GSI VB3-II

[EvilDragon]

Dunno, just saying "aimed at buyers who've never even been in a room with a Hammond/Leslie" seems quite pejorative to me - as if those devs didn't actually work with a real Hammond when creating the plugin (when they did). How can you even make such an assumption?

[lfm]

How many here have real Hammond 3-type organs and Leslies? I'm trying to figure out how some folks are acting so floored with VB3 II. And honestly it's not much of a leap from the prev VB3.

No physical leslie, but a range I used.
Old friend has a real B3 with leslie, so been in a room at least.
About the frequency content of sound overall
B4 - decent
B4 II - decent plus, some nice saturated leslie in there - never made it to 64-bit though.
VB3 - just testing, did nothing for me. Was part of Mixcraft running that for a short while.

External gear was next step
Korg CX-3 v2 - ok in one octave kind of
Hammond XK1 - here it start to shine
Hammond XK3c - this one is still shining in my ears
Hammond XK5 - looked at YT demos of it, but have not had hands on yet.

Since you on XK3 and up can adjust every tonewheel(96) by four parameters you can do many things to adjust frequency content.

volume of that wheel, lp filter cutoff frequency, hp filter cutoff frequency, LP filter resonance level.

Since these are mixed with drawbar levels later, that kind of control of content makes it more likely to succeed.

Don't know if any plugins bothered doing this yet.
Blue3, have not check it out - since I'm covered.
XK3c - I have a hard time reaching down to keys, since playing create an elevated state that high.

Another thing about XK3c is the tubes in there, how you can adjust bias for 12AX7 and 12AU7, and not only that but the crossover frequency(can be set), and which order if lows go in higain AX7 or lowgain AU7. This gives incredible control how the tube saturates. Sadly this was removed from XK5 and why I did not look further into it. This is where Suzuki Hammond really made a bit mistake in my view - removing that fine tuning and replace distortion with emulated digital stuff. Since tube is there - and all tubes are individuals - those settings are part of adjusting for that. So you cannot adjust bias to let tubes distort like running bias so saturated on upper half wave, or lower - for each tube and mix them.

About plugin leslies XilsLab has a plugin I rather like. Have something organic about it that come through in daw.

Then using Waves S1 for leslie, since they all go full wide stereo - you can narrow leslie to 1100-1400 range or so panned. That create a position for it in the mix. Really important as I discovered.

VB3 betters Blue3 and Arturia's foray though (both of which seem aimed at buyers who've never even been in a room with a Hammond/Leslie).

It's really hard to reproduce what you hear and feel in room - as a recording capturing that. Those that are gigging musicians, which I am not, will probably have an image in their head they look for in a plugin.

How to reproduce a feel from sitting in the room listening with the musicians that is a science by it's own.

[jojoB3]

Dunno, just saying "aimed at buyers who've never even been in a room with a Hammond/Leslie" seems quite pejorative to me - as if those devs didn't actually work with a real Hammond when creating the plugin (when they did). How can you even make such an assumption?

Thanks for sharing how you feel about the question

The question was: On the subject of organ clone/sims, is there anyone 'here' (in this thread) who uses a real Hammond/Leslie?
Do you, EvilDragon?

[EvilDragon]

I don't use it on a regular basis, no, but that I was on more than one occasion in a room with one and played one, I was.

[anjmazur]

I think I already mentioned that I only occasionally have the opportunity to play a real Hammond and Leslie, when the venue has them in their back line. But it happens often enough. The interesting things about that is that they are all different and some are definitely more inspiring to play than others.

[jojoB3]

I don't use it on a regular basis, no, but that I was on more than one occasion in a room with one and played one, I was.

EvilDragon, other than basic statements of "I like/hate it" you're not quite qualified to judge any Hammond organ/Leslie sim imo. Let's hear from players out there who own and use the vintage Hammond/Leslie regularly in performance and the studio.

[yoyobar]

I have had a real 1965 B3 with two different model vintage Leslies for decades. I also have VB3-II using a Kronos 2 61-key model as a controller. They are both a joy to play.

