Pa4x Drawbar Section

Korghelper · Post by **Korghelper** » Tue Aug 27, 2019 10:33 pm

The thing I'd like to know is, were the drawbar changes that seem to be upsetting most users made in response to anyone ever complaining about the old system, or was this just something Korg, for no apparent reason whatsoever, just decided arbitrarily to do?

It would be interesting to hear from someone at Korg about the decision making process. I'm pretty sure that if Korg had ever asked anyone if they thought removing the Percussion Amount parameter was a good idea they would have received a resounding 'NO!'...

So where did they get this idea from?

Actually, beefing up the percussion section is one of the most popular and common mods on real Hammonds...

mintjamman · Post by **mintjamman** » Mon Sep 09, 2019 11:13 pm

The continuing sage of the onboard Drawbar section -

I was away on holiday when the Webinar featuring Pete and Adam Whittle was broadcast so was unable to take part. However having subsequently watched it I was disappointed at the way in which my question had been dealt with.

Let’s get one or two things out of the way, firstly I hold Pete Shaw in great esteem he is a fine musician and player and knows his way round P.A. arrangers and is an asset to Korg UK and the wider P.A. community, having met him a number of times he is a hell of a nice guy too.

As for my questions Adam Whittle was more concerned about how many gigs Pete had done with his PA4x and to make a statement like that is to miss the points completely ! Maybe the art of the Tonewheel Organ just isn’t Adam’s thing.

Based on the response I hold no hope out that Korg will look at these issues as they have passed them off which I think is sort sighted, I am sitting here with a couple of Hammond Consoles A100s in fact and Leslie speakers, I also have a Crumar Mojo along with a Ventilator original and NI B3 to make comparisons with korg’s Drawbar Organ and some loaded Waves Art Organ samples on my PA4X.

I stand by my impressions that the Drawbar section could be far better and cannot understand how it is that other developers and MI companies have superior tonewheel organs in their products. On a flagship product Korg have fallen down here and there user base which consists of knowledgeable people like myself know the difference between a Great Sound and a mediocre sound.
We will never know who at a Korg develops ideas like the Drawbar Organ or if it’s something regurgitated from previous incarnations or even if the developers have any idea how a tonewheel Organ works and responds.

I have now given up with the Drawbar section as imho it’s weak with no balls and don’t get me stared on the Leslie sim and having spent lots of time on it for me it just doesn’t cut it. Adjusting EQ and the cabinet settings does little to improve the core sound and while I like some of the preset organs it is the Drawbar section that falls down for me, shame.

With respect to Adams comments I found them to be unhelpful to my concerns and it seems that amongst the Organ players on this forum others have misgivings about the Drawbar section as well, can we all be wrong ?

I have a work in progress to address my issues but it doesn’t involve the onboard Drawbar section.

mintjamman · Post by **mintjamman** » Mon Sep 09, 2019 11:15 pm

karmathanever · Post by **karmathanever** » Tue Sep 10, 2019 12:41 am

Well said and I agree even though I haven't had the same gear to compare with.
I have been able to compare with the Nord Stage, Roland Vr09, Hammond SK1 - all of which are far superior to the PA4X drawbar/Leslie
I will say however that the PA4X is far better than the previous PA models.

I'm not really a huge fan of my Korg Kronos CX3 engine but it is the best I have right now.
Although there's no drawbar control, my Roland Integra-7's static organ patches are superb and fully configurable.

I absolutely love my PA4X and I think that I am very unlikely to update unless the new model has some serious tone-wheel/rotary emulation.
I wish I had kept my VR09 as a sound module.

Cheers

Pete

Biggles · Post by **Biggles** » Tue Sep 10, 2019 4:58 pm

mintjamman wrote:The continuing sage of the onboard Drawbar section -

I was away on holiday when the Webinar featuring Pete and Adam Whittle was broadcast so was unable to take part. However having subsequently watched it I was disappointed at the way in which my question had been dealt with.

Let’s get one or two things out of the way, firstly I hold Pete Shaw in great esteem he is a fine musician and player and knows his way round P.A. arrangers and is an asset to Korg UK and the wider P.A. community, having met him a number of times he is a hell of a nice guy too.

As for my questions Adam Whittle was more concerned about how many gigs Pete had done with his PA4x and to make a statement like that is to miss the points completely ! Maybe the art of the Tonewheel Organ just isn’t Adam’s thing.

Based on the response I hold no hope out that Korg will look at these issues as they have passed them off which I think is sort sighted, I am sitting here with a couple of Hammond Consoles A100s in fact and Leslie speakers, I also have a Crumar Mojo along with a Ventilator original and NI B3 to make comparisons with korg’s Drawbar Organ and some loaded Waves Art Organ samples on my PA4X.

I stand by my impressions that the Drawbar section could be far better and cannot understand how it is that other developers and MI companies have superior tonewheel organs in their products. On a flagship product Korg have fallen down here and there user base which consists of knowledgeable people like myself know the difference between a Great Sound and a mediocre sound.
We will never know who at a Korg develops ideas like the Drawbar Organ or if it’s something regurgitated from previous incarnations or even if the developers have any idea how a tonewheel Organ works and responds.

I have now given up with the Drawbar section as imho it’s weak with no balls and don’t get me stared on the Leslie sim and having spent lots of time on it for me it just doesn’t cut it. Adjusting EQ and the cabinet settings does little to improve the core sound and while I like some of the preset organs it is the Drawbar section that falls down for me, shame.

With respect to Adams comments I found them to be unhelpful to my concerns and it seems that amongst the Organ players on this forum others have misgivings about the Drawbar section as well, can we all be wrong ?

I have a work in progress to address my issues but it doesn’t involve the onboard Drawbar section.

