We need a new king of Hammond plugins!

[Jace-BeOS]

Thanks for the responses, folks. It's true: I've never played the real thing of either. I would like to but there hasn't been opportunity. Also, I'm more likely to connect to an EP than organ, per my personal taste, so I'd probably enjoy owning a real Rhodes if the universe suddenly made me wealthy.

JCJR: I'd probably like looting your dumpster

[dwozzle]

RE EPs, have you tried AAS Lounge Lizard EP-4? Picked it up here on KVR a bit ago for a good price, and I find it much more fun to play than the Scarbee sampled ones. Wish I was a better keyboard player (I'm more guitar and bass, keys really just to write and arrange), but from where I sit it's pretty organic and responsive. More flexible than you'd think too, though kind of fiddly to customize deeply, but that's the tradeoff for a detailed model with lots of options.

Very cool, worth a try if you haven't yet. Best pick it up used or on serious special though, it's a bit pricey normally IMO.

[JCJR]

Thanks for the responses, folks. It's true: I've never played the real thing of either. I would like to but there hasn't been opportunity. Also, I'm more likely to connect to an EP than organ, per my personal taste, so I'd probably enjoy owning a real Rhodes if the universe suddenly made me wealthy.

JCJR: I'd probably like looting your dumpster

Don't worry I don't pitch anything unless it is rather irredeemably broken. Will probably end up giving away a few items locally, after housecleaning is done.

====

Anyway, vintage old electromechanical instruments pose various difficulties unless one has a warehouse to set em up and time to keep em maintained.

-- Takes study to learn what kinds of tracks, melodies, voicings and techniques actually suit the sonic nature of the instrument, but that probably applies about equally whether playing the original or a modern emulation.

-- The keyboards on lots of the old thangs felt so different that it can take a lot of work to master how to play the damn things (somewhat related to issue 1, the kind of riffs heard from the instruments somewhat molded by what is possible to do on the keyboard).

Clavinet was a light touch sensitive keyboard that tended to sound absurd on complex chords or even chords with lots of notes in them.

The wurlie IMO had a great tone and excellent "light touch piano feel" keyboard, but also fragile. Get carried away and pound on it for even a few minutes and there was danger of breaking reeds like toothpicks, resulting in long repair sessions, and true misery if you happen to wreck it in the middle of a gig and have to play it snaggle toothed and out of tune the rest of the night. Plus they were rather notorious for too much hum and hiss.

Rhodes maybe the biggest learning curve of all. Required both strong fingers and delicacy and control. They were more robust than wurlie, and quicker to repair, but get carried away and break tines. Work purt hard moving a stiff sluggish action but slap it too hard and break a tine.

The simple action relied on little pieces of felt for regulation. A new action was stiff and hard to play, then it gradually would wear until it was about as playable as it was gonna get, then it would continue to wear until it was unplayable being too loose and sloppy, note mis-hits and bounces and chokes. So then you would rebuild the action and be back to square one with a slow stiff cumbersome action, and have to suffer for months until it would start loosening up again.

The adjustment of the tines and pickups allowed some customization of dark versus bright. One could also experiment with the rubber hammertip hardness to get more chime or note attack definition. There were so many ways a rhodes could sound according to how it was set-up, numerous "classic sounds" but it took some hours to go from one classic sound to another classic sound. I personally didn't much like the factory calibration, and over the years maybe most working musicians didn't either because I probably adjusted hundreds of rhodes back then, just in my podunk burg. One or two a week over a few years, after awhile it adds up.

Just saying its nice to have an electronic copy that sounds and feels "playable enough" while only having to learn the feel of a couple of controller keyboards. It's a lot less crap to put up with, if one can play all the tones either from a weighted 88 or unweighted shorter board, with no tuning, broken tines, etc.

[jancivil]

I must be missing something, but what is wrong with N.I.'s Vintage Organs library for Kontakt? That was the replacement for B4. I don't use it much, but I can usually get what I want out of it. Has a great Green Onions patch. Just like Booker T.

I think there's a feeling that it's a well made sample library versus a true emulation. There's lots of finer points to the Hammond sound that may be difficult to pull of in a sample library. Tonewheel leakage, foldover, nailing the vibrato, the drive, the entire leslie speaker emulation.

That's why some people still prefer B4, or even better, GSi's VB3. My guess is that the raw tonewheel sound of Vintage Organs has both beat in that regard, but the others do a better job of emulating the other aspects of the B3.

I love VB3 but I think the drive/distortion sounds too crunchy, and the Leslie simulation could use some improvement. I bet Guido could do an even better job if he did it over, which it sounds like he's doing, so I look forward to his work. For my money, VB3+Amplitube 3's leslie are the way to go.

I'm not very taken with the Leslie out of VB3, it seems fizzy to me. And I agree with your assessment of the overdrive. I would rather apply something else. The Vintage Organs have some killer patches; it does not *bring* like a real Hammond, of course. Most if not all of it is a bit on the bright side (which I consider advantageous usually, 'it cuts'). There is this sort of beefiness that isn't sampled, or falls thru the cracks for whatever reason. I would rather 'produce' this than the other thing, which isn't as close to real as some here believe, for me. It is a bit like 'what is more analog', like out of the box you think you're going to have a magical experience, when really the characteristics can be somewhat known and applied through other things, *mixing*.

For a real keyboardist doing a big ol' solo, there is something missing, but there is something missing with a grand piano or a rhodes as well. I think the closest things to real, for live, in the virtual instrument world today are Sample Modeling, such as their flute, there is some def. science involved there and I believe that samples are the right basis for it, I think pure modeling is kind of cold.
But I create an illusion of live through trickery of whatever's necessary so the finer points of a Hammond are not a big deal to me. I detect more 'lack' with Rhodes for instance; the bark and all this should probably be modeled, studied deeply and modeled. I'm not really feeling VB3, I'm not knocking it, but I don't call it typically.