[EvilDragon]

I don't use it on a regular basis, no, but that I was on more than one occasion in a room with one and played one, I was.

EvilDragon, other than basic statements of "I like/hate it" you're not quite qualified to judge any Hammond organ/Leslie sim imo.

I can judge anything I want with the experience that I have. Your opinion is just that, opinion, and you can't tell me what I can or cannot do.

[Aloysius]

Judge Judy

[EvilDragon]

Quite. Just because I don't deal with real Hammonds on a weekly basis doesn't mean I don't know how one is supposed to sound, or how one sounded when I played one, and that I can't base my evaluations of plugins from that experience.

[Aloysius]

Case closed.

[electro]

IMO the IKMultimedia Leslie is about as realistic as ITB is going to get and VB3 1.x was already very accurate raw B3 emulation confirmed by A/B comparing with raw B3 samples.

[jojoB3]

I can judge anything I want with the experience that I have. Your opinion is just that, opinion, and you can't tell me what I can or cannot do.

Nobody is telling you what you can and can't do. I'm telling you your views on any Hammond sim's accuracy isn't quite worth a spit to me compared to those who deal with the real thing often.

[BBFG#]

I can judge anything I want with the experience that I have. Your opinion is just that, opinion, and you can't tell me what I can or cannot do.

Nobody is telling you what you can and can't do. I'm telling you your views on any Hammond sim's accuracy isn't quite worth a spit to me compared to those who deal with the real thing often.

I personally want to read both opinions without the spit and vinegar starting to spew here. And given the sub-forum premise, it always comes down to the software. Maybe this thread should've been posted in hardware?

My personal history with organs is this;
I had a Baldwin... meh!
My teacher had a Hammond M-3. (Better)
I've played several C-3s & B-3s over the years and found they were as individualistic as guitars. They age differently and many of them have their own quirks and characteristics.
Something where software shines is in their consistency. Any difference in sound is due to the processing and hardware. Both GG & GSI have the consistent sound needed to be able to depend on them without having to carry an extra box of tubes for emergencies. Which, BTW, can also suddenly change the sound.

Interesting to me, is that I'm checking these out because Arturia released their new synth. So I downloaded the synth and a couple of their other newer plugins I hadn't gotten around to checking out yet. And also Analoglab.
Ultimately, while all were good, none impressed me enough to be necessary. However, to my surprise, I really started to click with the Vox Continental. (I used to own a Vox Baroque.) I also played a couple of Farfisas in a punk band and always wanted a Yamaha YC-45d for my jazz fusion playing. Of course, like many, I wanted a C-3. But never wanted to put up with all the necessary nonsense it entailed.

So probably going to pick up the Vox when a good second hand pricing pops up. But knowing it's a different sound, have started demoing the two most talked about Hammond clones as well. I only want to buy one of them though. So I'm reading these threads to try and help. (ATM, I'm leaning closer to Blue. But it's really close so far.)

And yes, IMO, it's the Leslie emulation where the hardware is harder to beat.
But the emulations are at least consistent.

Now if I could find a non-Kontakt YC-45 I feel I'd have the arsenal of organs I've always wanted. (Can't say I ever really got along with the Farfisas I played. But it was punk, and its cheesy limitations added much to the necessary rage needed to play that kind of '70s punk.)

To those that own a real tube organ, what I can tell you is that your organ may not be like every organ of the same brand and model out there. I know that for a fact.

Software allows us to have as many as we want, without the associated love/hate, pain & suffering.

Oh, and software is only getting better.

[mon8169]

Played VB3-II in church on Sunday. Great sound, until the AU crashed Mainstage with notes still sounding. Gutted!!
Anyone else had problems? Standalone version maybe?
Really want this one to work.

It happened to me, contacted to Guido and no solution was found. I'm not using VB3 II any more.

Just out of curiosity, which version of VB3 II were you using and into which OS?

Ramon