Hammond-Suzuki XB-1

no problem

far enough for a budget Hammond

very satisfacrtory as for the price. Not a match for hte real thing but whoever thought it would be - must be an idiot. This is just a $700 HAMMOND -it must not be ideal.

good and heavy battle gear

I strongly advise for beginner hammond players - not for experts and megallomaniacs - but this is a regular kind of keyboard if you know what I mean.

Appaling!-The drawbars are situated right over the distortion wheel, the pitch bend wheel, (PITCH BEND??? -On a Hammond???) the percussion and leslie buttons so that every time you pull out the drawbars for more volume, you end up also rolling down the distortion and pitch bend whilst turning on the percussion switches. And the cherry on top is the master volume control.....situated on the far ...RIGHT!!!!! Editing sounds is fiddly and annoying with endless badly marked button pressing. The action is NOTHING like a real Hammond. -It feels plasticy and cheap. The drawbars are too stiff. The original presets sound like a digital version of Reginal Dixon.

No problems with polyphony.-I do plenty of 'leaning' and nothing dissapeared. It has reverb and chorus. They are both awful. The Leslie simulator is the worst I've ever heard. -Sounding like a crap phaser. Luckily, it has a 9 (or is it 11) pin socket for the real thing. The reverbs are digital and bathroomy. I am not a fan of chorus anyway. It does have touch sensitive keys. (WHY???) Midi? -I couldn't care less. -It's supposed to be a Hammond. It has two outputs -left and right but when only using the mono out, the 'Leslie' effect becomes a really crap tremelo effect. (Worse than the already crap phaser.

The worst thing about this terrible instrument is the sound of it. -It is IMPOSSIBLE to recreate ANY of the sounds of an L100. Or a B/C3. Or even a T series. The drawbars sound like different octaves of casio flute. The distortion sounds as unvalvey, cheap and un-subtle as Def Leppard trapped in an amstrad. (??) Did I mention the Leslie effect? What types of music does it work well for? -Crap music. Oh yes, one thing I forgot to mention earlier: The drawbars DON'T fade to silence!!!! -As you slide a drawbar out from silence, it jumps up to 1. Does it react to your playing? -Not as much as I react to it, kicking, screaming, setting fire to things.

I have had to put up with these turding 'instruments' for two tours. Both hire models have been totally unreliable. -The 1st one got stuck on a chord. -When I released my hands the chord carried on until I turned the machine off. -Most embarrassing! (Luckily the manager got me a Fender Rhodes for the rest of the tour -HOORAY!!!) Then, recently I was dismayed to find that another had been hired for a 3 week tour of America. It had no memory. -Each time the power was turned off, it would assume that I wanted to use presets instead of drawbars, percussion on full, no distortion (Which although rubbish is still better than clean!) and chorus. Sometimes it would even forget what it was supposed to be doing when the power was turned on.

If I dealt with the company, it would be to congratulate them on what a piece of sh*t they've made. Then I would punch the manager in the face. Then I would set fire to him.

If I owned one and if it were stolen, I would have a party. Selling this keyboard to someone would be a very cruel thing to do. I've been playing keyboards for 20 years or so and I've owned many Hammond L100s. They are well worth the hassle of lugging around. My L100 is everything that the xb1 isn't. For the price of an XB1, you could get an old L100 AND a van AND a pint for whoever has to help carry it into the venue!! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, DO NOT BUY AN XB1. And Suzuki- stick to motorbikes.

The XB-1 has by far the most realistic Hammond sound I've heard, better than the Roland, Oberheim, and any other I've tried. The dual Leslie simulators are great sounding, esp. when out of sync with each other in stereo, but I've recently added a MotionSound rotating speaker, which sounds even better. The only problems I've had were with the reverb unit, and occatisionally the program display screen hiccups. Killer overdrive (better than any on the market for that full-on Jon Lord sound). Overall, a great unit.

As the XB-1 hasn't been too long on the market i think i have version 1 of the software. Very easy to use if you have used a real Hammond Organ - all vital controls - drawbars, Vibrato/Chorus 1-2-3 is on the left panel. Better than Roland VK-7, which only has a vibrato on-off button. It's nice to have pots for reverb and overdrive. Using patches & programming involves the usual hassle with menus but it's fairly simple - i did some sound-customing after a glance in the manual in a few minutes.

The polyphony is 32-voice, i think - any way it's enough for (me) for live playing. The keyboard action is ok, but maybe the VK-7 is a little better (only used on two gigs a VK-7). There is a onboard digital reverb with room, hall and church simulations - lacks spring reverb simulation, which would be nice. Reverb amount is easily set by a pot, but can be programmed in patch. There's a digital leslie simulation (by leslie. Also the typical Hammond vibrato/chorus are onboard. The keyboard is both velocity and pressure sensitive (if you want to use the XB-1 as a mother keyboard). Thank god, the internal sounds doesn't response to velocity or expression, except for the percussion section (which of course by default is turned off). Anyone who wishes velocity on a Hammond should stick to synths.

The sounds are very realistic - as on the Roland VK-7. The big difference seems to be, that the factory presets on the VK are more on the rock side, while the XB-1 has "Instant Jimmy Smith" -jazzsounds. The leslie simulation sounds good and is programmable, the vibrato/chorus sounds better than anything i heard (including VK-7. A nice feature is that there is two tuning modes - E tempered and B3-type. Is any other Hammond clone faithful to the tuning (scale)of a B3, which apparently is not the same as a standard synth-tuning?

Well, it's certainly much more reliable than my old L100 generator organ...

I have no experience of the customer support

I've been playing (with some breaks) for about 25 years. Since the first italian (cheap)organs in my teens i've always loved the Hammond sound. However i don't want to carry any extra load. Now I can get the sound without breaking my back. I'd like to see a spring reverb simulation and a possibility to break the leslie simulation with the foot control. Of course i wish it had two manuals, but then it probably would be too expensive for me. I compared the XB-1 to the VK-7, which is more expensive. I would probably have bought the XB even if the VK would have the same price. Unfortunately the Oberheim 32 is not available in Finland. The old Korg cx-3 is much is not worth the sums they ask for them i Finland 4000-5000 fim (800-900 US$)- it has one serious drawback - it lacks the vibrato/chorus effects.