Hammond XK3 and Sysex

[Drawbar Dave]

I’m not sure whether this should be under Hammond Organs or Midi but here goes. Despite reading the manual carefully i don’t understand how to send a setup by sysex from a computer to the organ. I wanted to try out the Jim Alfredson setup. It sends via Midi Ox but there is no acknowledgement from the Hammond, which I would expect from my experience of sending sysex dumps to old Yamaha and Roland synths.

Can anyone enlighten me further?

[JJMcS]

It has been years since I messed with Sysex dumps/loads on my XK-3 /c and XM-2 module so my memory on exact details is fuzzy. Also, I used SoundQuest MIDI Tools to do it. I tried MIDI-OX a few times to try to help others and alwaus had a heck of a time getting the signals connected/routed properly. You can download a sysex file from your XK-3 and upload that file or a sysex file from another XK-3 to your XK-3. Setup files are different. If you have a normal setup file (XXX.SET) you can't load it via MIDI. It can only be loaded from a compact flash card. If you don't have one, try to find an old very small (1 or 2 Mb) card. It is a long story but basically the XK-3 needs a CF card that runs on 5 volts. As the cards got bigger the CF card spec changed to 3 volts. Cards were supposed to be backwards compatible and run on either voltage but very few were so they didn't work.

Good luck.

[Drawbar Dave]

Thanks for the fast reply. It looks like it would be quicker to input the tonewheel values manually! I don’t want to start messing with outdated storage media, I had all that experience with my Super JX. The organ sounds good with the subtle tweaks that I have already done so perhaps I should stick with just playing it :-)

[JJMcS]

It really shouldn't take too long to enter the values but save the tonewheel set often as you enter the values. if you accidentally exit the adjustment mode you will have to start over or from the last saved point..

[Drawbar Dave]

It’s a shame the tone wheel values cannot be converted in to millivolts peak to peak. I’d love to be able to programme the generator output values that I charted from my old consoles.

[Drawbar Dave]

Well I ended up finding a couple of cheap 512MB CF cards on eBay from a second hand camera shop for £5 each and easily managed to upgrade the firmware and then loaded Jim Alfredson’s ‘58 B3 set which sounds much better.