B5, Vb3 II, and Blue3 are ALL great plugins. I have been playing Hammonds since 1967. I’ve owned a few, and moved many…(ugh, my back). I still play the real deal when one is available. Being a Hammond player is somewhat like many guitarists. We all are searching for “that sound”. Many of us long experienced Hammondists get real picky about the emulations, mainly because we are still searching for “the sound” we have in our heads. All Hammonds are basically like human beings…there are similarities yet every one has it’s own differences. VB3 II can be tweaked to sound great. Even out of the box presets are very good. The thing is, the Leslie has been hard to emulate, but they are getting really close, and as these developers compete, the leslie keeps getting better. I said sometime back that Blue3 is the one to watch, and they proved me correct. I was dead wrong about VB3 II though. It is unique on it’s own. It is still a great plug and it is still in my arsenal.
Do the Blue3 demo and see what you think. At least we can test drive it, unlike B5. As far as previous hammond users out there with an opinion, just read all the organ threads. We definitely have opinions !
Thanks Corky! I have downloaded the demo, and will get around to installing it. I broke my back on hammonds until someone introduced me to the piano dolly. Wow! What an invention! I am overrun with school work, so I will have to test it on a study break.
Glad you are going to test it. In the day, I loved playing in venues with a resident Hammond. Liked tweaking them, and hearing the leakage, and experiencing the many Leslies. I am hoping to someday share some of my settings on these plugs, just to see if others are hearing what I am hearing. Let me know what you think of Blue3. And, as far as VB3 II is concerned, I do not regret the upgrade I paid.
So much for objectivity. I played it and loved it, then bought it. The only thing I see as a weakness is the old familiar programmer’s mistake of making the higher frequencies (horns) less doppler and more vibrato in the cabinet (Main complaint I had about the Yamaha Motif attempt at a Leslie). I will have to tweak the cabinet a bit. VB3 has that aspect nailed. The higher frequencies (the horns) are doppler. Blue3 may be as well. My big test is Oye Como Va, and Blue 3 got it closer than VB3 II on overall sound, but less distortion reveals the horn issue. I will go ahead and get bad grades so I can get a great sounding B3.
I’m on my way back from a festival my band was playing but already already downloaded Blue3 V2. My Nord Stage 2 has a nice B3 but the keyboard is hammer action so not optimal for organ work. Looking forward to upgrading my Blue3 and starting to use it.
The Nord products sound great. I remember being wowed by the Roland VK-7 until I heard the Electro 2. Nord has dialed in the B3 for sure. I agree that the weighted keys are not the best for the organ patch. That is why I have my MPK261 dedicated to all organ patches. I am looking forward to buying a Mixface by studiologic as a drawbar/everything controller.
I had a nordstage 1 years ago - solid instrument but I wasn’t happy with the sound quality.
For me sampled instruments are not the way to go. I try to avoid it. With cantabile3 I use modeled instruments in the first place and only use samples when there is no other way to do it.
I have been checking the GG Audio Spin, and decided to put it on VB3 II. Interesting for sure. I used the presets on Spin instead of a custom preset. However, I had to adjust the input gain on Spin because it boosts the VB3 signal to distortion/clipping level. It was just another brain fart I had, but another one appeared shortly thereafter. Controller 1: VB3 II into Spin, Blue3 V2 into VB3fx, and B5 into IK Leslie…all of them at the same time from the same controller.
Corky, I did a similar (very subjective) experiment with Spin and UVI Charlie/Retro-Organs (‘Lord Full’ preset, one of my fav canned-B3 samples). I had to turn-off UVIs Leslie-Full-Mix, and dial down distortion/amp/levels in Spin. The result was a very nice grinding Full B3 sound with spin-up Leslie. I haven’t tried this in a full band / or full mix just yet, but it is sounding pretty sweet solo!
I actually was using the ancient Charlie on one song, and it sounded so good, I didn’t want to give it up. But, I put it aside 6 months ago. I bought the UVI Retro Organs sometime back. I was disappointed because UVI bragged about their new Leslie in it, and I didn’t know it was a sampled FAST and SLOW Leslie… No accelerate or de-accelerate . Just like Charlie. Haven’t tried Charlie with Spin, but may try it soon, and use IK Leslie with it as well. Anything Hammond makes me happy.
Charlie was a killer for that one sound! Someone could probably do a better fully sampled organ now with x-fades for the Leslie ramp up/down, but it would be huge and expensive; it’s just not worth it any more. Plus you’re stuck with whatever level of amp grit they sampled.
Works great for Blue3 and VB3-II! OK, it may be a bit slower than “lightweight” presets, but not noticeably so. The only disadvantage: the Cantabile installer seems to overwrite Compatibility.ini when installing an update, so I’ll have to re-add my flags on every update… @brad Maybe you can add a custom Compatibility-User.ini file that gets added to the standard Compatibility.ini - and doesn’t get overwritten on updates. This way, any new standard compatibility settings can be added in updates but will not kill any user-specific additions?
