What are your favo plugins you are using?

Yep, I think you’re right. I’ve played a real Hammond since the 70s (starting with an M2 and then a string of C3s) and I’m a real snob about organ sounds. I used to get as worked up over how my Leslie was sounding as any guitar player and his amp rig. I actually had a Nord endorsement back around 2005 and got an Electro 2 rack and it was a revelation at the time (which went away went the American distributor closed and the parent company took over from Sweden). I tried to like the B4 but it just had such a flat, dull Leslie sim and the amp modelling was bad. And you couldn’t bypass that because there was no other decent Leslie plug I could find. (For the record, I don’t like Lotary at all either.) But the VB3 blew my mind utterly when I heard it. Sure, the Leslie still isn’t perfect, mostly at the fast speeds, but it’s light years ahead of anything else. And in a mix it almost always sounds real enough it will fool most listeners. I play a real B3 every Sunday in church, and of course there’s always a sense of, “Oh… right… THAT’S how it sounds!” lol But the VB3 is pretty fantastic. I even love how you can have the classic Leslie hiss running in the background- I always leave that on during shows :smile:

Hey Guido, add my name as well!

Fre

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Thats funny, I started with the M100 as a teen (all I could afford at the time). My M100 had the 12" facing down to the Styrofoam rotary port and the singe 3" tweeter (fixed and not spinning). No more piano dolly, just a Laptop. Thank God. I am sure playing the C3 at church is awesome. I use VB3 at church (and gigs).

B4 - all show, no go.
VB3 gets much closer for me.

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NS2= Nord Stage 2. We have one of those at church and I’m convinced its organ section doesn’t sound as good as the Electro 2 did, but I may be crazy; I think it’s supposed to be the same. I don’t have the Electro any more to compare. But the NS for sure doesn’t sound as good as GSi. I will say this, we did an album where I used both the Nord and a real Hammond and now listening back to it today there’s some bits I know are real and some I know are Nord and some I can’t tell.

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I have been using VB3 for several years, and it still beats anything else I have used live, including NS2. GSI still has Key Performer available which I used for sometime until I went to a new laptop. It now will crash after a few minutes of use, but the emulations Guido had on Performer worked great in live performance. The footprint was also next to nothing. Great electrics, acoustic pianos, strings, synth, and B3. It had most everything I needed on stage, but the best thing was the B3 was the newly developed VB3 version 2, and sounded great. It was early stages of the VB3 v2 so the rotary wasn’t tweekable. Drawbars worked as did all the other settings.

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I will say that I’ve had some luck for very specific sounds routing B4 through the effects section of VB3. There’s that super ticky bright Keith Emerson Karn Evil 9 sound that seems to work well that way. But really, the difference is hardly worth the effort. The thing (well, another thing) VB3 does that nothing else touches is its overdrive.

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Reading those last few posts is like settling into a favourite armchair with a glass of good Malbec :slight_smile:

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I was overjoyed to find VB3. Programs like B4 can get a particular sound like the Keith Emerson B3 that would take VB3 some shaping to accomplish. However, the live use of VB3 (Using a MPK261 draw bars controlled by faders with lowest drawbar controlled by a knob) lets you shape your sound on the fly. My MPK261 is incredibly versatile in getting the chorus and percussion on and off in the middle of a solo. I coveted the Elektro 2 (rack) for the longest time, but I have never been at a loss for getting the sound I really want through VB3. That overdrive is awesome, it even acts just like a real overdrive in that it reduces the gain the dirtier it gets.

Thanks Alex for your post, Very cool. I use my Yamaha Motif Classic 7 as the lower keyboard and the MPK 261 as the upper. Utter and complete fun!

Thanks Fred for defining NS2. I was embarrassed to see how obvious it was.

Cantabile 3 and VB3 have, by far, been my most frequently used tools in a long time. (Lunge Lizard, as well. I know there are better, but, hey, it was half price when I got it). Love the sound of LL, but I never owned a 73 or a Wurli, so I am not sure what a previous owner would think of it.

Well, to get away from the hi-jacked Show Us Your Rig thread we’ll jump back over here:

I downloaded the Diva demo and that thing may well be the best analog VST I’ve ever heard. I’m ready to ditch Arturia for it! :open_mouth: I don’t really know why I never checked it out before. u-He is making killer stuff. The only downside is they aren’t kidding when they say it’s a cpu hog. A couple insances of that live may grind the whole system to a halt. Will have to experiment. And I don’t really want to spend more $$ right now but at some point it’s well worth getting.

If you like DIva you might also like Serum

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While you’re looking at u-he-plugins, it might also be worth-while looking at Hive (https://www.u-he.com/cms/hive). Not quite as vintage-sounding as Diva, but pretty resource-efficient, and a great bread-and-butter synth for live use. I like the ability to change the synth engine character (normal, clean, dirty), which affects filters and envelope shape. Makes a huge difference to sounds!

Plus, a nice sequencer/arpeggiator and effects section.

Hive is my go-to virtual-analog synth for live use - next in line being FabFilter Twin 2, which is a monster when it comes to modulation options!

Cheers,

Torsten

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‘Best’ … oops lol
It is a shock, isn’t it?
You feel it giving something back to you that is just … remarkable.

i like ReFX Nexus Synth… for trance music

@Torsten
Korg Legacy collection M1 is a fav of mine as well.

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Me too- which is funny because at the time of the real M1 I thought it was kind of crap lol I bought an 01/W when it came out; that’s when I thought they got it right.

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The great thing about plugins like M1 is that they take up no physical space, and only a bit of drive space. So although the sounds aren’t the best in the world, they can easily justify the physical space they occupy in my car on the way to a gig, unlike a real Korg M1 :stuck_out_tongue:

The thing I like about the Legacy Collection M1 is that it has some great “standard” sounds like simple pads etc, which you can easily throw into a song, and take up hardly any processor/memory resources.

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The Legacy plugs I really like are the PolySix (always had a soft spot for it) and the Wavestation (prefer the sounds to the DX series…)

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@FredProgGH
Some creep stole my Juno6 and Poly 61 So the Poly Six vst sort of gives them back.
The WaveStation is an interesting thing also. Nearly bought the rack mount but settled for the bytes.

…and who after eating too much fugu comes up with the patches names over there???
DebussyOnWheels??
SmokeyBacon??
:slight_smile:

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Or the ever-popular HamOnEggs :smiley: Seems like references to wheels were usually Hammond sounds if I remember correctly- ya know, tone wheels :wink: I had a freind with a Poly-61 and I used it in my rig but the PolySix sounded better for the kind of patches I used. And the EX-8000 (I had the rack). Holy sh!t- effects! Built right in! lol That was the first keyboard I remember to have that.

to add to the classic romplers,
I just found out this new kontakt lib:

Also,
on Youtube there are some kontakt d-50 klones, indeed illegal, but the only for now I guess to have a digital D-50. :wink:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kontakt+roland+d-50