Hammond XK-5 61-Note Drawbar Keyboard + 12 Presets

Due to their size and weight, lugging old Hammond organs like the B3, to and from gigs has never been easy or fun. Since they’re getting on a bit and are a little more senstive, it’s now increasingly difficult to move them without them grumbling about it later when on stage. And after all, you don’t want to break something you might not be able to get fixed. In short, it hasn’t easy to get that authentic Hammond sound with any convenience. Until now, that is! The Hammond XK-5 comes so close to faithfully matching the sound and feel of the original B3 (especially when combined with the XLK-5 keyboard) but has none of the problems that come with the age and sheer bulk of its ancestor.

Hammond XK-5 Drawbar Keyboard: The New Original
The Hammond XK-5 brings the past, present and future together in a drawbar organ that looks entirely new and yet warmly familiar. As such, it’s already adopted the nickname, ‘The New Original’. The latest technology has been used to affectionately recreate the original Hammond sound which until now, has never been done quite so faithfully by a modern instrument. The Hybrid Multiple Key Contact System that controls key response is a completely new design. With an organ, you hear all the harmonics that are controlled by the drawbars simultaneously. With a real Hammond, however, the further a key is pressed, the more harmonics are produced. It’s a subtle difference, but it’s a detail that has not only been observed with this model but one that all true Hammond fans will undoubtedly appreciate.

That’s why the XK-5s keyboard uses three mechanical contacts per key that trigger three additional virtual contacts each, so that the drawbar harmonics produced are as close to the original as possible. It’s this sort of attention to detail that gives the XK-5 the same feeling as the B3 when you play it. The keys even have the classic waterfall design, essential to hammering out classic Hammond organ techniques like palm slides.

Adjustable Settings
All of the signals from the different registers pass through a precisely-tuned, linked transformer just like the original Hammond, to produce the same breathy sound. The saturation and hysteresis on the XK-5 is adjustable from virtually nothing to full on. Compared to its predecessor the XK-3, the XK-5 has more than 50 new features just waiting to be toyed with. The interface and menus are easy to use and all of the different sounds and effects can be easily adjusted. As well as built-in percussion, the effects include Leslie, vibrato/chorus, overdrive and reverb. Better still, lugging the XK-5 around is as easy as it can get.