Digital Combo & Tonewheel Organ
Reviews : Keyboard
With the demand for (and prices of) old
combo and tonewheel organs rising all the time, a keyboard that emulates
both at a reasonable cost seems like an excellent idea - but can the
Nord C1 cut it when compared to its ancestors?
Photos: Mike Cameron
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Swedish synth maker Clavia's first stab at a Hammond
emulation was featured on the Nord Electro 61 keyboard, which I
reviewed in the December 2001 issue of SOS. I was very
complimentary about its organ mode but, due to some serious errors in
the implementation of its electromechanical pianos, I described my time
with it as "an emotional rollercoaster". So when I read that Clavia were
designing a new keyboard based on the Electro, throwing away the pianos
but further refining the organ model, I was rather excited. When I
heard that the resulting instrument was to have dual 61-key manuals and
include emulations of the Vox Continental and Farfisa Compact Duo
(which, perhaps for copyright reasons, Clavia refer to as the Electric-V
and Electric-F models) I was very excited.
Physically
The C1 arrived in a padded and wheeled soft case.
This is a chargeable option, but it's nice nonetheless. Removing the
organ gave me a pleasant shock: it's lighter than many modern
workstations. I had prepared a heavy-duty double-X stand for it, but it
was apparent that this would not be necessary. The C1 will be a doddle
to transport and set up for live use.
The back of the C1 is not complex by modern
standards, but you have to watch what you're doing. For example, there
are three MIDI sockets, but these are not In/Out/Thru, they're In, Out
and a dedicated omni-mode MIDI In for bass pedals, the input from which
is channelised and directed to the MIDI Out if required.
Alongside the MIDI sockets, a USB connector is
available for upgrading the OS, should it be necessary. Since the review
unit had an early version (v1.02), I upgraded it to the latest (v1.12)
by downloading the application, connecting my Mac to the C1, running the
program, and waiting about 20 seconds for it to do its thing. The
procedure was faultless, and PC owners should also have no difficulty,
although they will require a driver (available on the company's web
site) to enable Windows to 'find new hardware'.
There are three control pedal inputs: a TRS (stereo
quarter-inch) socket for a swell pedal, a switch input for controlling
the speed of the rotary speaker effect, and a sustain pedal input (which
is not as odd as it seems, given that you can use the C1 as a MIDI
controller).
Finally, we come to the outputs. These include a
headphone output and the main stereo outputs, which can also be used as
independent outputs for the Hammond emulation (left) and the Vox and
Farfisa emulations (right). When you consider how you might amplify
and/or mix these organs, this makes a great deal of sense. Next comes an
11-pin Leslie connector. I suspect that the C1 would sound stunning
through a real rotary speaker, but I have six-pin Leslies in my studio,
so this will have to remain speculation. Finally, there's a high-level
(14V) output for a Leslie preamplifier. This also uses a quarter-inch
socket, so you must be careful not to connect it to standard line-level
inputs.
Operationally
Like the Electro, the C1 has no physical drawbars,
and uses pairs of buttons to increase or decrease the contribution from
each footage. It's a more useable system than it sounds, but if your
Hammond performances rely on 'playing' the drawbars, you may find that
the C1 is not for you, and that one of the other, more conventional
'clonewheels' will fit the bill better. Nonetheless, the use of buttons
and LED readouts has at least two significant advantages. Firstly, the
system is flexible enough to mimic the disparate controls of the
Hammond, Vox and Farfisa organs that the C1 imitates. Secondly, the LEDs
give you immediate feedback about the nature of a Program (or 'preset')
when you recall it from memory, which physical drawbars cannot do.
The C1 uses pairs of buttons to emulate the
drawbars found on more traditional organs. This does, of course, make it
a good deal easier to save and recall preset sounds.
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There is memory for 126 Programs that can be saved
and recalled in the normal fashion, and dumped and loaded using SysEx.
There are also two buttons called Live 1 and Live 2 associated with each
manual. These act as non-volatile memories and allow you to recall your
favourite registrations without scrolling up or down the patch list.
