Gear Hunter
Korg CX3 Combo Organ
Description
The Korg CX-3 is an electronic clonewheel organ with drawbars that simulates the sound of an electromechanical Hammond organ and the Leslie speaker, a rotating speaker effect unit. The CX-3 was first introduced in 1979. This is the Digital remake which was issued in 2001. It has two sets of drawbars, a waterfall keyboard, expression and overdrive controls, and a built-in reverb unit and Leslie simulator. It also had a tube (valve) amplifier simulation. It weighs 37.5 lb (17 kg). It has a 20-character fluorescent display to provide information to the player about the presets and effects. It uses Korg's REMS (Resonant structure and Electronic circuit Modeling System) to provide sound modeling and emulation for the tonewheel sound.
Like a Hammond B-3, the Korg CX-3 has three vibrato settings and three chorus settings. It has two drawbar sets of nine drawbars per set, and offers a split keyboard mode. It also has MIDI In, Out and Thru jacks so it could be connected to sequencers or other MIDI instruments. It can save 128 programmable presets.
Korg implemented a range of MIDI capabilities. The CX-3 offers seven different MIDI channels, which are all adjusted globally. The upper and the lower parts of the split keyboard each have an individual RX and two TX channels. The first TX will send a note according to the waterfall keyboard, i.e. when the key is depressed by about 1mm, whereas the second TX will send the note when the key is completely pressed down. The global channel (e.g. for program change commands) is the same for RX and TX.
The 2001 model has some buttons and functions not present in the 1979 version. Among these are an edit button, a write/enter button, an exit button, eight program select buttons, check/advance buttons, and increment/decrement buttons. Many of the buttons have LED status lights. In addition, the 2001 model has a 1/4" expression pedal jack and two 1/4" assignable control jacks (switch pedals could be connected to the two assignable jacks to control various features, such as turning on the rotary speaker emulator or selecting programs). A feature not found on the 1979 CX-3 or on the vintage Hammond B-3 is the 2001 CX-3's EX mode, which enables the user to produce new and even unusual synthesized sounds using the tonewheel synthesis engine. The CX-3 does not have an 11-pin Leslie speaker jack, a feature found on vintage Hammond B-3's and on earlier clonewheel organs.
Besides the balance between the horn and the rotor the Leslie simulator offers many programmable details: slow speed, fast speed, up transition time, down transition time and stop transition time, and microphone spread and distance. All these are available for the horn as well as for the rotor and are individually saved for each preset.
The amplifier simulation provides two types or just a preamplifier. It has a three-band equalizer providing adjustable gain in the range +/-10dB for each band. All these settings are per preset.
