Tweet
Virtual Hammond X-66 and WERSI W Series? OR a new Analogue instrument?
After spending an inordinate number of years looking to gain access to various organs, namely the Gulbransen Rialto K, the WERSI HELIOS and Hammond X-66 for the purposes of digitally sampling them. I decided that if I can't beat them then I'd join them by changing the rules. I don't have the physical room for all these organs, nor the space for extensive speaker arrangements, but I can build analogue organs.
During 2016 the assembly manuals for the WERSI 'W' Series Helios, Classica, Saturn and Galaxis were gradually obtained from Germany along with all the various voicing filter cards, a, b, c, d, e, f and their associated motherboards.
Several WERSIVOICE PCB's were obtained for the WERSI's choral and tremulant animation. Thus the animation of the standard W series and the dual channel WERSIVOICE of the Galaxis will be replicated.
Since the voices of the WERSI voice filtering could have attack and decay applied by the use of drawbars, I decided that for completeness sake, rather than just sampling the voices straight from the voice filters, that it would be more prudent to have the correct attack/decay keying and master oscillators driving the voice filters. So the search is on and more PCB's are to be obtained in 2017.
This year has concentrated on the WERSI side of things as the X-66 really needs the Vibrato Scanner to animate the voicing properly and without which really was not going to cut the mustard for replicating the X-66's special sound.
Well, earlier this year after spending several years hunting for one, I found an X-66 Vibrato Scanner assembly on eBay, won the bid and had it shipped to the UK. With many thanks to Paco de la Rosa, I now have the rubber drivebelts to run the three scanner assemblies. That way I can now consider designing and building new X-66 voicing cards and digital sampling can take as long as I like in order to get them right.
And that's really been the problem getting access to these organs for digital recording, either they are not fully functional or owners may not have either the time or interest to make samples. That is beginning not to matter any more for the WERSI and later next year the X-66, the Rialto K is a different story, sampling or rebuilding an old Rialto K remains an elusive task.
After deliberating whether to try and obtain a pair of the X-66's Series 12 tone cabinets, in reading Daniel Vigin's account of their poor audio replication, and combining that information with listening to the recent digital recordings made on the X-66 made by Omar Garcia. The decision was set to ignore that idea and go for direct injection for recording purposes and in the new instruments design, add a BOSS RT-20 Rotary Sound Processor like Omar uses.
https://youtu.be/hE5DqfAQkVc
Thankfully, in understanding the way these two magnificent organs work, it transpires that replicating the WERSI-COMPUTER and the X-66's Drawbar operation is similar to that of the Gulbransen Rialto II in that they are voltage controlled and do not pass audio. Meaning that all the tabs and drawbars for both instruments can be controlled by MIDI messages sent from another MIDI keyboard or an Artisan Instruments control system. Thus thumb pistons, combination action, SAM's and MIDI can all change the entire instruments voicing and animation whilst playing live.
I'd still rather digitally sample than build new percussion circuits for the X-66 and I would still like to obtain the sounds of the Gulbransen Rialto K's Tibia's, so IF you have either of these instruments and can help things along then please PM me.
T. B. C.
Comment