Keyboard Corner update - a change in clonewheel

I just pulled the trigger on my acquisition list item to fill the Clonewheel gap. After going through decision points and targets that started with the Roland VR-09 V-Combo, then the Nord Electro 4D (which until last Tuesday was my actual target) - and then on Tuesday I thought enough to really dig in and go through a much larger list of Clonewheels that covered off the last 15 years: Korg CX-3, Voce modules, etc... and dug out references to two unknown to me keyboards that are new and both very highly regarded.

The Crumar Muse is a dual manual organ based on Windows Embedded hosting a firmware based VB3 VST from GSi. But as with what I'm typically looking at - the dual manual organ was a bit spendier than my budget allowed at $2500 plus shipping from Italy. Great reviews, great specs... but no...

The Fatar Studiologic Numa combo organ ended up being my choice. Endorsed by and based on the very iconic B3 organ owned by Joey de Francesco (very famous jazz organist) - I watched several YouTube performance and review videos, read many other reviews, and then did some soul searching as it is a dedicated organ clone - no other sounds loadable on this. With the Leslie emulation being very highly regarded, the sound of the B3 and C3 being highly praised, the portability of the unit... and the price being a full $300 cheaper on eBay than the Nord - this became a no brainer.

This means that in order to have my beloved Mellotron samples I'll need to have some kind of VST host unit. I have my eye on a couple Muse Receptor units on eBay right now which are very affordable - lets see how long that lasts. One auction ends Sunday so I'll have updates next week.

This means my keyboard rig now looks like this:

• Yamaha MOx6 workstation
• Studiologic Numa organ
• Yamaha KX-88 with Korg Triton Rack & Yamaha TX816
• Roland Gaia SH-01 virtual analog synth
• Novation X-Station 49 synth
• Muse Receptor
• Arturia Analog Laboratory
• Native Instruments Komplete 7
• Ultrabook computer - patch loading and editing/controlling

I also have a M-Audio Axiom 49 and a Roland GR-33 to MIDI into the rig - keyboardist will have their rig as detailed above, but I can access modules/workstations to either play keys or add layers to my guitar parts. There are some songs (such as Mesmerize) which have the Sustainiac guitar controlling monosynth lines adding timbres to the song.