They did say that they would pass on your observations to Korg Italy.

That said they did not seem to be very concerned about your observations.

Not as though I would expect any speedy response from Italy.

mintjamman · Post by **mintjamman** » Tue Sep 10, 2019 5:48 pm

Pass exactly what back? Surely they should have been asking questions based on what I was saying, what is Adam going to report?

In any case I sent my concerns to Paolo months back and heard nothing more hence why I thought the webinar would be the place to air these issues especially as it was an organ feature.

I have been in the business long enough to know when people are wallpapering over an issue. But lets give Adam a chance to pass my feedback as he promised and see if he reports back as to what the developers say!

Biggles · Post by **Biggles** » Tue Sep 10, 2019 8:53 pm

The next Webinar is this Thursday, you could always ask them what is the state of play regarding the matter.

mintjamman · Post by **mintjamman** » Wed Sep 11, 2019 12:01 am

I think any questions should be relevant to the webinar topic or else people could be asking questions out of context, maybe there will be aanother general Q&A session where we can again ask questions. Of course thats all very well but as I use my instrument professionally I cant sit around months awaiting possible solutions that might never come.

Korghelper · Post by **Korghelper** » Wed Sep 11, 2019 5:32 am

I regret that I honestly don't see much of a way for Korg to unpaint themselves out of this corner.

I would think that, if at this point you can't route the organ section to a Direct Out, it's a hardware issue that no OS update can fix. So there goes the easiest solution of using a Ventilator or some other external Leslie. And if the Leslie sim on the CX3 and Kronos suck (IMHO, they do) it's unlikely they will magically create a good on for the PA4x!

Admittedly, I think that it MIGHT be possible to rewrite the code so the Perc section mutes the 1' d'bar, but again, I'm more leaning towards thinking that, if it hasn't been done by now, there probably IS some kind of software/hardware issue that prevents it. Even the least experienced Hammond player is aware of this quirk of the tonewheel models.

Yes, it shouldn't be a tremendous issue to return the Perc depth control as it already used to exist. But I'm still interested as to why the decision was made in the first place. Surely Korg have someone working for them that plays an organ? Or maybe not... (go and hire one, Korg!)

The bigger question is, do Korg have a big enough OS update coming that this could be rolled into? The odds of a new OS just to fix this alone seems slim.

mintjamman · Post by **mintjamman** » Wed Sep 11, 2019 9:43 pm

Forget routing out of the AUX outputs for the Drawbar Organ section, I eons ago turned off all the effects and output the Drawbar Organ out of the Main outputs then into my Neo Instruments Ventilator which models successfully a Leslie 122. What did it sound like ?

Well I also hooked up one of my Hammond A100s and nice 1964 model to the ventilator and also my Crumar Mojo, Both sounded great with the ventilator and I have used them live with great effect so good in fact that people have asked where the Leslie is !

Now back to the Pa4x hooked up, the sound was'nt good, I could detect harmonic beating especially when using the in harmonic drawbars like 2.2/3 ad 1.1/3 there is something strange with the drawbar sound is Leslie stop position and the leakage in Ver 3.0 is a nasty digital hash. Of course when I bought the Pa4x I never expected it to sound like a tonewheel organ but as Korg had gone to the trouble of providing a drawbar section I had higher hopes that it would be at least as good as the the offerings of Roland and others. I still love the Pa4x as its the right tool for the work I do and has brought many live benefits which I did'nt have before.

So in conclusion I have found a much much better solution to by organ woes and I know that if I do dozens more gigs that no amount to twiddling is going to make the Pa4x Drawbars come alive and provide me with a Pro Organ sound but I now have that covered thank god.

I think that Korg and the guys on the sales floor for Korg should not look at all this criticism as negative but grasp what users are saying as we are the ones laying out their cash and try and understand that by making things better more players will buy Korg Arrangers which must be a positive for all concerned.
If Korg supplied the Pa4x or its successor with a Killer Organ section that could nail it.

I may post a video up soon when I get time which shows what can be achieved and then we can all judge if the Pa4x Drawbar organ is weak or not

Bernie9 · Post by **Bernie9** » Thu Sep 12, 2019 1:44 pm

Thanks for the tip on the Vent. I had tried the Pa4X Drawbars with the sub outs and found no joy either. Since you are more of an expert in this matter than I, I will be very interested in your solution. Maybe I am old school, but I too need to have an authentic Leslie sound, but didn't want to add outboard gear, but maybe I have to.

I think the present iteration of Drawbars is better, and probably fine for younger musos that haven't grown up with a B3 and 122R Leslie like I did.

Bernie

D575 · Post by **D575** » Thu Sep 12, 2019 5:59 pm

https://youtu.be/vniyyS0xWAA https://youtu.be/YbDywIyOYb8

Bernie9 · Post by **Bernie9** » Fri Sep 13, 2019 8:34 am

Very cool

Korghelper · Post by **Korghelper** » Wed Sep 18, 2019 7:06 pm

Is that first one supposed to be so drenched in echo you can’t hear the lines as soon as they were faster than whole notes?

A tip to help anyone use tons of echo without blurring the melody is to analyze the fastest section, then use a delay factor that puts the echoes in between the notes. For duplet rhythms like that, triplet rhythms work well. Triplet quarters, triplet eighths, that sort of thing.

Listen to guitarists. They are experts at that sort of thing. David Gilmour is especially good at picking echo values that don’t clash with his lines...

In truth, neither of those videos convinced me they were Hammonds in the slightest.

D575 · Post by **D575** » Wed Sep 18, 2019 9:53 pm

Ah...there you are korghelper...i wondered when you would pop up (!).... Yes Dave Gilmour is a incredible guitarist, creator of music and a generous person to his fellow human beings.