SOUND
The XK-3C is all about organ — unlike the XK-1, which has a handful of piano, EP, Clav, and synth sounds, the only non-organ sounds here are a couple of synth basses you can swap in for the pedal part. As on the XK-3, full polyphony means you can have all keys down and not miss a note, and the three polytimbral parts correspond to the upper manual, lower manual, and bass pedals on a real B-3.
The sound engine uses a separate sample for each tonewheel frequency, and if anyone insists that modeling is inherently superior to sampling for this job, it’s because they haven’t played an XK-3C. Good and bad samples exist; so do good and bad models. These are good samples. Using single drawbars, then combinations, I played every interval in every key and octave, then various chords. I did this with and without Leslie simulation through studio monitors, headphones, and my real Leslie, a vintage 142. I listened to the “spaces between the notes” for phase issues or unwanted harmonic interplay, but heard none. Drawbar for drawbar, the XK-3C is warm, euphonic, and entirely true to the B-3.
IMPROVEMENTS
To C or not to C? If you’re wondering what exactly has changed from the XK-3 to the XK-3C, that is the question. Here are the answers:
Leslie Simulation. More than anything else, your rotary sound will make or break your tone cred as an organ player. Happily, the XK-3C’s Leslie effect is light years better than what was in the original XK-3. In fact, it’s not just better. It rocks. The treble and bass rotors in a real Leslie spin in opposite directions, and the sonic payoff of this is supremely difficult to convey through stereo monitors. The XK-3C comes so close to nailing it that I think the only way for an electronic rotary simulation to get any better would require some kind of surround listening system.
Vibrato/Chorus. Like to solo with, say, a thick chorus, but comp with a straighter sound, or vice-versa? You can now turn vibrato/chorus on and off separately for the upper and lower keyboard parts. I couldn’t find any way to make vibrato/chorus affect the pedal part, though a dry pedal sound is what you’d normally want for kicking bass anyway.
On vintage Hammonds, using the “C” choruses boosted the treble by different degrees, depending on the model and year. The XK-3C’s new “emphasis” parameter lets you customize this amount. Now that’s attention to history!
Tube Overdrive. What with everyone making a tube something these days, I empathize if you think sticking a glow-bottle in a digital keyboard is a marketing gimmick. But the XK-3C has the most useful, most macho tube output circuit I’ve ever seen on a keyboard.
Two vacuum tubes (a 12AX7 and 12AU7) are tweakable at a surprisingly deep level: You can route highs and lows to different tubes or both to one tube, set the crossover point, and adjust the bias voltage to fine-tune your clean-to-dirty transition. The possibilities are endless, but here’s one favorite recipe of mine. It goes into clipping gradually and has that all-important grind, but even with the drive maxed, it keeps the drawbar tones distinct and doesn’t add a nasty buzzsaw to the highs: Send lows to 12AX7 tube and highs to 12AU7. Set crossover at 400Hz. Bias 12AX7 negatively and 12AU7 positively, to taste. Turn overdrive knob to about two o’clock. Play intro lick to Santana’s “Hope You’re Feeling Better.” Grin like a maniac.
More Tonewheel Sets. A second “B type” sample set has more leakage and general road-worn B-3 shmutz than the original. The manual says that “B type 2” is the dirtier set, but my ears say it’s “B type 1” and that type 2 is cleaner. No biggie. There’s also a muted sawtooth set that’s great for Farfisa and Vox organ sounds, not to mention reedy pipe organ registrations.
MIDI Controls and Zones. One complaint about the XK-3 was that you couldn’t just grab a knob for key click, reverb depth, or other details you might want to adjust on the fly. Now you can, thanks to six knobs and six buttons, which are assignable to internal settings as well as external MIDI control numbers. All your assignments get saved with presets.
For playing external MIDI gear, the XK-3 could control up to three zones, with key ranges you could define, on three different MIDI channels; the XK-3C ups that to six. You get three zones on the XK-3C’s keyboard, two on any keyboard plugged into the “lower” MIDI in, and yet another on a pedalboard (or keyboard) connected to the “pedal” MIDI in. Though each knob and button is labeled for one of these zones, that’s only a suggestion — you can make any zone talk on any MIDI channel, so you’re not locked into using certain controls for certain zones. The buttons can even send sequencer start, stop, and continue commands.
