Best External Keyboard to Pair With Electro 6D for Organ?

[cphollis]

I think you should consider just how much you want to get into the authentic dual manual (and pedal) thing. Nord was in that game for a while, but it's pretty much Hammand and Crumar Mojo for dual manual organ playing. Maybe someone else I'm forgetting, but ...

While the Vox and similar suggestions above are great (really), they aren't the same as an authentic dual-manual layout. Which will cost you.

[wtibbit]

If you are playing piano parts in addition to organ parts I suggest you consider for your lower keyboard a 73 key, hammer action controller designed to interface with a DAW. I gigged for years with a hammer action Roland or Yamaha stage piano under my Hammond digital organs, and found that configuration to be very workable. It provides a fast organ keyboard on top and with your E6D in dual keyboard mode, the lower manual for your organ. Other E6D modes would set up the organ on the upper and the piano (or synth) on the bottom. The hammer action is definitely better for piano and will work well enough for organ unless you really need the traditional configuration of a console Hammond. Perhaps this one at around $500 new would work: Studiologic SL73 Studio Hammer Action Keyboard Controller.

[anotherscott]

I was torn between the Vox continental and the Electro. Both feel like actual instruments and the Vox even has a modeled synthesizers + pitch bend. What did it for me in the end was the slight awkwardness of the Vox's interface. How do you know what key/layer number is the poly synth?

Yeah, just like the Electro models before the E5, you need to come up with a strategy for identifying/locating your sounds when all you have are 2-digit LED displays for reference. You can use a cheat sheet, and/or you can use a smartphone for patch selection. The image below shows my cheat sheet which tells me which sounds the shortcut button combinations will take me to (see the printed strip I taped under the patch select buttons on the lower keyboard in the image), but I would still need something else if I were looking to call up something other than those 27 sounds and didn't want to do it just by ear.

You can layer sounds but not split, but you can split the Organ?

The ablity to split sounds was added in the 2.0 system update. The split function is still pretty limited though, e.g. you can't independently shift the octave of the split sound. So if you put strings on the left and piano on the right, that's fine if you want cellos, but not if you want violins. I think they added the feature mostly to support left hand bass. And in fact, among the 50-ish new sounds added with the 2.0 update, there were about ten bass sounds to take advantage of that feature.

If only the Vox and Nord could have a baby combining the the best of both.

Well, that's the advantage of using the Vox as a lower manual for the Nord! It still yields a rig that is pretty light and compact, gives you the best of both, plus 2-manual organ when you want it.

The Electro gives you (at least IMO) better sounding organ, better sounding piano, access to the extensive Nord sample library and the ability to load your own samples, the informative OLED display, more flexible split/layer combinations, and more locations into which you can save your own sounds (416 vs. 64); while I'd say Vox is stronger sounding for EPs, orchestral instruments (e.g. strings and brass), and virtual analog synth, and has I think a better action.

Do you use the key/layer sounds at all? There are interesting ones but not very mailable and preconfigured by Korg.

The more malleable than you might think. When playing those sounds, besides all the direct knobs for effects, you can use the 9 touchstrips to edit attack, decay, release, cutoff, resonance, vibrato depth/speed, and two additional parameters which vary depending on the exact sound selected (for example, if it's a lead synth sound, one of these will be portamento). All these settings can be saved into your user presets (scenes).

[anotherscott]

There are a couple of Alesis controllers with drawbars that have standard MIDI and USB MIDI and you can hook up a power supply since with standard MIDi you'd need one.
The Alesis keybeds are pretty basic and not waterfall to my knowledge, but as a lower organ keyboard they could be fine depending on how fussy you are.
Another option is a weighted keyboard with standard MIDI for your secondary keyboard. It would work way better for piano sounds, and as a bottom organ keyboard would be fine also, IMO. That's what I do.

Yes... if you let go of the waterfall-shaped-keys requirement, there are lots more options.

the authentic dual manual (and pedal) thing. Nord was in that game for a while, but it's pretty much Hammand and Crumar Mojo for dual manual organ playing. Maybe someone else I'm forgetting, but ...

Viscount. And Mag if you're in (or willing to buy from) Europe.

I wonder if Nord will come out with a C2D replacement. Roland (VK77) and Korg (BX3) used to play in that ballpark, not anymore.

[michael_C1]

I wonder if Nord will come out with a C2D replacement. Roland (VK77) and Korg (BX3) used to play in that ballpark, not anymore.

I kind of doubt that they would. It probably wasn't a big success even before better sounding and more physically impressive offerings came out from Viscount and perhaps Crumar/GSI.

Hammond/Suzuki, I think personally, has made a piss poor decision regarding their current method of organ sound production. As a vintage Hammond owner and player I'm sad about this.