I used an 8-element, slider/drawbar-assigned AWM2 organ Voice in a Motif XF7; worked fairly well for basic gigging; though it didn't quite keep up with a dedicated clonewheel engine. Adding a Ventilator did help, some. From what I've listened to and studied so far, the Montage AWM2-based organs are a step up, though don't sound exactly competitive with current built-in clonewheel models - i.e., Nord Stage 2, Korg Kronos, Kurzweil Forte. But as someone who's considering a Montage - which would sometimes be used on single-keyboard gigs (on which I wouldn't have my Hammond XK-1C), I think there may be an alternate, and very viable solution: FM-X, plus an outboard effect (e.g. - Ventilator) or the internal rotary sim - especially if it's new / upgraded from those in the Motif XS/XF.

From what I understand, so far, I think this might work: Two FM-X engines within a Performance, 8 Operators each, would provide plenty of resources for creating drawbar tones, percussion, key click, etc.. Additional FM or AWM2 components could also be brought into play to imitate the complex and varying and tonal anomalies that occur in a true tonewheel organ. So initially, have one FM-X engine contain the 16' drawbar, plus the additional tonewheel sound components, etc., and assign that drawbar's volume to your front panel controller of choice; then, have the other FM-X engine contain the remaining eight drawbars - assigned to the eight sliders. Put through a Vent (or improved onboard sim ?) it could work well.

I used some custom DX7 organ patches in the late 80's, and tried them through a Digitech RPM. That worked great for the time, so I'll bet FM-X 8-OP organs w/Vent or improved onboard sim would sound great today; and likely much stronger than the AWM2 organs alone. Sampled organs sound initially good - as a 'snapshot', but tend to fall short - due to the missing tonewheel anomalies and interactions typically reproduced by dedicated clones. With all of the sonic firepower in the Montage, it would seem that competitive clone-grade organ Performances could be produced.

Cheer Alan, but that sounds a little complicated for my skills. I was hoping they would have built the organ from the Reface range into this. Perhaps it might be an add - on at some stage.

Also does Montage offer draw bar facility?.

The Montage does not have drawbars- you can use the eight Control Sliders to act as Element/Operator or Part Volume Level controls. It must be stated this way (least some one be confused).

The level controls work so that the up position is maximum. In either AWM2 and FM-X you can build a tone wheel organ an oscillator at a time, as discussed above.
Of course, Montage offers radically new ways to approach controlling the output level of multiple oscillators. If you'd like the more traditional control using the CS as reversed drawbars, that is available (like in Motif) but right up the "Super Knob's" alley is morphing one setting to another smoothly, right up the eight recall able SCENEs alley is "instant recall" of different drawbar settings for your detailed organ program.

Playing the drawbars, is an art. If real time action (traditional) is what you want, the CS act as level controls when you select that function.

Don't just think "8 + 1" for nine oscillators, Montage has some 55 more oscillators to work with in a playable program... I'm not suggesting you need them all for a B3 emulation, but just saying, you maybe thinking 2 dimensionally in a 3 dimensional chess game! Additional, oscillators can be used for specific details. Things like "leakage", "rotar noise", real chorusing of oscillators, etc., etc., can be done with such fine details now, adding just the right amount to your tone wheel organ is where the 64 available oscillators open new doors.

I'll repeat many times between now and ship date, reserve opinions about what Montage is in comparison to other products... On paper everything sounds flat (pun intended) making sonic comparisons before you actually hear it, is, well making sonic comparisons before you actually hear it. Judging ice cream based on looks would be wrong, all wrong, on so many levels!

Vanilla ice cream looks just like mashed potatoes in 2 dimensions...

Thanks Phil

Cant wait until May.

Has this been addressed yet? (regarding a draw bar facility)

Is there a tutorial or instructions on how to do this?

thanks in advance...

Why isn't there just an organ preset that contains the programming necessary to use the sliders as Hammond drawbars? I've already had a bunch of people ask me if it can do that. "You can program one if you dig in really deep and know what you're doing, but the sliders will be backwards"... This is not a very impressive answer to win these people over.