[dwozzle]

My $0.0002, not having been around real Hammond since a bunch of decades ago when one of the bands I was in in high school rehearsed in my parents' living room for a couple years: I played w VB3 for a quite while last night, and was stoked, loved it.

Didn't compare it to the NI Vintage sampled version, which is what was using before hearing about VB3, but my gut reaction was that while I found Vintage totally usable in a song, VB3 was just a solid gas to play. Something about it just felt lively, musical, evocative, inspiring.

The Hammond sounds that is. The Farfisa and Vox patches blow, just wrong, they're fired, need something else. Back to Vintage maybe? Any recommendations? I actually have some use for those on some tracks floating around in my head.

The Leslie wasn't as bad as folks made it out to be, but I agree that the Amplitube version is better; it's just really good. Shame it can't be used without the whole Amplitube shell. I also agree that VB3's distortion is a bit heavy handed. Didn't mess much with backing it down, but I will at some point, and there are lots of other options.

I will compare VB3 to Vintage when I get a chance, probably this weekend. I'll also see if I can get my ancient copy of B4 working on my current Win7/64 machine through jBridge. I have the combo organ "tone wheel" sets too, also worth a play if the instrument itself works ok. Has anyone tried B4 on a current computer?

But bottom line for me was that I had a blast with VB3, seriously dug the vibe, heathen Philistine though I may be.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

The Hammond sounds that is. The Farfisa and Vox patches blow, just wrong, they're fired, need something else. Back to Vintage maybe? Any recommendations? I actually have some use for those on some tracks floating around in my head.

This guy has a brilliant Farfisa and he also did an equally great Vox Continental which is no longer being developed, but still on the site:

Farfisa:

http://www.martinic.com/combof/

Vox:

http://www.martinic.com/combov/downloads/

[EvilDragon]

I REALLY like Leslie sim in VB3. Better than Amplitube, as far as I'm concerned.

[reusenoise]

These
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZd_z1bFDWw

[evilantal]

MVintageRotary still beats the crap out of other leslie sims as far as I'm concerned.
But I agree VB3's leslie sounds better to me than Amplitube. Seems to have a bit more grit to it...

[Spitfire31]

I REALLY like Leslie sim in VB3. Better than Amplitube, as far as I'm concerned.

And it's even got the wind whoosh of the speeding treble horns and the click of the solenoid when switching speeds! I fully agree.

I'm quite OK with the VB3 OD as well – at least it's heaps better than the brittle dist of NI's B4 II. All IMHO, of course. De gustibus non est disputandum.

/Joachim

[Spitfire31]

MVintageRotary still beats the crap out of other leslie sims as far as I'm concerned.
But I agree VB3's leslie sounds better to me than Amplitube. Seems to have a bit more grit to it...

I bought MVintageRotary last autumn, in fact, and there was something that made me put it in the cooler for the time being.

Maybe it was the lack of a true a toggle function for Leslie speed. Vojtech said (last September) that it would be included in an upcoming update – then I plain forgot about it…

Have to check it out now. Thanks for mentioning MVintageRotary!

/Joachim

[dwozzle]

@FET, thanks for the pointer to the martinic combo organs, they both seem excellent.

@everyone, didn't I see MVintageRotary on sale somewhere recently? Can't find it now, except a post from JRR, but that price doesn't seem to be happening now.

It also looks like there's new related but different rotary from Melda, with more options I think, MRotary, same price at least for now. Anyone tried it?

[bbaggins]

+1 for the Martinic Farfisa and Continental. They're excellent emulations of the real things - and free. Doesn't get any better than that!

I don't understand the comment about MVintageRotary lacking a "true" speed switch. Not sure what that means. You can easily toggle speed via automation. Speed ramps up and down like the real thing. Or maybe there's more implied in the "true" adjective than I'm understanding.

The new MRotary plugin is MVintageRotary on steroids. Instead of 3 preconfigured speaker models, MRotary lets you create imaginary speakers that never existed in the real world. It's not just for organs!

Don't worry if you missed the introductory price. Just be patient. Vojtech's extended his random-discount deal through May, so it's just a matter of time before MRotary goes on sale again for half price.

[Spitfire31]

I don't understand the comment about MVintageRotary lacking a "true" speed switch. Not sure what that means. You can easily toggle speed via automation. Speed ramps up and down like the real thing. Or maybe there's more implied in the "true" adjective than I'm understanding.

It means I couldn't change speed in a toggle fashion – hit the CC64 pedal once, speed ramps up, hit CC64 again, back to slow speed (or vice versa).

I could hold CC64 down to get fast speed and then let go of it to return to slow ('choral') speed. That's not toggle, though, and it didn't suit my workflow.

I'll check out the latest update and see if Vojtech was true to his word.

/Joachim

[dwozzle]

+1 for the Martinic Farfisa and Continental. They're excellent emulations of the real things - and free. Doesn't get any better than that!

And 64 bit to boot, even the obsolete one, very cool.

The new MRotary plugin is MVintageRotary on steroids. Instead of 3 preconfigured speaker models, MRotary lets you create imaginary speakers that never existed in the real world. It's not just for organs!

Definitely going to check that out, sounds like fun!

Don't worry if you missed the introductory price. Just be patient. Vojtech's extended his random-discount deal through May, so it's just a matter of time before MRotary goes on sale again for half price.

I hate to be an Eeyore, but there' are a lot of Melda plugins, 3 new ones on sale every 3 days doesn't guarantee it'll come up by the end of the month. But I'm hoping for sure . I'll check back there every day, but if anyone notices that MRotary has come up on sale, post here, that I'll see.