Indeed! It's more useful to expand the sound palette and that XTk is great machine!

There is an exception of course.....

JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER 8 JUPITER

But seriously......I was thinking of keeping the Nord 3 a while back....but b'cos money is a problem....I'm saving up for a wavetable (Waldorf XTk). A nice contrast to analog and VA.

DS

why keyboard?
do you perform?

It's always nicer to have a keyboard version. That way you avoid MIDI hell.

Edit: Hell. This was full of typos. Kayboard and awoid. Time for another mug of tea.

LOL Juho

Keyboard versions are so much more fun to play. I hate racks....they are boring.

DS

Indeed. I just noticed those typos. No wonder that I felt like Hollowcell for a moment. I have a slight hangover and tiredness and that's my excuse.

Controlling several racks with one or two keyboards can get annoying from time to time.

Yes, I have to agree about that, too. Keyboard versions are the way to go; the only caveat being that they take up so much more space in your studio. Also, when my band plays live, we have four keyboards in a big U shape onstage (all played by the keyboardist); it looks really cool (BUT you really have to be careful what you do onstage so you're not constantly running into the keyboard rig, lol).


Hmm, I was also wondering how many of you own the Alesis Ion. I'm thinking I might need one of those...any insight?

Yes. But you can cope with few keyboards. For example a workstation, Indigo2, Nord G2 and Microwave XTk gives all sounds you need. That way you need only two two-level keyboard stands, which is not that bad.

That sounds nice. We also planned (can't actually call it as planning because it is quite utopistic idea) to form a progband with drummer, bass player and three keyboardists (one Hammond, one piano/Rhodes/other as needed player and one player with a VA/other as needed). Just to give some counter force to the drummer-bass player-guitarist bands. That of course will never happen due the lack of players, but it would look quite cool and it would sound bloody good.

That Ion seems very nice. Haven't tried out one though. There have been rumours of really crappy mechanical quality in those things. Crappy knobs, etc.

I do. I've had it for about two months now. I love it - it's really raw sounding. I also had to get a TC M300 delay and reverb unit for it as it has no built in delay FX to speak of.

There's an excellent users group at Yahoo which I read up on (every post) before I bought mine, here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alesis-ion/messages/ The early posts from many analogue purists really convinced me to check this keyboard out at Digital Village as I have to say that when the Ion was initially launched, I had kind of already dismissed this keyboard as a cheapo A6 wannabe.

Unfortunately, lately the Yahoo group has turned into a bit of a pissing match with many users (probably 50%) complaining about something called a "ghost edit bug" in the OS or the potentiometers and appears to randomly edit parameters. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones as mine just doesn't have this problem. It's even got so bad that Alesis have removed the users group link from their Ion site !!!! 8O

I've just remebered I answered a similar question on the SOS website summarising my likes and dislikes. Hang on, it's here: http://sound-on-sound2.infopop.net/2...167#7263006167

BTW - the SOS review is still only available to eSubscribers (it was originally in the Sep '03 issue)

Hope this helps

r3dnaX