Product: Suzuki XM-1
Price Paid: US $1450
Submitted
12/06/1996
at
05:07am
by
Fabio
Ease of Use
:
8
I think that the presets are not very useful since most of them replicate the original B-3 ,A-100 presets (and they were not intented for R&B!) This is not a problem since all the presets are stored in RAM so you can completely overwrite them. Editing is a little hard since the LCD is small and there's no data entry.But this is not a synth so when you have created your sounds probably you will never need almost any more editing Thanks to the (not really) optional Drawbar module XMc-1 you can change in real time the most important features.
Features
:
9
polyphony is 32 (shared by 3 MIDI channels related to 2 manuals and a pedalboard) It has a built-in leslie simulator entirely programmable and a reverb entirely non-programmable Furthermore it has a distorsion effect controllable via MIDI or by a dedicated rotary knob The most important parameter of the leslie are controllable via MIDI too and it has a dedicated footswitch input for changing speed (or Brake) It has percussion, Key-click, foldback and all that kind of things that let you recreate the magical sound of a B-3. All the parameter are programmable and often go beyond the real B-3 possibility.
Expressiveness/Sounds
:
No Opinion
The sound is pretty good and matched to a good leslie simulator (or better to a REAL leslie) i think it would be almost undistinguishable from a B-3 The 2 major compliants are the distorsion, which is nice but surely not as warm as I like, and the leslie simulator. This one is surely better and more flexible than any other built-in leslie (apart from Voce V-3 that i never heard) but it lacks in amplitude modulation.
Reliability
:
No Opinion
Only the time will tell but it seems to me that this little machine is robust enough and I'll surely use it on a gig Only one comment: there is a cord which connects the XM-1 module with the XMc-1 drawbars. This is a custom cord and if you lose it i think you have to contact Hammond/Suzuki for a replacement
Overall Rating
:
8
I ever wanted a real Hammond clone with drawbars and i think this one is very good I ain't got the opportunity to compare it with Voce V-3 and I think that it's probably better but it's even less affordable. After all I just guessed that the 75% of the "B-3" sound I like so much is due to the old good leslie.
