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So 5 years ago, I was happily gigging on my Hammond SK2 when I started hearing about HX3 and MAG organs. I spoke to people who had played one and they assured me these were the best sounding clones around. So I ordered one.
It took a year to build and deliver. If they had told me that on day 1, I would have cancelled and bought something else. But it's the slow burn- "just two more weeks" over and over again for months. While waiting, I learned that HX3, the engine that drives the MAG Organ, could only be updated using a PC running WINDOWS 10 (I think?) or earlier. I happen to have a dying old Windows 7 laptop laying around, so fine. I was told that an iPad app was coming out and that you'd be able to update your organ using a wifi connection "soon." It's 5 years later. And neither of those bald-faced lies have come to fruition.
So after a year of waiting, it arrived, complete with an extra $300 import fee that nobody warned me about. I plugged it in, turned it on, and the sound was cutting in and out. I wrote to Max and he immediately had me opening the organ and poking around. I found several loose screws inside. They were bumping up against the output and causing shorts. Nobody has ever been able to tell me what those screws went to. So the organ was finally working. Except...
I noticed when I had the organ hooked up to my Leslie 3300, and accidently hit the switch for the "internal Leslie sim" it would boost gain in my Leslie 3300. The Leslie sim was now playing through my actual Leslie. Reported the issue, never resolved.
When turning the overdrive knob, a tone can be heard. It sounds like a synth. Turn the overdrive up. And the tone goes higher. Turn the overdrive down, and the tone goes lower. In steps, like auto tune. Reported this several times, assured multiple times it was a few weeks from being resolved. Never was.
I reported easily a dozen issues to the manufacturer over the next year or so, none of which were ever addressed or fixed.
Now lets talk about updating this thing. You have to log onto a windows 7-10 machine (good luck!) with a USB cable because as previously stated, the wifi dongle and iPad app never happened. Oh they did sort of release an app for the iPad, but you can't use it to update your organ. It's just an iPad version of the organ's controls which is handy if you are playing your organ and suddenly, for some reason, you.can no longer reach the controls that are right in front of you on your organ, but can somehow inexplicably reach an iPad. Not what I was promised when he was taking my money.
So one day I hook up all the ancient machinery to do another standard update to my organ, and it just **** the bed. The HX3 board was dead in the water. Cannot be revived. Guess what? You have to open up the organ, remove the HX3 board, send it to Germany to be fixed. So after several months and more international mail, I finall.received the HX3 back. Carefully reinstalled it and followed their exact directions for setting it back up, and still no signal. I can hear the internal Leslie spinning, but the keyboards make no noise.
So I went back and forth with Max for another YEAR trying to unf*ck that ugly mess. After Max finally realized that he hadnt instructed me to run the correct keyboard scanner to recognize the MAG fatar keyboards, we finally got it fixed, only to realize that the Editor software and the organ.itself had undergone some big changes since my $3000 paperweight last made sound. The volume, drive, organ and tone dials no longer operated the same way. When I asked about this, Max accused me of not listening to him and "messing things up." Yeah, but I didn't change all the switch assignments to buttons, that wasn't me. I didn't change how the volume knobs work, they did. And nobody advised me of it. To try and blame ME for changes that Keyboardpartner and MAG chose to make? Nope. Not the behavior of a worthwhile adult, much less a business.
My advice is to stay FAR away from this manufacturer unless you absolutely love years of disappointment, anger, frustration, and shipping things overseas. If you like being blamed for choices that THEY made. If you like trying to get tech support via email from somebody who is 14 hours ahead in timezones, ENJOY!
I do appreciate the help I was given over the years by Max, but the bottom line is this- when you spend over $3,000 on something, YOU SHOULD NOT NEED 4 YEARS OF HELP. Any REPUTABLE dealer would have replaced this broken piece of crap immediately. Not MAG!
I can't even sell this thing to some other sucker in good conscience because I'm not human trash. So I guess I'm stuck with a $3,000 lesson. And a hissy, ****** sounding organ that will break down again any day now- Do I trust it enough to gig with it? Absolutely not! Not without a backup. You cannot rely on it.
I'm sure lots of people had better luck with MAG than I have. I don't care. I'm here to tell prospective buyers to BEWARE. They will lie to your face. They will promise things that never happen. And your organ could easily brick for no reason during a simple, routine update, causing you to mail crap all over the world for months. If that sounds like fun to you, go ahead- roll the dice. But understand that when you buy a MAG organ, you ARE rolling the dice. It's a $3,000 gamble. And the house is the only guaranteed winner.
