Need an honest review of the Technics SX-100C

[Shawn Gallagher]

I have the opportunity to purchase a Technics SX-100C organ for very little money. Can someone provide an honest review? How does it compare to a Lowrey? Sound quality? Number of presets, voices, styles, songs, etc.?

Thank you,
Shawn

[andyg]

Do you mean an SX-F100 console or an SX-G100 spinet, perhaps? Apart from very early models, there will always be a letter or letters after SX and before the number.

Either of those two models are superb instruments, even by today's standards. They have the ability to emulate various makes of home organ, like Hammond, Gulbransen, Conn, Lowrey and Eminent, as well as classical and pipe theatre. Lots of good quality orchestral and solo sounds and very usable rhythms and automatic backings. Definitely more of a player's organ than more recent Lowreys, which are heavily biased towards the home 'hobby' player, in terms of automatic features, factory set presets etc.

There are many threads about those two models with more information. If it's not one of those, please post a photo so we know what model you're looking at.

[auronoxe]

I switched my SX GA3 (the spinet model of the ..100) 6 months ago with a Roland AT-500 - which is about 15-20 years younger. And I can say: It is possible to hear this in almost any respect. The GA3 is a nice organ and very versatile - and surely worth 500 to 1000 €. But the Hammond sound and Leslie simulation, the Theatre organ sound and several of the orchestral sounds and the reverb are definitely worse than on current Roland organs (I can‘t compare to Lowrey, I don‘t know them enough). Certainly the current Rolands are about 3 times and more expensive on the other hand.

The Technics organs seem to have glitches when they get older meanwhile (sold since 1995!): The tempo wheel does often not work properly anymore (can be fixed), the disk drive may fail (can be fixed with USB drive) and some get a strange digital noise when the volume is low (can probably not be fixed), which disturbs the reverb significantly.

Number wise (styles, voices) the GA3 compares to the smaller to mid range Rolands. It‘s enough! However it is missing some modern styles and modern drum sets that Roland (and Lowrey) offer.

One big disadvantage of the GA3 is: The organ has no split point for the lower keys. No way to play more that one voice-combination there. Roland and Lowrey offer at least 2. My Roland AT-500 can offer up to 4 (!) different split areas at one time: Drums, then a bass sound (can be any sound, at any transposition), then lower voices (3 in parallel), then upper solo (1 voice).

More modern organs have more than 4 octaves for the lower keys ... which is handy for many split points or playing the piano.

So over all based on my latest, current experience: At a sensible price definitely very nice! But it does not compare anymore to current, still more expensive models of Roland concerning sound quality of many voices.

[andyg]

I'll have to respectfully differ about the leslie sim quality. If you really dig into it and start playing mix and match with organ types and tremolos, you get something that's certainly the equal of the regular At x00 models, though not the Platinums, which have the VK09 drawbar organ engine. You start with the tremolo assigned to the 'US Theatre' type sound (Conn) and then adjust the rotor speeds and wind up/down times until you get something close to a 147 or 760 Leslie. If you start with the 'Theatre Drawbars' type, then do the same things you can closely emulate a 710 or 715. One day I'll find a nearby GA3 or G100 and re-create all of the settings I used. They may still be on my 'survival' disk, which I make available to any GA3/G100 owners.

I'd concur with the points that auronoxe makes about the split points etc, and I'd add that the solo and ensemble voices on the larger Rolands are better than the Technics, especially when it comes to strings. I think the Technics has some brass voices that I'd like on my Roland, though.

[auronoxe]

Hi Andy,
yes, I tried that and it really improved things compared to the default parameters. But my ears still told me, that 2“ to 1“ drawbars with higher notes are just not affected by the Leslie effect strong enough. It has not enough „bite“ (harshness) in my opinion. I feel it‘s too much of a pure tremolo. But certainly everyone has different taste and expectations :-)

[gregp]

Certainly interesting to read differering opinions.
As somebody who sold plenty of Technics organs and some Atelier models (not the ATx00 series), I've always preferred the way the tremolo works with the electric/electronic organ sounds on the Technics, and the flexibilty of editing the various tremolo/tremulant types.
I think the Atelier tremolo doesn't handle the higher pitches very well and the sound can be a bit shrill (like some Italian organs can be). Always found it necessary to keep the volume of the higher pitches down a bit on the Ateliers that have digital drawbars, but I'm sure it's much better on the newer Roland models.

The GA/G100 are 26 year old technology and many of the sounds are a bit dated and to be honest the key to them, particularly in creating decent strings and theatre or classical organ sounds is using sound edit. The standard touch sensitivity and digital filtering is all wrong on the string ensemble sounds, and there simply aren't enough organ sounds using just the sampled theatre or classical organ tabs and extra voices in the screen to create a big sound with out adding edited sounds from the orchestral sections. To be fair, I think the Atelier would be the same to a certain extent, if it didn't have preset theatre and classical organ combinations. Always thought it a shame that Technics didn't include an organ sound section in the orchestral voices, beacuse there are plenty of organ sounds in the orchestral sound chip they could have used. I used them when I created an organ registration disk for Technote back in the day, and Tony Pegler certainly did when he created the theatre organ player styles and registation disks.

Shortly after the GA was realeased, Roland introduced the Atelier AT50 and 70 and I remember how impressive the classical and theatre sounds were, but how poor the rhythms were on those early models, certainly compared to the Technics GA series, and that the first two models didn't have a real sampled piano sound.
Have to agree with Andy, some of the brass sounds are still really good on Technics, and at the time were way better than most other organs. Electric pianos and some of the pad sounds still sound great.

I've rambled off topic a bit here...but I'd definitely buy a G100 or GA3 (personally sooner have a GA3) if I were looking for a cheap organ, they can still make a great sound and I'm sure will be way more advanced than a Lowrey of similar vintage.
Compared to a more modern Lowrey, the Technics doesn't have as many presets and rhythms, but for one of the same era the G100 has more and there's certainly plenty of disks available for the Technics to add more rhythms and presets if you wish, that's for sure. There are dozens and dozens.