Another shot across Electro’s bow

[Gambold]

https://hammondorganco.com/msolo

Trying to find pricing. It’s not a Swiss Army knife like the Electro but it’s very light and bound to be way cheaper. Couple this with a decent Yamaha digital piano and there isn’t much reason to spend oodles on an Electro.

Clavia really needs to release some new products.

[Gambold]

Interesting and thanks for sharing the announcement of this new Hammond M-Solo (maybe you could mention it in the title?)

I think this product targets a totally different audience than NE and reading its manual one of the first things I see is:

This is a compact Drawbar Keyboard that designed for real-time operation which is rarely seen in today. There is no display, or finely parameters. The buttons and Drawbars on the top panel are all of the current setting for playing. The setting can be recorded up to 3 exclusive Patch buttons.

So 4 octaves, no pianos (and you need to carry 2 keyboards if you need them, as you also say) also no memories (3 global patches only), no sample synth (but it has a polysynth and a string machine emulator), monotimbral. (EDIT: no dual manual on organ, no split)

Nice product this Hammond M-Solo, but comparing it to NE is apples vs pears, imho (or are you going to swap your NE6 for it?)

[Gambold]

I believe I said right from the start that this was no multi-purpose keyboard like the Electro. BUT, it is an option for players who use Electros principally for their organs and sample synths. If you look around the Internet, you'll see a lot of Electros as part of a rack. I'm pretty sure they are there for organs or fripperies, and not as go-tos for principal keyboarding.

I too have found my Electro's keypad to be fairly unbearable when it comes to playing acoustic or EP emulations. I use another board for that (a Korg SV-2, which is stupidly heavy), and the lightweight Electro sits happily above it, ready to serve for the Hammond or for occasional samples. I'm especially fond of having the ability to play organ with one hand and piano with the other, without being hampered by Nord's split limitations.

THIS new board from Hammond is even lighter, is certainly going to be cheaper, and looky-here, it even has a built-in synth! So, for those of us who use the Electro as the organ/effects machine it essentially is - this Hammond is an attractive alternative. I agree, the lack of memory presets pushes the player to stay simple with just a few - but that's not as much an issue with Hammond playing.

And really, the big point here is not that Hammond has a new, potentially spiffy offering with a probable low price point - it's that Clavia has NOTHING new under the sun. Except a lightly-updated Stage 4 for $6000.

[Rusty Mike]

Cool little instrument. Hopefully it’s priced well.

Hey, it’s got 1’ drawbar cancel! Well well well.

[Gambold]

Looks like it might have USB audio too.

Price here (near bottom of page) is 125,000 Yen, which is about $835 USD.

https://info.shimamura.co.jp/digital/ne ... /10/152054

So I maybe we see it at $850 or so. Can't go much higher given only 49 keys...most organ players would prefer 61. This is going to work for one-handed organ stuff or background chording in a band. It's not a stand-alone performance organ by any means.

So a current Electro player would pass - you are giving up too much. But it could still hurt the Electro if you were traditional keyboardist looking to upgrade your rig from the Casio/Roland wasteland, and wanted a decent weighted stage board for AP/EP and then something light for the organ toppings. You'd still spend less on both than you would a new Electro with a good keybed. A Yamaha CP88 for $2600 and this Hammond jobber for $850 is $3450. A new Electro 73 with hammer action is $3600...and has only 73 keys.

[Hlaalu]

What I am seeing though is that it doesn't seem to have waterfall keys... that could be a bigger stopper than the sheer number of keys...

[Spider]

The Electro 6D 61 costs 1925€
The Hammond SK-Pro 61 costs 2390€.
The XK-4 costs the same 2390€ (a bit surprising, given that it has much less than the SK-Pro).

850€ looks impossibly low, we're in Roland Gaia territory. Of course anything's possible, but I don't think the M-Solo will cost much less than the Electro. Probably be more or less the same, or even a little higher. The competition will be about brand, sound and features, not on price.

Still it's an interesting product: even here in the NUF sometimes it was suggested that the "missing" product in Nord's lineup would be a light 2nd-tier board with organ and synth but no piano. It's a highly specialized board but it could be useful for certain players, we'll see how it fares.

[Hlaalu]

I'm not sure about that comparison. The Electro and the other two Hammond you mention have a much more sophisticated action, the M-Solo looks a bit lighter and smaller. € 850 is more than twice the price of the Yamaha Reface series, to which I think it's a fairer comparison. Probably halfway between the Reface and a full keyboard, hence the price would be just about right.

[harmonizer]

Re the statement the Yamaha board does not have waterfall keys, I will confess ignorance on its potential impact: would this mean one could not do a palm smear on it?

[Hlaalu]

Re the statement the Yamaha board does not have waterfall keys, I will confess ignorance on its potential impact: would this mean one could not do a palm smear on it?

I was actually referring to the M-Solo not having waterfall keys (but the Reface series don't either).

Well, it depends on several things like key shape and even material. Some plastics create some sort of "adherence" that you'd find your hand stuck to it while trying to do a palm smear, and this would be regardless of the key shape being waterfall-type.

The opposite is true as well. Since we mentioned the Yamaha Reface, it doesn't have waterfall keys but your hand slides extremely smoothly on it. That said, it has mini keys, and I am not sure one would have the same feeling had the keys been normal in size.

I would assume the M-Solo being designed as an organ will have adequate keys to play organ (and that would include palm smears), but it's hard to tell before trying.

By the way, waterfall keys have other advantages too, apart from being palm smears friendly. The kind of legato playing that is sometimes referred to as "organ crawl" is helped by the keys being waterfall "on their side too", not just on the front when looking at them. Thin keys, typical of synths, make your finger get stuck sideways when playing very legato. I hope Hammond releases some more pictures so that we can look better at the keys.