Inevitably, not all of the C1's parameters and
functions are available on dedicated buttons or knobs, so there are
three System Settings menus: System, MIDI and Sound. These contain the
detailed settings that you are unlikely to want to change during a
performance. Navigation is a little clunky, but simple once you get the
hang of it. Happily, the manual is wrong when it says that "System
settings are global; they are not stored within a program, but apply to
all programs all of the time". This would greatly reduce the flexibility
of the C1, and I suspect that the writer intended to refer to the
System menu, not the System settings as a whole.
The dual 61-note keyboards are interesting, having
two possible responses. 'Fast trigger' mode is not velocity sensitive,
but responds as soon as the key is depressed. This is ideal for organ
playing, and is always used internally. In addition to this, a
velocity-sensitive 'normal trigger' mode is directed only to the MIDI
Out. Neither mode generates or receives aftertouch but — depending upon
the MIDI mode chosen in the menus — the control panel can send and/or
receive MIDI CC data, thus allowing you to record and automate changes
in drawbar settings and so on. Unfortunately, the C1's knobs are
potentiometers rather than rotary encoders, so if the physical position
is different from the value recalled within a memory, the parameter will
jump to the physical value when you touch the knob. This can lead to
some unpleasant results, especially where the EQ and overdrive knob are
concerned.
Before starting the review in earnest, I connected a
set of Korg MPK180 MIDI bass pedals, and everything worked swimmingly.
This is a big advantage over my favourite clonewheel, the Korg BX3,
which has no ability to host a set of pedals. However, had I not had the
pedals to hand, I could have used the C1's 'Split' function, which
allows you to divide the lower manual into two sections, the upper three
octaves responding to the sound chosen for the lower manual and the
lower two octaves responding to the sound chosen for the bass. I tested
this, and it worked perfectly.
Half-mooning
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The Hammond Mode
You select the organ model — Hammond, Electric-V or
Electric-F — using a dedicated button that cycles through the three. If
you're programming a Hammond sound, your next stop is the Tonewheel
model, which resides in the Sound menu. There are three models, called
Clean, Vintage 1 and Vintage 2, and these offer increasing levels of
artifacts such as leakage and crosstalk between drawbar settings. Of
these, my favourite was Vintage 1, which sounded very realistic. Clean
was also nice — the 'ideal' Hammond, maybe — but I found Vintage 2 to be
unusable. If I ever met a Hammond that sounded like this, I would send
it to the doctor. For example, there is a sub-octave leak on D-flat 4
and E-flat 4 that was clearly an electronic fault on the organ used to
develop the model. Discovering this was not a question of microscopic
investigation: I was playing Pink Floyd's 'Echoes' and there was a
low-frequency rumble ruining the delicate registration used for this
piece. I double-checked it against my Hammond A100 (see box opposite)
and no such artifacts should exist.
Returning to Vintage 1, I then carried out a careful
comparison against my A100 and was impressed. The raw sound and
pitching across all footages and across the keyboard was excellent, the
subtle inconsistencies of a real Hammond were reproduced accurately, the
wrap-around at both extremes was correctly recreated, and the gentle
compression of the original organ was much as it should be. However, as
on the Electro, the key-click and key-bounce artifacts on the C1 are far
too loud, and the only way to attenuate them is to turn down the treble
EQ. But I don't want a dull sound; I just want less key click! I would
like to give Clavia the benefit of the doubt and assume that the C1
conforms to the sound obtained from the Hammond(s) that they analysed to
create its models, but somebody within the company should have realised
that this level of click is not typical. In my view, correcting it is
vital.
Moving on, the C1's percussion sound correctly
recreates the tone and response of a Hammond, and there's a bonus,
too... The 1' drawbar remains active when percussion is on, which is not
the case on vintage Hammonds. This seems trivial, but it isn't, because
it allows you to create interesting registrations that are unobtainable
on the original.
The 'scanner' chorus/vibrato is the final element in
a Hammond emulation, and Clavia's is perhaps the best that I have
heard. In 2001, I wrote, "The [Electro] vibrato section offers
all six options found on the classic Hammonds, and is worthy of a
compliment or three. Accurate imitations of the Hammond scanner
chorus/vibrato are notoriously difficult to realise, but this one is
excellent, particularly for the deeper effects V3 and C3". The same is
true on the C1.
