Time to kick this up.
Having got close to my happiest 70s/80s rig, when demand is high in other areas, the Waterfall Leslie is crippling. I like to run at a buffer of 128 (maybe a blind test would determine whether I can really feel it, but seeing that buffer at 256 translates immediately to my fingers. Just not feeling that immediacy. Anyhoo, I digress) and the Waterfall is chewing up masses of buffer headroom.
The dedicated organ racks are OK, with nothing else competing, so it was time to enable the VB3 dry output and have two routings; one via Waterfall, and the other employing the VB3 mk1 Leslie. It will give me the opportunity to check out some of the double Leslie concepts that were floated earlier in this topic, or choose one over the other if running out of gas.
Gotta say, having dialled the VB3 Leslie in through the pres and eq I’ve been tweaking for Waterfall over these months, it don’t sound bad at all, having been away from it for some time. And the meter is running 20-25% lower… that’s huge.
In other news, I wanted to use one of my trusty Yamaha FC7 foot controllers on a Fatar/M-Audio setup and, as I remembered from previous attempts, fails horribly. Needs an adapter doodad which are being sold on ebay for this very purpose.
For 1/3 less dosh I picked up one of those cheapo M-Audio pedals which has a compatibility switch, a rotary range control, and works perfectly, full range of values, with an M-Audio Axiom. No surprises there, except that it works just fine. Extremely cheap. Construction not so heavy as the Yamaha but bloody well good enough, for 30% less than an adapter plug!
(BTW, something weird gong on with the dates on these posts. I’m seeing posts which are only a few months old dating years earlier. Wazzup?)
Nothing magic in these adapter doodads - if you’re handy with a soldering iron, you can solve this yourself. These thingies don’t do anything but switch the tip and ring contact of the TRS plug. If you’re not planning to use the FC7 with a keyboard that requires the original Yamaha setup, simply re-solder the plug, switching tip and ring.
If you need to go back and forth between Yamaha and Roland standard, you could copy my approach: I’ve re-fitted my FC7s by cutting off their cable, leaving just a short length (20 cm) with a male XLR plug at the end on the pedal. Now you can create cables of whatever length and polarity you need with an XLR female plug on one end and a TRS plug at the other. Just make sure you label or color-code these cables to make sure you pick the right one for the keyboard you are using…
Yeah, I actually priced up the components.
Female stereo 1/4”, cable, stereo jack.
The pedal was under 16 bucks, works in both formats, offset pot.
It was a no brainer.
BTW, that is a good approach. I would have been a little hesitant to cut the FC7 cable because sometimes the contents are those wonderful ‘unsolderable wisps’ which only people with magic powers can connect. As you’ve taken the plunge, I might risk it.
XLR way better approach - and the FC7 pedals are good.
One thing that’s worth noting is that the full range of control is very well represented when the M-Audio pedal is plugged into an M-Audio keyboard. The same pedal intp the Fatar could not be encouraged to get all the way from one end of the scale to the other.
My trusty Elka MK88 is not so trusty at the moment. It always played nicely with FC7s - but it needs surgery after a stand collapsed with it on the top.
rotor speeds, spin up/down times, motor noise, equalization, etc. I am currently pairing it with Acousticsamples B-5 organ V3, which to me sounds better than IK Multimedia’s B-3X with the built-in Leslie simulator. It’s also less resource intensive and with a more responsive UI than B-3X. At 50 bucks, I think the rotary plugin alone is more than worth the money and you get the organ thrown in.
I spent 45 minutes with it. Tone Wheels really sound good. Leslie is not bad after making few adjustments. There are several pages of edits on everything. It looks like they will be adding different models and fx in the future. Understand, this was made for Gospel, but I am sure I can “Jon Lord” it up after some more time. The Leslie has a “knocking” noise on the horn…kinda like the horn is hitting the cabinet, but I cured that with mic position. Will get more experience time, and report back. I hope @bpeterson1123 gives us more insight as he spends more time with it.
Maybe in the US, in Italy you will find many Viscount or other local brands, both frequency division and sampled, but certainly not an A100 or a C3.
Except for the time when I was studying piano and organ, I am not much of a churchgoer, and the only Hammond I have seen was an M100, ages ago. Of course I tried to buy it, but it’s not easy to do business with a priest.
I bought it too and so far I’m very disappointed. Hopefully version 2 will have some things ironed out. The main thing that excited me about it was seeing so MANY needed parameters to dial in your sound that other makers have failed to include in their clones. All of them should take notice of this and get to work!
I’ve noticed quirks like odd popping noises and notes from higher ranges while playing chords and holding lower notes. I also think it has a distortion problem even at low volumes. A lot of issues do not occur when the rotary effect is turned off. I’ve tried removing all the extras in the rotary section and still couldn’t get a sound I liked. I’ve spent several hours with this thing over a couple of days and I’m at the point of giving up. Some things are just too irritating about it that keeps me from spending more time with it.
There is no doubt they have more to do. They also set this thing up as if it was a synth. Filters and sine waves? Really? Oh well.
I will say great tone wheels and Leslie. This is really good for church, but not so good for Prog Rock.
The “dirt” they use is terrible. They have more things to do, but I think they will make it much better, especially after I contact them.