With all this MIDI control, I was puzzled not to find a USB connector on the back. You’ll need a MIDI interface if you want to connect to a computer for playing soft synths or sequencing.
Tone Control. On the tube preamp inside a vintage B-3, turning a screw rolled off the highs in a distinctive way. The XK-3C models this perfectly, by way of adding a fourth “band” to the bass/mid/treble EQ — push the tone button until a lowercase “t” is in the display, then twist the tone knob. You could also assign each band to a different MIDI knob to tweak ’em all at once.
Preset Lock. Ever get so into it that you let rip with a downward hand smear and overshoot into the reverse-color keys, accidentally changing the preset? Me too. Hold down the Bank and Rec/Jump buttons on the XK-3C, and the preset keys become immune to your enthusiasm. Drawbars and all other controls still work normally.
IN USE
In a live situation, the sound of the XK-3C is all there. The scream of the high notes on a rock solo, the definition and “singing” quality of the midrange as I’m comping “No Woman No Cry,” thick pedal tones for those times when my left hand is the bass player, and the occasional Hammond-hip listener asking me where the heck I hid the Leslie. On every clonewheel I’ve played, when the simu-Leslie is at fast speed, I hear more of what I like when the C3 chorus is on as well. Though this is still true, it’s less necessary on the XK-3C than it’s ever been.
Simulation aside, the XKs have always been my favorite digital organs for playing through real rotary speakers. On clones from most other companies, there’s a tendency for the higher drawbars to get a bit “lost” inside some Leslie cabinets. The XKs’ stay more forward in the blend. This is as true as ever on the XK-3C, which I tried through my vintage 142 and a Speakeasy Roadbox MkIII, getting great results in both cases. I wanted to try it through Hammond’s Leslie 3300 (reviewed Nov. ’06) as I did the XK-3, but I lent the one they’d sent me to Booker T. Jones over a year ago. He’s still got it . . . we’ll let that speak for itself.
Like on the XK-3, if I hold a preset key down, it reverts to the manual drawbar settings, while everything else — EQ, tonewheel sets and Leslie modeling, all those tube settings, key click, MIDI zones, you name it — stays the same. This lets me use presets as top-to-toe organ setups for different situations, but concern myself only with the drawbars (instead of the tiny graphics of them on the LCD) to know and change my basic sound.
Speaking of different situations, the XK-3C can shift gears into some beautiful pipe organ sounds. If you reduce key-on click to nothing, the note attack gets slower. Do the same with key-off click (that’s right, you get separate settings), and you’ll hear a slight release phase when you let off a key. This sounds nothing like the B-3 we know from rock, jazz, and soul, but everything like a pipe organ. Check out the F# preset bank for some examples of what I’m talking about.
How useful are the new MIDI controls in the real world? For realtime control of internal settings, extremely. As for external gear, while it’s doubtful that a piano- or synth-centric musician would go for the XK-3C as their master controller — lack of aftertouch limits is appeal there — I can see it playing exactly this role for someone who plays mainly organ, but needs piano and strings and things from a sound module. Using the factory “external volume” template, the six knobs controlled the first six mixer channels on my Muse Receptor without a hitch.
CONCLUSIONS
Most of the improvements in the XK-3C are aimed at musicians who know how a real B-3 is supposed to behave, and need that behavior so they can play at their best. Such pros will be delighted with this organ for a lifetime, but you certainly don’t have to be in some exclusive club of B-3 virtuosos to get a lot out of it. The Leslie simulation will floor anyone with even a causal grasp of “the sound,” for starters. If your gig is mainly standing up and playing cover tunes and the XK-3C is more organ than you want to pay for, check out the XK-1. Its overall sound and Leslie effect is a lot closer to the XK-3C than the original XK-3 is. That said, if authentic overdrive is big in your sound, nothing else is in the XK-3C’s league.