The Hammond A100
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The Vox & Farfisa Models
I suspect that the 'V' model in the C1 seeks to
emulate the Vox Continental II but, due to its physical configuration,
this isn't quite possible; in particular, the Vox was a spinet organ
(dual four-octave keyboards) with a different arrangement of controls.
But if we forget the ergonomics and concentrate on the sound, we can
make useful comparisons.
The Continental II had differing sets of drawbars
for the upper and lower manuals: 16', 8', 4', II and III on the upper,
and 8', 4', 2' and IV on the lower, with additional drawbars that
controlled the contributions of the sine-wave generator and the
triangle-wave generator for each. (The II, III and IV settings were
different combinations of the higher harmonics.) The C1 gets things
almost right, but with the addition of a 16' drawbar on the lower
manual. I view this as a bonus, not an error, especially since the
octave relationship between the manuals is correctly retained.
Sonically, the sound of the C1 is close to that of
the original, but my Vox Continental II is simultaneously brasher and
deeper. Hmm... there's something strange going on here. Despite showing
the correct legends on the control panel, the C1's manual suggested that
its Electric-V waveforms are triangle and square waves rather than the
sine and triangle waves of the original, but my ears told me that the
waveforms are neither those of the Vox nor those described in the
manual.
When I checked the waveforms on the oscilloscope, I
discovered that the Vox's sine wave isn't a pure sine; it's mildly
distorted, and there's a slow modulation that adds movement to the
sound. In contrast, the C1's sine wave (which, dear manual writer, is
not a triangle!) is close to an ideal sine, so it's no surprise that the
Vox has more of an edge. Moving on, the Vox's triangle wave looks a bit
like a sine wave with the back edge cut off each half-cycle. The C1's
is a more precise version of the same general shape, and certainly not a
square wave! Happily, we're dealing with small differences here; while
the Vox has a little more character in a direct comparison, the
Electric-V model still sounds very good.
A more significant difference lies in the nature of
the distinctive Vox vibrato. The emulation on the C1 is much slower than
on my Continental II. For the percussive playing of, say, Two-tone or
post-punk New Wave, the Vox vibrato is more desirable, but for sustained
chords I prefer the Nord's.
The C1 differs from the Continental II in other
regards, too. For example, some Continental IIs (including mine) had
percussion; Electric-V does not. Likewise, the bass controls on the
Continentals were a switch to select 16' or 16' + 8', two drawbars
controlling the contributions from the sine- and triangle-wave
generators, and a sustain knob. In contrast, the 'synth bass' model on
the C1 (which is automatically selected when you choose the 'V' or 'F'
models) has drawbars for the 16' and 8', and produces yet another wave
shape. There are also controls for the amount of 'pluck' as well as
sustain. To be honest, I prefer the C1's bass sound but — for the purist
— it's not the same.
Unfortunately, I was unable to make a comparison
between the Electric-F model and an original Farfisa Compact Duo,
because I didn't have access to one during the review period. All I can
say is that the C1's emulation sounded much as I remember, as did its
four modes of vibrato. Subjectively, I liked the F-mode very much, but I
can't guarantee its accuracy.
The Effects
In addition to the effects contained within the
organ models, there are seven 'outboard' effect processes available in
the C1 — delay, overdrive, EQ, amplifier model, chorus, reverb and
rotary speaker — but it strikes me that these are in the wrong order.
For example, the overdrive would normally lie immediately before the
speaker emulation, and the reverb should lie after the rotary speaker.
It would be interesting to discuss this with Clavia's engineers, and to
find out why they placed them in the order that they did.
Testing the effects themselves, I have to say that
I'm not a fan of the delay; it's too pure and too limited in scope. The
overdrive is much more satisfying and, although it has just one control,
it is superior to many equivalent effects found elsewhere, imparting
anything from a warm growl to a full-on howl.
