Hammond XK-5 Organ

The HAMMOND B-3 organ and its siblings such as the C-3 and A-100 have been the single most influential keyboard instruments in musical history, perhaps apart from the acoustic piano. When paired with the spinning Leslie speaker, the HAMMOND's sonic versatility defined the electrified keyboard sound of genres from rock to soul to Gospel to jazz. This sound is as sought after today as ever. With the XK-5 Hammond is proud to announce that they've closed the final millimeters of the realism gap—in terms of both sound and feel—in a form factor that's far more portable and affordable than a vintage Hammond organ. Four full sets of Harmonic Drawbars plus pedal drawbars, just like on original Hammond console organs including the B-3. 12 additional virtual tone wheels are devoted to harmonically complex pedal tones (i.e. more than just 16' and 8' sine waves), as found on Hammonds beginning in 1945. Custom tone wheel profiles available via download. Our best-ever Digital Leslie effect. Anything else is just a "rotary simulator." Continuously variable Digital Leslie speed if desired. Dedicated octave shift / transpose buttons. Improved DSP-based overdrive complemented by vacuum tube preamp. Improved vibrato-chorus. Dedicated on/off buttons and amount knobs for reverb, overdrive, and assignable multi-FX. Lower B drawbars can alternately control 9 MIDI CC messages for external gear. Left and right 1/4" outs can be used at the same time as Leslie output, for running the XK-5 through a real Leslie in parallel to stationary speakers, a subwoofer, or house P.A. More key-triggering modes for pedal-to-lower coupler (Manual Bass function). Firmware updatable via USB flash drive or directly from computer. Crisp new OLED display is more readable under different lighting conditions Hybrid Multiple Key Contact System On classic Hammonds pressing a key closes nine mechanical contacts: one for each drawbar. Your ears usually hear the multiple harmonics as one note. Depress a key slowly, however, and you can hear the harmonics come in at slightly different times. Normal playing created a subtle "slop" between otherwise crisp attacks, and the more drawbars you pull out, the more of an almost subliminal but chewy and soulful character it impacts to the sound. One perhaps feels this more than hears it, but seasoned players certainly notice its absence. All-New Sound Engine The XK-5 employs new proprietary technology to recreate Hammond's storied tone wheel generator with unprecedented accuracy and flexibility. Tone wheels were spinning discs on shafts, each with its own pickup pointing at the edge. The pattern of "teeth" cut into the edge of the wheel and its rotational speed determined the pitch. Modeling and sampling are combined in an exclusive process to capture the frequencies of all 91 tone wheels found in the original organs, not to mention other important sonic details such as key click, harmonic percussion, vibrato-chorus, and more. Advanced Modeling Tone wheel generators have become like rare violins or classic cars: Even though Hammond originally calibrated all instruments that left the factory to sound identical, no two are exactly alike after decades of use. So they've extended the programmability of both the overall generator characteristics (such as leakage and cross-talk between pickups) and individual tone wheel behavior (such as the purity of the sine wave) to almost ludicrous depths. In addition to letting you perfectly duplicate different conditions of Hammonds—from showroom-new to road-abused if that's what you're going for—there's the ability to recreate individual organs right down to the model, year, and serial number! Presets will capture the exact tonal qualities of famous artists' instruments, from jazz great Dr. Lonnie Smith to Chuck Leavell (The Rolling Stones) to Gregg Rolie (Santana, Journey) and more. Virtual Matching Transformer: An often overlooked subtlety of the Hammond sound was that the tone wheels generated tiny voltages that needed to be stepped up, and you could be "drawing on" some of the same wheels at the same time by playing similar notes with similar drawbar settings on both manuals. All signals from the upper, lower, and pedal manuals passed through a matching transformer that was intended to even things out before the signal moved on to the preamp and vibrato-chorus scanner. The transformer could "remember" some of its saturation based on how hard it had been working previously, thus affecting new notes played. Physicists call this hysteresis. Musically speaking, it affects how much "volume robbing" you hear and adds to what Hammond aficionados think of as the "breathing" quality of the organ. In the XK-5, the matching transformer and its place in the signal chain is modeled precisely, and the saturation and hysteresis amounts are adjustable from barely-there to over-the-top. Please note, if you plan on attaching a Hammond XK-5 to the Hammond Model A-3 spindle stand you must use the Hammond Model A3 lower manual. The Hammond XLK-5 lower manual is not compatible with the Model A-3 spindle stand.