

I have one of these: http://cgi.ebay.com/VPI-HW-19-Junior-Turntable-Wireworld-Cable-/230622110311 There's another on eBay for $525.99 but with no cartridge. http://cgi.ebay.com/VPI-HW-19-Jr-VPI-L-M-A-tonearm-/220768145833 I'm not affiliated with any of these sellers, but I did pay a lot more than either of those for mine, brand new. I have a Rega tonearm and a Grado Red cartridge on mine. It's a great sounding turntable.

I don't see anything unethical. Chuck is not offering any incentive for people to write a review, negative or positive. That would be unethical. He didn't ask for anyone to go there and write anything. That would be in poor taste, but not necessarily unethical. As far as we know, all the reviewers own the disc. It would be unethical to write a review (positive or negative) for music you've never heard. There was no coordinated, organized effort to solicit reviews. That would be unethical. So exactly what is unethical? Since I personally know Chuck, is it verboten for me to ever write a positive word about his recordings? Since he hangs out here, no other organissimo member can speak positively of his recordings without there being a conflict? If he mentions a shitty review, we can't respond if we genuinely think the negative review is out of line or if we genuinely love the recording in question? That doesn't make any sense. Y'all are some of the most musically informed jazz fans on the planet. Why not use that for good? Writing reviews of tiny, independent label releases (such as Nessa Records) to hopefully help sales (after all, if these discs don't sell they will not be produced anymore) = good and perfectly ethical Selling the database of member email addresses to various marketing firms that specialize in products for "upper class, intelligent clientele" (yes, I've gotten offers to do just that, many many times for quite a bit of money... but I never have) = bad and unethical See the difference?

Except America. We export ours all around the world. Ever hear Chinese rap? It's as bad as you think.

You can use either one, really. But they are not interchangeable so once you choose you need to stick with that choice. In other words, you cannot use the same 6pin output to power both a 122 and a 147. Yes, the 147 style amps were meant to be used with non-balanced preamps and most would prefer that set-up just because it's easier to wire.

