Due to the kind folk at Bernie's Musicland in Ringwood, I had the opportunity to play a Hammond XK-1 last week. I knew nothing about Hammonds when I walked into the store except that Mr Hammond was the founder of modern-day keyboards and that Hammonds produced the classic organ sound that only Hammonds can.

Personally, I'm after a really funky, semi-vintage, rhodes-like sound, similar to those produced by the Nords.  Because the Hammond XK-1 is new on the market, a bit cheaper than a Nord (and it's a Hammond!) I figured it's worth a play.

The first thing I noticed were the drawbars. With zero organ experience, it was a little perplexing, so I pressed a few buttons, moved a few sliders and immediately produced some very fat organy sounds.  Bernie steps in and explains that the drawbars allowed me to produce multiple tones from a single note being pressed.  So when I played middle C, I could slide another drawbar down and it would produce another tone an octave lower.  Another drawbar produced another C an octave higher.  Other drawbars added a fifth or a third into the mix.  So with only one finger playing Middle C, I was producing an 8 note chord consisting of C2 through to C5 plus a few E's and G's added into the mix.

The intensity of each of the notes in the chord depended on how far I slid the drawbar.  This means there was a near infinite number of combinations of drawbar positions that I could set to produce the sound I want.  Add to that the ability to control the amount of vibrato, and I was able to produce very rich sounds of differing dynamics.

So thanks to Bernie, within 15 minutes, I knew my way around a Hammond and could immediately see the potential this instrument would afford. At a retail price of around A$2000, it felt like an inexpensive way to own a little piece of music history.

I didn't buy it though.  Despite all the great points mentioned above, the sound just wasn't what I sought. I felt the organ sounds were a little too "true" and whilst that is testament to the great hardware under the hood, I'm after something a little more contemporary.  The strength of the Hammond is it's ability to produce very fat chords but I'd prefer something that specialised in a clean, single-note style suitable for fast jazz solo lines, so at this stage, the Nord still has my pick.

As an aside, I also briefly tried the Roland VK-8 Organ while I was there. It looked very similar to the Hammond XK-1 in every way, with its wooden cabinet, 61 vintage styled keys and drawbars plus rotary speaker controls on the left.  The only difference was its $4000 price tag. But, I must say I preferred it's sound, not enough to fork out twice the price but it just had the edge over he Hammond in terms of the contemporary organ sound.

Bottom line - I'd like a keyboard that feels like a Hammond but sounds like a Nord 

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Michelle Capicchiano
Posts: 1

Re: new Hammond SK1
Reply #1 on : Tue August 16, 2011, 09:47:03

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Hi Terence,
Hope you and your family are well. Great to hear your thoughts on these keyboards. Hammond has just launched the SK series to take on the Nord. Might be worth a look! Both the single keyboard and two-keyboard models are in-store. Looking forward to showing you!
Kind regards,
Michelle @ Bernies