Taken together, the sound and features make the XK-3C leapfrog comfortably ahead of any clonewheel we’ve reviewed so far. For the record, that judgment has nothing to do with it saying “Hammond” on it — there have been times when this or that competitor was more on the mark, and we’ve said so. As it stands, Hammond-Suzuki’s late nights at the drawing board have made the XK-3C the one to beat, and a Key Buy award winner.
GIMME SOME ACTION
Like the XK-3C, just about all clonewheels now have waterfall keys: square-front white keys with no piano-like “lip.” That’s just the beginning of authentic B-3 feel, though, which blends two contradictory traits: First, you get a sense of the keys falling under their own weight as you play — it’s like they want to go down. Second, they spring back very quickly. For “gravity,” the XK-3C is as good as any clone you can carry under one arm, and better than some; it has a heftier feel than the Nord Electro or C1 (reviewed May ’07), for example. As for key return, the XK-3C gets top marks, with enough bounce for those Brian Auger machine gun trills, but not so much that notes double-trigger unwantedly. The XK-3C is velocity-sensitive for external MIDI gear, and for its own bass pedal and harmonic percussion sounds via menu settings. I MIDI’ed it to a Muse Receptor running Native Instruments Akoustik Piano, and using the first of four available velocity curves, got a predictable, linear increase in velocity values from 4 to 127 as I played harder.
GIMME SOME MORE ACTION
Like the XK-3 before it, you can put the XK-3C flush atop the XLK-3, Hammond’s dedicated lower MIDI controller, creating the Pro XK System: a full console organ that one person can easily transport. (We’ve published a pictorial setup guide from the July ’06 issue at www.keyboardmag.com/audition.) You can turn your XK-3C into a two-manual organ by plugging in any MIDI keyboard, but the XLK-3 interfaces seamlessly, both in terms of function and looks. It has its own preset keys, draws power from the organ on top, and feels the same. Until March ’07, though, it had trouble playing external gear with velocity — owners used the upper keyboard for that. XLK3 units shipped since then do transmit velocity when paired with an XK-3C (or XK-3 with version 2 firmware). Hammond sent me the XLK-3 upgrade chip, and though I installed it without difficulty, this involves enough disassembly of the XLK-3 that it’s an “authorized service center” thing in the real world. Long story short — when controlling external piano sounds from the XLK-3, I now get results identical to the XK-3C itself.
CLAIM CHECK
Hammond project manager Scott May says, “The XK-3C is a further refinement of the New B-3’s little brother. We believe that it isn’t enough that our portable organs sound like a tonewheel Hammond, they should play and feel like the classics as well. It’s all in the details — this is where the other clones miss the mark. Our engineers (some of whom were on the staff in Hammond’s vintage days) keep tweaking the engine to enhance those details. Their progress has warranted a model upgrade, and we believe that the XK-3C is a major leap ahead in capturing the sound and feel of a vintage Hammond organ. B-3 players have a certain expectation when they sit down, and we want all of these players to be totally at home on the XK-3C with no compromise, regardless of the style of music.”
VITAL STATS
POLYPHONY Full, nine partials per key.
POLYTIMBRAL PARTS 3 (upper, lower, pedal).
DISPLAY 2 line x 20 character amber LCD.
AUDIO OUTPUTS 1/4" unbal. L and R, 1/4" stereo headphone out, 1/4" mono effect send.
AUDIO INPUTS 1/4" mono effect return; insert point is after overdrive but before Leslie simulation.
LESLIE CONNECTOR 11-pin.
MIDI CONNECTORS In1 (pedal), in2 (lower), out.
PEDAL INPUTS 1/4" footswitch, 1/4" expression, multi-pin EXP-100F input.
OPTIONAL ACCESSORIES EXP-100F expression pedal with toe-kick switch, $172.
POWER SUPPLY Internal 120V AC, takes standard 3-prong cord.
DIMENSIONS/ WEIGHT 47" W x 15.8" D x 4.7" H; 40.8 lbs.
GORY DETAILS
INTERNAL PRESETS 120, all overwritable.
TONEWHEEL SETS B type 1, B type 2, mellow, bright, sawtooth, custom.
LESLIES SIMULATED 122, 147, 31H, 760, 722, 825, “Rock,” user.
EXTERNAL STORAGE Compact Flash card slot.