From recent questions asked at the shows about how I set up the XK-3 and XK-1 for the demo, here are a few basic tweaks I perform ....
Percussion: Press and hold the percussion switch which will take you to the main edit screen for the percussion. Leave the normal value at 12 but reduce the soft to 1. This will give a very soft but still prominent percussion on the drawbar setting used. Remember that the percussion only triggers on a full note on / note off keystroke i.e. holding a note down and pressing any other keys will not sound the percussion. This is one of the most useful features of hammond Organs that allows you to add expression and accents into your chops and licks.
Vibrato: This is very personal choice but I like to use C3 vib on quite a slow cycle. Press and hold the vibrato button, now take the setting down to 6.10. The result is a slower 'pulse' which I like particularly on slower bluesy numbers on slow Leslie.
Key click: go to Menu then Drawbar then I usually set to B type 1 - Key Click 8 or 9 but try turning the LPF down to around 95 - 100. This takes the edge off the click without reducing its effect in the mix. Also while we are in this menu DO NOT DISMISS the 'mellow' tonewheel setting ! Many think this is the 'cheesy' setting but in actual fact it is a very fact wholesome, fat sound that is great for ballads and blues.
Overdrive: Press and hold the Tube button. Now try various settings for the valve pre amp. I use S UX quite allot which is only utilising one of the valves the 'AU-7' (I think it is a little smoother then the AX-7) Now page up and change the X over to 800 and hear the difference across the keyboard range.
Deeper Left Hand Bass: In the menu, go to Drawbar and page across until you get to the fold-back parameter. It will most likely be set to 'C2' Wind it down to 'C1' and now the 16' drawbar will sound a full octave below note 'C2' instead of playing or folding back to the octave above pitch whilst playing the first octave. Great for deep grooving bass lines ! For a lot of my pre-sets. I set it to 'F1' which still gives the octave up flick effect when playing bottom C to E. Play around with it and you will see what I mean
Internal Leslie: Well I could spend ages here but a basic tweak is to set the fast speed on the horn a little faster than the bass rotor say 383 for the horn and 375 for the bass and the same for slow speeds, say 33 on the bass and a little faster on the horn. This will increase the doppler / spacial effect of the Leslie effect.
I will get a camera on the XK-3c / XK-1 screen ASAP and produce a video podcast taking you through these tweaks and much more.
Don't forget all these settings are remembered in your programs so you can have a mixture of various textures and feels to suit all styles from Theater to Heavy Rock at the touch of a button. !!
PS >>> it would be good to know how many of you rely on and use the RSS feed to keep up to date with our news and how many still prefer the mail-shot newsletter ?
Drop us a line with the subject Mail or RSS if you get a few spare moments: survey@hammondorgan.co.uk
More soon ..... Malc
