Welcome Ray,
Great to have a developer devote some time here. Much respect to you and thanks to @brad for reaching out.
Dave
Oh trust me, I went deep into it the first time around but I don’t want to base a lot of stuff around what my memory of my impressions were, I want to be very specific. I’m in beta mode 
1 Like
@Corky - Future plans? Let’s just say that I’m listening to the comments from many of the users and beta testers and then going with my gut to prioritize it all. Sorry for the lack of details. More to come.
@FredProgGH - Based on your comments, you should know a few things:
-
The Classic rotary has a bit less high end but more high mids than the Custom rotary. The Custom is also a bit smoother than the Classic. The Classic emulates a 122/147 and the Custom emulates a hot-rodded Bill Beers high powered Leslie.
-
The Wax Tonewheel sets are much mellower than the Recapped or Mylar sets as well as the Blue3 set. Unless they’ve been serviced by a really qualified Hammond repair guy, many real Hammonds still have the old wax capacitors and therefore, sound mellower. Hammonds that have been recapped with or without mylar capacitors sound CONSIDERABLY brighter.
-
The Hi-Gain (Marshall-like amp) Overdrive is MUCH brighter than the Classic (122/147) Overdrive.
-
The Transformers control also adds some distortion, but it’s transformer based and therefore sounds different and somewhat mellower than the Overdrive sim.
Hope that helps.
2 Likes
I had that impression already… The Hi-Gain is not anything I’d ever use under any circumstances with the Leslie, only in a Jon Lord/Marshall Stack kind of situation (which is what it was intended for, I suspect). My impression (I need to revisit it and I can say with more clarity) was that I really wanted more of a mid-way point between the two Leslies. What I’d REALLY REALLY like (and no one does this!) is something akin to an insert effects loop where I could put my own amp/overdrive between the organ and your Leslie simulation. Come to think of it, one could do this with the standalone Leslie couldn’t they. I may mess with that. Wasn’t the separate Leslie part of the 1.2 download??
The standalone Leslie, Blue3Rotary appeared in 1.1.0, and yes, you can use Blue3 for the organ and use Blue3Rotary as the speaker and patch anything you want in-between. Some users even use it to have 2 Leslies.
1 Like
I will definitely start playing around with that.
Fred…I meant to ask you if you knew that the upper keys were default midi 3. When I first tried this, way back, I was running on midi 1 which was the pedals. Most B3 uppers are defaulted midi 1. I moved to midi 2, but wasn’t impressed until I realized I was on the lower keys. Just thought I would throw that in…
Well… huh. Surely, in messing with the drawbars that would have become pretty obvious… there wouldn’t have been any harmonic percussion on the wrong manual. I don’t know! I’ll give that a look for sure.
Mmm, no, MIDI channel 1 is definitely controlling the upper manual for me. I REALLY like the sound of Blue3 dry and processed through VBfx,
Your midi 3 must control the backpedals.
Great to see developers here - thanks Ray!
I really like Blue3, from what I’ve seen so far.
The only serious criticism I have of it is the spacing of the harmonics at low velocities. I’m finding that I’m having to set the timing to absolute minimum to make it usable. That’s a shame, because this is a feature that I’ve wanted for years. Although I want to hear it working I’d like the spacing to be faster at the ‘normal’ setting, with an option to slow or speed up from there.
I’d also like to see some tonewheel sets from the humble T-series organs (I own a T-202) to recreate that more delicate Genesis sound I know and love!
Overall I’m very impressed, though. I could see this becoming a very close friend!
1 Like
I did play with it some more last night. I am partial to the wax cap models definitely. The thing with the amp… it’s actually pretty good, I was way harsh on it earlier going from my memories of it. But I get this feeling that the overdrive is somehow… the only way I can put it is it’s riding on top of the Leslie sound, not going through it. That’s not the case of course, but there’s an edge that doesn’t blend that VB3 aces perfectly. You really hear the swirl on the distortion through its Leslie. If there was a way to move the mic positions more than just “front or back” in Blue, maybe that would be part of it. Or model the mic types. I just can’t dial in what it is; the elements are there but it’s not making my pants tent. I went back and listened to my Eddie Jobson Danger Money organ setup as well and I think I could make it better with Blue3 as the organ though, in combo with VB3. Which will suck in a way because then I need to buy Blue3 and I’m broke 
Really, really love Blue3. I have all the others, too but have pretty much migrated all my patches/songs to Blue3. A few weeks ago my new band was recording some test/practice tracks. Our new trumpet player hadn’t worked out a solo for a particular instrumental we recorded, so the the organ/guitar/bass/drums/percussion were the only things on recording. The guys doing the mixdown of these live sessions liked the organ sound (Blue3) so much, they cranked up my comping part and called it the solo. I thought it was funny. I’m really a sax player that plays a little keys.
1 Like
Great discussion, I bought it after reading, thanks for chiming in Ray
1 Like
This update is a combination of feature additions, sound engine enhancements, minor fixes and one big correction.
What’s in this update:
- Added the ability to use any MIDI CC to control rotary speed.
- Added Load & Save buttons to the Controllers page to save and load controller setups.
- Added some predefined controller maps for several controllers as part of installation.
- Corrected a stupid coding mistake in the pedal bass sounds resulting in proper and much fatter pedal sounds.
- [BREAKING CHANGE] Updated all non-continuous parameters to discrete parameters for better DAW & controller integration.
Thanks Ray! Very nice! I have been experimenting with the wax tonewheels and really digging it. I played with the zoom feature in Cantabile and ran the bottom GUI buttons off the screen… I had to run the standalone to reduce it. 
Other than that, I have had zero problems with it. Very stable.
Glad to hear it, @Corky.
You can correct an overzealous zoom by right-clicking on the top bar between the preset menu and the name plate and you’ll get the panic menu to reset the zoom.
Cheers!
1 Like
I missed this post on GG Audio Facebook in March. Looking forward to what Ray is working on Blue3 2.0 !!
GG Audio
**March 13 · **
Hey everybody! I know we’ve been a little quiet lately, but I thought you’d all like to know that we’re hard at work on version 2.0 of Blue3 and we think you’re going to love what we’ve been working on. That’s it…just a quick hello, and now, back to work!
GG Audio
Software
The update to V2.0 will be free for existing users
1 Like
See, I’m kind of hoping this lit a fire under GSi 
LOL ! I hear you Fred…but I really like the “fire” Ray has for his product, kinda reminds me of @brad. It took awhile to develop VB3 into what it is. Ray is moving much faster than Guido did at this point in time of development. I believe Blue 3 will possibly surpass VB3 eventually because of Ray’s passion. Look what Brad has created with C3 in such a short period of time…just amazing. Ray is listening and is engaged…something Guido has not been for 7 years(he is, however, engaged in hardware). I use VB3 V2 in GSI Key Performer, and love it, even though it is early version. Problem is, it is X86, and dislikes jbridge. I can run it in X86 C3 just fine, but most of my arsenal is X64, so not a good choice for me. If Guido comes through with all our wishes, I will be first in line, but I am betting the future on Ray and GG Audio.
1 Like