Hale wrote:

Why isn't there just an organ preset that contains the programming necessary to use the sliders as Hammond drawbars? I've already had a bunch of people ask me if it can do that. "You can program one if you dig in really deep and know what you're doing, but the sliders will be backwards"... This is not a very impressive answer to win these people over.

Isn't the "All 9 Bars" exactly doing that? With the 1.20 firmware update it automatically switches to that mode, with the older version you would have to switch to performance control automatically, but still, it is there. Am I missing something?

I believe "All 9 Bars!" covers the fader-control romplerwheel category fairly well.

Keep in mind that there is a second "page" (part 2's elements vs. part 1) of controls that adjust parameters such as percussion, leakage, key contact noise, etc.

Be sure to split the keyboard if you want to have percussion while playing chords in the left hand - or your left-hand work will keep the percussion from sounding due to the normal legato characteristics of percussion in the hammond (meaning none w/legato).

I mentioned this elsewhere - but there are certain artifacts which are available with the Part 2 elements which I believe should sound at all times even when no keys are pressed - so it's a bit strange to hear some of the "noise" only when keys are pressed that would generally be regarded as always there ("Rotor Grit2").

Edit: And yes, I agree the Leslie simulator could be better. My clonewheel is currently a Voce V3 drawbar MIDI+rack unit. Which, these days, isn't the top of the heap anymore - but still stacks up fairly well. I'll compare the two to see if the sound that's in my head for the V3 is really "better" than the Montage.

Follow-up:

The leakage noise seems to match what the Voce does and cuts it out when no keys are pressed. I'll have to "roll out" the Hammond CV to see what it sounds like one of these days.

What I noticed is the foldback is different. I'm not sure, right off, who's right. But there's hardly any foldback on the Montage's "All 9 Bars!". One of the "pipes" has a foldback around Db and D (if I'm remembering correctly) which doesn't match any of the Voce's foldback - which has more points of foldback. At least from the chart I started to look up - there's more foldback at play with the 3-series (B3, C3, etc). Also, there's just one percussion with no adjustments on the decay - although volume is "infinitely" more adjustable for percussion volume on the Montage. The core sound of the pipes is different on the Voce as well. I was only comparing the J.S. program on the Voce - so there may be a different organ simulated that sounds closer.

To me, the overall sound of the Yamaha sounds much better (more round) while the Voce is able to get a bit more "dirty". The speaker simulation is not the strongest with either - the personality of each organ (between Voce and Montage) is unique and neither is bad. Both have enough flexibility to face just about any gig. Montage has the additional benefit of surgical modification to the sound - particularly around custom shaping of the percussion sound (frequencies and decay) without having to go too deep into programming. As mentioned previously, the Montage doesn't "out of the box" have the decay settings and also doesn't have an adjustable harmonic (pitch) like Voce - but given the ability to edit these components - the Montage comes out ahead in just about every category.

It's going to be difficult to get that leslie perfect. The Voce has a Leslie output for a direct connection. I believe it worked fine with my leslie. Montage would require a conversion kit. Short of that - there are popular add-ons for Leslie simulation that may be an upgrade add-on. Even though stereo may help - I never get two channels on a gig - so mono is my reference in order to stay as true to my gig sound. I have two reference monitors - but am just leaving one plugged in for the time being.

Sorry for question. I don't understand how last firmware update has give a benefit to 9 bars program. May someone explained it to me?
Have someone test montage with crumar burn?

Previously, the fact that you could use the faders to adjust element levels was "lost" because when you pulled up "All 9 Bars!", the keyboard defaulted the faders to adjust part volumes.

"All 9 Bars!" has two parts

Part 1: 8 drawbars
Part 2: 1 drawbar + other noisy things (percussion, keyclick, leakage)

Previously, when you pulled up "All 9 Bars!" - by default (and I stress - just the default how things were configured) - the faders 1 and 2 would just adjust the volume of the part (meaning everything in the part at once) #1 and #2.

Default control setting (old firmware) -
Previous Fader 1: All 8 drawbars volume controlled at once (since this is part 1)
Previous Fader 2: All of what the part 2 did - 9th drawbar plus noisy things would be faded at once

So, by default, when when using the old firmware and pulling up "All 9 Bars!" - you couldn't use the faders to adjust the 8 drawbars in part 1.