The C1's back panel: note the unusual selection of MIDI ports.
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The three-band EQ is basic, with no sweepable
frequencies or Q controls to allow you to refine the effect, but it's
useable. More so are the amplifier models: L-type (Leslie), F-type
(Fender Twin), R-type (which might mean Roland Jazz Chorus, but I
wouldn't swear to it), and bypass. These are particularly useful in
Electric-V and Electric-F modes, but don't discount them when you're
playing in Hammond mode; torturing the output of a B3 through a valve
head driven to the point of self-destruction remains a respectable way
to get the attention of your audience.
Unison is a stereo chorus with just three settings:
medium intensity, high intensity, and off. It's a gentle effect, but I
found it much more useful than I had expected. Then there's the reverb,
which offers five types but just a single unnamed knob for controlling
the level of the effect. Despite the continuing paucity of controls,
it's capable of creating some fabulously spacey sounds reminiscent of
Pink Floyd and other psychedelic bands of the late 1960s.
Finally, we come to the rotary speaker simulation.
This is very pleasing but I am not impressed by the degree of control
that you can exert over it. There are just four parameters. The first
adjusts the fast and slow speeds of the horn, with just high, normal and
low settings that act simultaneously on both. The second controls the
horn's acceleration, while the third adjusts the rotor's acceleration,
again with high, normal and low settings. The fourth adjusts the fast
and slow speeds of the rotor, again with just high, normal and low
settings that act simultaneously on both. While the presets are well
chosen, it would be nice to have more flexibility and have access to the
range of parameters (such as the distance and separation angle of the
virtual microphones) that you would find on most modern workstations or
multi-effects units.
Put It All Together And...
Make no mistake: despite the lack of real drawbars, I
like the C1 very much. It's superbly playable, and the sound is
excellent. Choosing the Hammond mode, I experimented with jazz, blues
and pop styles, and it responded and sounded just as I wanted. I strayed
deep into prog-rock with Deep Purple riffs, Emerson Lake & Palmer
and Focus, and then — at the touch of a button — transported myself into
soul and gospel territory, and the C1 always delivered.
Having said that, there are problems and, as on the
original Electro, it's not the big issues that let the C1 down, it's the
details. Indeed, Clavia drive me completely bonkers! ... they get
things so nearly right, and then let themselves down with
avoidable errors. Sure, the problems in the Vintage 2 model are
irrelevant because — in my view — Vintage 1 is as 'leaky' as you need
for convincing imitations. But the key-click drives me insane. It's
almost as if Clavia's engineers had said to themselves, "let's make sure
nobody misses the key-click!" If not for this, I would give the C1's
Hammond mode an almost unreserved thumbs-up.
My only other area of concern lies with the effects
processors, partly because of the order in which they're implemented,
and partly because control over them is so limited. If I were a
manufacturer and had decided to place the equivalent of a Space Echo, a
simple chorus unit, an EQ, a valve amp and a Leslie in the signal path, I
would have given players the opportunity to adjust them at least as
fully as they could on low-cost outboard effects units.
OK, that's enough moaning, because I want to finish
on a high: I think that you could justify the cost of the C1 for its Vox
and Farfisa modes alone! The sound of Electric-V is very close to the
original, and I'm sure that I wouldn't be able to tell the difference
without the opportunity to compare them directly. Similarly, Electric-F
makes me believe that I am sitting at and playing a real Farfisa. Given
the cost of a tatty Vox Continental II in today's market (perhaps £750)
and that of a Compact Duo (at least as much again) and a Leslie 122RV or
similar (as much, yet again) the C1 is a much cheaper and more flexible
option. That it weighs just 15Kg and can be carried around in something
that looks like a big red suitcase is another huge bonus. I like it!
Conclusion
The C1 is a first-class instrument. Its emulations
are excellent, and the chorus/vibrato and Leslie effects are as good as I
have heard. Would I use one? Certainly, and I believe that few, if any,
listeners would be able to tell that I was not using an original
Hammond, Vox or Farfisa. But please, Clavia, please let me turn down the
key-click. It's driving me mad.
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