Here's my review that I posted on the Keyboard Magazine forums. I got to play with the Sk1 for about an hour Saturday afternoon. Ok friends, I'm just back from the gig at Fitzgerald's. Scott could not make it out for the gig but he very kindly stopped by the hotel beforehand to give me a personal guided tour of the SK1 and let me play around with it. He did take some video which he said will make it's way onto the Hammond website soon. The short and sweet? Hammond has a winner. In my opinion, it makes the Nord obsolete. Real drawbars (though they are not exactly like the XK series drawbars... more on that later), absolutely fantastic organ engine, great Leslie sim, and the other sounds are very good. Plus it is multi-timbral, meaning you can play the organ and the external sounds at the same time. Ok, now for the long review: First and foremost, it is very compact. And the gig bag (not sure if that's included or an add-on; probably the latter) is really slick. It's a lot like the Nord gig bag and can be used as a backpack. As we all know, it's about 15 lbs. Very lightweight, yet all the controls are very sturdy. And the OS is much like the rest of Hammond's line. The layout is straight forward. It didn't take me hardly any time at all to find my way around. Lots of dedicated buttons for important functions and like the XK3/c if you hold a button down for a few seconds, the LCD automatically switches to that button's related sub-menu for further tweaking. The keyboard itself feels great. Not the same as the XK3/c. More like the XK1, but not exactly the same as that either. It's a Fatar action. I liked it. Very responsive. The extra sounds played well on it, too. It's very nice for electric piano. The organ engine is, according to Scott May, the same as the XK3c with a few important tweaks. The Leslie sim is improved and the chorus/vibrato is from the New B3 MkII. Both sounded very good. The C/V was definitely a step forward in authenticity compared to my XK3. I didn't have a real B3 to compare it to, but to my ears it sounds really good. The percussion sounds much better, too. It's got that nice woody thwack. There are lots of tweakable parameters and tonewheel sets to choose from. I didn't spend much time messing with all that since it sounded so good as is. I did play with the Leslie settings a bit since the stock settings are better for stereo and I had the SK1 connected to my Leslie 2101 bottom cabinet (a killer keyboard amp, btw). You can choose different Leslie models including 122, 147, 31H, & 760. Each sounded different. The 31H model was great. The ramp down of the low rotor was really well done. Single speed Leslies ramp up and down much differently than two-speed Leslies and Hammond really paid attention to that detail. The onboard reverb has it's own dedicated knob and sounded great. Easily tweakable and switchable on or off. The other effects were great, too (including the Crybaby wah-wah sim... more on that in a minute). Overall, the organ engine is top notch. I even put it through the Ventilator (Scott had never heard one). It sounded great but I was able to tweak the onboard sim to sound just as good as the Vent sans overdrive. I gotta be honest: The Vent still holds the crown in terms of the overdrive emulation. The drawbars are very interesting. They are actually sliding potentiometers. If you look closely at the hi-res pic posted earlier in this thread, you can see the little "tracks" of the sliders, like mixer faders (or I guess the Ocean Beach unit). They do not click like regular drawbars; they are perfectly smooth. But they feel really nice. And they look like drawbars, with the numbered "bar" and everything. I think still having the bar lends stability to the whole thing, so they don't feel like mixer faders at all. They feel like drawbars (sans clicking). Ok, onto what I'm sure everyone is wondering about; the other, non-organ sounds. Acoustic Piano: I liked it a lot. There's a lot of different ones; several stereo pianos, stereo with pads, and yes even a true mono piano. I really liked the sound and response. I can't imagine someone not being happy with it in a band context. Is it Ivory quality? No, but it sounds very nice on it's own and I guarantee will cut through the mix on the bandstand. I would leave my Motif rack at home if I had the SK1 piano. It is light-years better than the piano in the Nord Electro2, in my opinion. Rhodes: There are two different Rhodes, with variations of those two sample sets including dry, with panning, with phasing, and with overdrive. The overdrive is (as of yet) not tweakable on the extra voices that use it, something that Scott said he is hoping they'll change in the final version. I preferred the first sample set Rhodes. It reminded me of the VintageCase sound on my Motif ES rack. I would be perfectly happy gigging with this Rhodes sound. Wurlitzer: Scott wanted me to be frank with him about it. He is concerned about everyone's opinion. I think the lower octave is really good. Nice and gnarly when you smack it, full and mellow when you don't. The second octave seemed to respond differently to the same velocity and was not quite as strong. The upper octaves sounded really good. The preset Wurli patch was not as good as just the raw samples I played. Not sure what is changed in the preset, but you can certainly tweak it. As JMcS guessed, playing with the velocity settings helps a lot. Currently there are four velocity settings. 1 seemed to work the best for me. As you go up (2, 3, & 4) it changes the response curve so it's easier to hit full velocity with less force. I would like to see an additional level below 1 for myself. But then again, I didn't get the chance to MIDI up my Privia to the SK1 to see how the non-organ sounds responded. Oh well. Anyway, Scott and I discussed some ideas to make the Wurli better. It's almost there. I would not be opposed to using it on a gig, that's for sure. It is not quite up to par with the Nord, but it is close. The Wurlitzer is one thing Nord really nailed, imo. I also really like the Wurli sound in my Motif ES rack. The Hammond is close; some small tweaks (which may or may not be possible for the end-user right now) is all that's needed. The clavinet sounds are killer. Very extensive including all possible combination of pick-ups. The auto-wah is cool; I'm not a big auto-wah fan but it sounds like it should. The Crybaby wah wah pedal feature, which turns your expression pedal into a wha pedal, is AWESOME! It sounds bad-ass. That was one of my favorite sounds. The keybed of the SK1 feels great playing clav parts, too. The clav is a winner. There are a lot of other sounds on-board. Some are very inspiring, including a very extensive set of accordion sounds, probably the most comprehensive set I've seen in a keyboard. And they sound really really good. The pipe organ is wicked and my brain was spinning with all the possibilities of using those tones in an organ trio setting! In fact Scott had me play a bit of "All The Things You Are" with a neat pipe organ setting that sounded really cool! The Vox and Farfisa sounds are great, too. And there's a patch called "Lucy" which sounds exactly like the intro from Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, which was a Lowrey organ. And another preset called "Telstar", which emulates the Clavioline. Fun stuff! And then there's a really cool feature that is really hard to explain, but it reminds me of a chord organ type feature. Scott took some video of me playing around with it using a saxophone big band section type sound. Again, my wheels were spinning thinking about the possibilities of incorporating it into live performance. There were some cheesy analog-esque lead sounds (not monophonic unfortunately) and some Solina type 70s string sounds (cool but not really my bag) as well. Overall, I'm really impressed. This is an instrument for the gigging musician. I want one. Or two. Or maybe an SK1 for Janiva and an SK2 for organissimo. The non-organ sounds are great. And with the ability to load in other sound sets in the future? Watch out. If they can tweak the Wurli a bit before release, it will be a no-brainer. As it stands now, it's really close to being just about perfect for me.

Soon soon soon. Just waiting on proof-reading. Soon, I promise. The music is killer!

Lay off the moderators. They do what they think is right and Larry even admitted his mistake. And they do it on their own free-time. You think this is an easy job? The issue seems to be resolved, so let's just move on.

The photo was taken somewhere in Grand Rapids; can't remember. It's a drag because shortly after we had that shoot (which cost a fair amount of money), I joined Janiva and then Joe left the band so we never even really got to use it for much.

And it gets better. http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/34/3458.asp

I've been reading this magazine since I was a kid. Kinda proud of this one. http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/newbay/kb_201105/#/14

Corner Record Shop in GR will get it into tip top shape for a reasonable fee!

I bought this receiver for $15 at a Goodwill store about 7 years ago. It never worked and I finally got around to getting it fixed. Listening to Jimmy Smith's "Midnight Special" on it right now. It sounds gorgeous! And looks beautiful, too. They don't make 'em like they used to. I also had my dad's old Sansui AU-5500 repaired, which has been non-working for about 15 years. Haven't had a chance to hook that up yet as I'm enjoying the Marantz too much. When I started having kids, I sold all my stereo gear. Now that they're older, I have the desire to have a good home system again; something the whole family can enjoy.

Looks like I may get to try one when Janiva plays Chicago next week. Hammond Artist Rep Scott May says he'll bring one for me to play with. I'm excited!

Yeah, I really want to get my hands on an SK1. It's basically the perfect instrument for what I'm doing right now (ie, traveling the world and not kickin' bass).