What home keyboards have the best organ sounds?

[Neumie]

I know every keyboard these days has great sampled sounds ... pianos, strings, oo's and ah's. They also all throw in some abstract synth sounds ... I suppose good for atmosphere or "soundtrack" kind of stuff.

I'm not interested in any of that. I like organs! Big fat warm nostalgic top-of-the-line $20,000+ Lowreys, Technics, Rolands, Wersi ... organ sounds that sound like organs, not an "organ patch" on a synth.

Technics and Roland have both had great organs in the past ... has that technology carried over perfectly into any of their keyboards?

I mean, if a fellow decided he wanted the ultimate home organ, but only had room for a single-manual portable keyboard ... which one tops the list?

So far, I have yet to see anyone market a keyboard as a real "portable organ" (save for the Hammond-Suzuki keyboards, which are great, but limited exclusively to the Hammond B3 sound.)

[saudade]

Roland/Rodgers makes one, so does Viscount, and Orla. They have flute and principals at 16 through 2, a mixture, reed and v celeste. The keyboard can be or is split to emulate 2 manuals. The split is settable on some. I picked up an Orla on ebay, 76 keys, digitally sampled organ voices. Has digital effects too. Have connected it to a midipedalboard for a 1 manual organ. Outboard sound system does wonders.

[tobeycat2007]

The yamaha tyros 3 has excellent organ sounds, have a look at the yamaha demo clips on youtube for demo, i was very impressed, its not cheap but does seem to deliver the goods so to speak!

[Mark055]

Look at The Roland VK 7 or 8 not a lot of synth but reasonable second hand price's... if money is not the problem go for the Tyros.

[Neumie]

Thank you, guys.

I'm going to start with some YouTube demos on the models you mentioned, then do some research with the manufacturer's websites.

Any other suggestions?

[seamaster]

You should audition any Roland keyboard that can accommodate the SRX-7 Vintage Keys expansion card, eg E-80. The quality and quantity of organ sounds on that card are tremendous.

[andyg]

The trouble is, of course, that just about everything mentioned so far is Hammond B3+Leslie - based, with the occasional sprinkling of 60's Italian transistor organs. As for those big fat Lowrey sounds etc, there's not much on offer. A few odd flutes or 'theatre' sounds but that's about it. Technics did actually put some tab organ sounds (basically old school Lowrey, IIRC) in their KN7000.

I guess that the manufacturers don't think there's much call for this type of voicing in new keyboards but you could always look at Orla's higher-end range (though these are classed more as single manual organs than keyboards - not that there's much difference!).

[mashaffer]

Of course another option is to get any one of a number of keyboards with midi output and a computer and the options expand greatly.

mike

[andyg]

[quote user="mashaffer"]

Of course another option is to get any one of a number of keyboards with midi output and a computer and the options expand greatly.

[/quote]

True, but you still wouldn't get the sounds he wants 'out of the box'.

Perhaps run Miditzer and make some custom soundfonts for it?

[organlover1]

Hi, I have a Yamaha DGX-520 and check out the organ sounds on it. A great Theatre Organ sound, church organs, rock organs, a really great sampling of organs. Check out on you tube