Vox Continental 300

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There is an additional emulator for the later Mark-II, Super, 300 or whatever

model you want to call it. This is probably closest to the 300. It was a

dual manual organ, the lower manual is a Continental and the upper manual had

a different drawbar configuration, using 8', 4' and 2', another two compound

drawbars that represented 5-1/3'+1-3/5', and 2-2/3'+2'+1' respectively. This

gave upper manual a wider tonic range, plus it had the ability to apply some

percussive controls to two of the drawbars. Now, depending on model, some of

these values could be different and bristol does not emulate all the different

combinations, it uses the harmonics described above and applies percussive to

the 2' and 5-1/3' harmonics (which is arguably incorrect however it gives

a wider combination of percussive harmonics).

The percussive has 4 controls, these are selectors for the harmonics that will

be driven through the percussive decay (and then no longer respond to the

drawbars), a decay rate called 'L' which acts as a Longer decay when selected,

and a volume selector called 'S' which stands for Soft. The variables are

adjustable in the mods section. The mods panel is intended to be hidden as

they are just variable parameters. On the original units these were PCB mounted

pots that were not generally accessible either. The panel is visible when you

turn the power control off, not that I suppress the keyboard or anything when

the power is off, but it gave me something useful do to with this button. The

transparency layer is fixed here and is used to apply some drop shadow and a

few beer spills on the cover.

There is an additional Bass section for those who bought the optional Bass

pedals (my old one had them). The emulation allow the selection of Flute and

Reed strengths, and to select 8' or 8'/16' harmonics. The 'Sustain' control

does not currently operate (0.10.9) but that can be fixed if people request

the feature.

The lower manual responds to the MIDI channel on which the emulation was

started. The upper manual responds to notes greater than MIDI key 48 on the

next channel up. The Bass section also responds to this second channel on keys

lower than #48. Once started you cannot change the midi channel - use the

'-channel' option at startup to select the one you want. The actual available

max is 15 and that is enforced.

The emulation only contains 6 available presets and a 'Save' button that you

need to double click to overwrite any preset. The emulation actually uses

banks, so if you started it with '-load 23' it would start up by selecting

bank 20, and load memory #3 from that bank. Any saved memories are also then

written back to bank 20, still with just 6 memories accessible 20-25. You can

access more via MIDI bank select and program change operations if suitably

linked up.

Vox is a trade name owned by Korg Inc. of Japan, and Continental is one of

their registered trademarks. Bristol does not intend to infringe upon these

registered names and Korg have their own remarkable range of vintage emulations

available. You are directed to their website for further information of true

Korg products.