It took a year to build and deliver. If they had told me that on day 1, I would have cancelled and bought something else. But it's the slow burn- "just two more weeks" over and over again for months. While waiting, I learned that HX3, the engine that drives the MAG Organ, could only be updated using a PC running WINDOWS 10 (I think?) or earlier. I happen to have a dying old Windows 7 laptop laying around, so fine. I was told that an iPad app was coming out and that you'd be able to update your organ using a wifi connection "soon." It's 5 years later. And neither of those bald-faced lies have come to fruition.
So after a year of waiting, it arrived, complete with an extra $300 import fee that nobody warned me about. I plugged it in, turned it on, and the sound was cutting in and out. I wrote to Max and he immediately had me opening the organ and poking around. I found several loose screws inside. They were bumping up against the output and causing shorts. Nobody has ever been able to tell me what those screws went to. So the organ was finally working. Except...
I noticed when I had the organ hooked up to my Leslie 3300, and accidently hit the switch for the "internal Leslie sim" it would boost gain in my Leslie 3300. The Leslie sim was now playing through my actual Leslie. Reported the issue, never resolved.
When turning the overdrive knob, a tone can be heard. It sounds like a synth. Turn the overdrive up. And the tone goes higher. Turn the overdrive down, and the tone goes lower. In steps, like auto tune. Reported this several times, assured multiple times it was a few weeks from being resolved. Never was.
I reported easily a dozen issues to the manufacturer over the next year or so, none of which were ever addressed or fixed.
Now lets talk about updating this thing. You have to log onto a windows 7-10 machine (good luck!) with a USB cable because as previously stated, the wifi dongle and iPad app never happened. Oh they did sort of release an app for the iPad, but you can't use it to update your organ. It's just an iPad version of the organ's controls which is handy if you are playing your organ and suddenly, for some reason, you.can no longer reach the controls that are right in front of you on your organ, but can somehow inexplicably reach an iPad. Not what I was promised when he was taking my money.
So one day I hook up all the ancient machinery to do another standard update to my organ, and it just **** the bed. The HX3 board was dead in the water. Cannot be revived. Guess what? You have to open up the organ, remove the HX3 board, send it to Germany to be fixed. So after several months and more international mail, I finall.received the HX3 back. Carefully reinstalled it and followed their exact directions for setting it back up, and still no signal. I can hear the internal Leslie spinning, but the keyboards make no noise.
So I went back and forth with Max for another YEAR trying to unf*ck that ugly mess. After Max finally realized that he hadnt instructed me to run the correct keyboard scanner to recognize the MAG fatar keyboards, we finally got it fixed, only to realize that the Editor software and the organ.itself had undergone some big changes since my $3000 paperweight last made sound. The volume, drive, organ and tone dials no longer operated the same way. When I asked about this, Max accused me of not listening to him and "messing things up." Yeah, but I didn't change all the switch assignments to buttons, that wasn't me. I didn't change how the volume knobs work, they did. And nobody advised me of it. To try and blame ME for changes that Keyboardpartner and MAG chose to make? Nope. Not the behavior of a worthwhile adult, much less a business.
My advice is to stay FAR away from this manufacturer unless you absolutely love years of disappointment, anger, frustration, and shipping things overseas. If you like being blamed for choices that THEY made. If you like trying to get tech support via email from somebody who is 14 hours ahead in timezones, ENJOY!
I do appreciate the help I was given over the years by Max, but the bottom line is this- when you spend over $3,000 on something, YOU SHOULD NOT NEED 4 YEARS OF HELP. Any REPUTABLE dealer would have replaced this broken piece of crap immediately. Not MAG!
I can't even sell this thing to some other sucker in good conscience because I'm not human trash. So I guess I'm stuck with a $3,000 lesson. And a hissy, ****** sounding organ that will break down again any day now- Do I trust it enough to gig with it? Absolutely not! Not without a backup. You cannot rely on it.
I'm sure lots of people had better luck with MAG than I have. I don't care. I'm here to tell prospective buyers to BEWARE. They will lie to your face. They will promise things that never happen. And your organ could easily brick for no reason during a simple, routine update, causing you to mail crap all over the world for months. If that sounds like fun to you, go ahead- roll the dice. But understand that when you buy a MAG organ, you ARE rolling the dice. It's a $3,000 gamble. And the house is the only guaranteed winner.
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