... now - since you can save what the faders control (this is indicated by the 3 green LEDs to the left of the faders "Part 1-8" "Part 9-16" and "Element/Operator"), "All 9 Bars!" will default to "Element/Operator" instead of - previously - "Part 1-8". What this means is that when you pull up "All 9 Bars!" and move a fader - it will change elements 1-8 of the currently selected part. By default, part 1 is selected - so when now when pulling up "All 9 bars" the faders control drawbars 1-8 individually

Default control setting (new firmware) -
New Fader 1: Drawbar 1 (part 1, element 1 volume)
New Fader 2: Drawbar 2 (part 1, element 2 volume)
New Fader 3: Drawbar 3 (part 1, element 3 volume)
New Fader 4: Drawbar 4 (part 1, element 4 volume)
New Fader 5: Drawbar 5 (part 1, element 5 volume)
New Fader 6: Drawbar 6 (part 1, element 6 volume)
New Fader 7: Drawbar 7 (part 1, element 7 volume)
New Fader 8: Drawbar 8 (part 1, element 8 volume)

... that said: you could always get the montage in this mode - even with old firmware. It just wasn't "mode switching" the faders to control element volume when you selected the "All 9 Bars!" performance. The extra (previous) step was you had to make the green LED illuminate on "Element/Operator") by pressing [PERFORMANCE CONTROL] then Number A [1] (which is the "1/1" button under "PART SELECT") or Number A [2] (which is the "2/2" button) depending on the part you want to control elements for. Note above I detailed part 1 since that's the default part controlled when you select the performance now w/new firmware.

If you want to switch to part 2 - you still have to do the button pressing of [PERFORMANCE CONTROL] then Number A [1] (for part 1) or [2] (for part 2).

The part 2 gives you control over the 9th drawbar plus 5 other interesting nuances. In part 2, the last two faders (7 and 8) do not control anything. I won't detail this because getting to part 2 and what is available under part 2 is the exact same as old firmware.

This is all about the defaults when you "load up" the "All 9 Bars!" performance. Nothing has changed about what it CAN do - just how you get to the mode which allows the faders to adjust individual drawbars.

The downside to the previous default was that one would not realize you can do anything useful with the faders since only faders 1 and 2 did anything - and just turned off almost the entire organ core sound or other fader just turned off all the clicking noises (percussion) since by default the 9th drawbar was at 0 and only the percussion was turned on. Which made for a very low amount of any real control until you realized you could switch into a mode to set the faders to control elements (direct drawbar control) - if you ever got that far.

Also, expanding further than what v1.20 gives you - keep in mind that also the assignable knobs control organ parameters too. Like the faders, what these knobs affect changes as you change the part (that Number A [1] or [2] selection from above).

Part 1 has the left-most assignable knob (assignable knob 1) as rotor/horn mix. Next knob is disabled even though it is set to control element 6 volume (which is the same as fader 6). The reason why spinning this knob doesn't do anything is because under motion control element 6 is set to OFF. Probably because the fader is good enough and having a knob only gets in the way if you do not have the knob set at 50%. Next knob over is set to element 7 volume - same as last knob - has been disabled. Next knob over (assignable knob 4) is for overdrive. Assignable knob 5 is not used at all (unassigned). Assignable knob 6 is reverb level. Assignable knob 7 is delay amount. Assignable knob 8 is not used at all (unassigned).

Part 2's assignable knobs mostly control different parameters. You can turn on "Auto Select" under the Mod/Control->Control Assign menu for Part 2 (common) to see what each knob does. In this case, the knobs that control element levels do have the element turned on - and generally these act as limiters (floor and ceiling) of the fader.

Sorry Jason, but which is the procedure to save with the program the element led on?
I select performance controol and part 1 so I can controol 8 element volume of part 1 and I save in this condition, but when I return on this program the led is switched to part 1-8 so I can't controol element volume. Is it necessary to setting somthing somewhere?
Thanks

Ok sorry I've found out what is the problem.
Thanks.