Hammond B3 Spoofing

[amanise]

Having just moved from ACID Pro 10 to Reaper, I've lost (from inside Reaper anyway) the nice 'Vintage Organ' instrument that came with ACID Pro. You could get a passable Hammond sound out of this if you fed it into the Waterfall Rotary Speaker Leslie emulator. I tried adding the path to the Magix Vst folders in Reaper - but they wouldn't run, complaining about it being the wrong version of ACID. Hey ho, that's what Magix must be charging for then.

I then tried getting ReaSynth to do one - and realised I had no clue of what actually came out of a B3 in terms of waveform. So I just tried 50% square wave, and 50% Saw-tooth, and then fed this into the Leslie emulator. It was pretty weird, not much like a Hammond - so I then flanged it. If in doubt - flange the bejazers out of it. That made it still not a lot like a Hammond - but interesting enough to use in small doses. Quite Hurdy Gurdyish.

I have no budget left to buy one - so I checked the plug ins of choice thread for revelations. Didn't see any. Would anyone have, either clue of what to try and get out of ReaSynth to feed into Waterfall, or a recommendation for a passable free Vst that sounds B3-ish enough to fiddle around with please?

[MarkOne]

I found this:
https://plugins4free.com/plugin/3117/

The demos don't sound too bad

Here's the direct link
https://sampleson.com/collab3-free-tonewheel-organ.html

[Hugh Robjohns]

Classic Hammonds generate each note from individual tone wheels, all driven by gears and shafts from a single motor.

The tonewheels are the size of coins — roughly 2P sized — shaped like cogs, but with very rounded teeth. Near the edge of each one is a pickup, like a single string guitar pickup.

The result is a something close to a sine wave for each note, with random phase relationships between notes and octaves.

Complex tones are created additively, by combining notes of different pitches — mostly octaves, thirds and fifths — at different levels.

There's also chorus/vibrato using a modulated delay, and compression via the mixing transformers which helps to keep single notes and chords at similar volumes.

[Drew Stephenson]

I rather like this: https://lostin70s.com/shop/keys/album/

Some folks aren't so keen on the Leslie emulation but you've already got that covered.

[James Perrett]

I've installed CollaB3 recently and it seems pretty good. Before that I used Organized Trio which turned into

https://www.genuinesoundware.com/?a=showproduct&b=44

and is no longer free.

I'd also add that creating organ sounds isn't hard and would be a good test project if you ever wanted to learn to program your own JS effects. On a simple level it is really a matter of combining sine waves in the right proportion.

[Folderol]

They are mostly slightly 'flattened' sine waves pushed a bit to one side, and the lowest ones have a fair amount of 2nd and 3rd harmonic to thicken them.
The hardest part is getting a decent Leslie effect - I've tried a combination of phaser, cyclic filter+volume... sort of works.

[sonics]

There were a bunch of free Hammond plugins around a decade ago. None were any good!

If it has to be free, the the Hanon or the Collab would be the best these days.

Look for sales on the Air Music Tech DB33. It's been on sale for as little as $10.

If you can wait longer, the two best organs (IK's B-3X and the UAD Waterfall) have both been on sale at $49, and probably will be again.

[Arpangel]

They are mostly slightly 'flattened' sine waves pushed a bit to one side, and the lowest ones have a fair amount of 2nd and 3rd harmonic to thicken them.
The hardest part is getting a decent Leslie effect - I've tried a combination of phaser, cyclic filter+volume... sort of works.

One of the best Leslie effects, regardless of price, was my Zoom RFX1100, strange but true, it was really gritty, and just right.

[amanise]

Thanks all! Lots to take in there. I'm amazed there are any free ones at all TBH. Got to be worth a go! My brain's far too addled to be taking on JS programming now though - I know my limits

[MarkOne]

They are mostly slightly 'flattened' sine waves pushed a bit to one side, and the lowest ones have a fair amount of 2nd and 3rd harmonic to thicken them.
The hardest part is getting a decent Leslie effect - I've tried a combination of phaser, cyclic filter+volume... sort of works.

One of the best Leslie effects, regardless of price, was my Zoom RFX1100, strange but true, it was really gritty, and just right.

If you can find one for sale, the Line 6 RotoMachine was a brilliant Leslie simulator. It modelled the Leslie 145 and 122 and the Fender Vibratone 16. You could set the fast and slow horn and drum rates and had a great modelled tube overdrive. When I had the original Fantom G I sent a clean hammond patch via its output 3 and 4 into the Rotomachine. It was much better than the then Fantom rotary speaker app for my live rig.

[Hugh Robjohns]

For a plugin emulation its hard to better the UAD Waterfall Rotary Speaker, and for a hardware emulation, the Neo Instruments Ventilator Ii is the best I've found.

[ajay_m]

I dunno, I thought Nubi and Spinner (i.e the Leslie emulation (both free) were fairly good, certainly for free.

[progger]

This might not be much to OP because of Reaper... but I think the stock Logic tonewheel organ is one of the very best out there, and probably tied with Alchemy for Logic's best stock instrument (although I quite like several of the older synths too, as well as the sampler). I use the Logic organ on professional sessions all the time and the clients/artists/producers I work for are always extremely pleased... often with the organ in particular!

Moreover, an older friend/mentor of mine who's a top-tier B3 player (worked with George Benson and even Stevie Wonder!) uses Logic's tonewheel organ for many of his sessions, too, since it's easier than firing up the B3 and sounds great right away. We shared a laugh about that a couple months ago, dirty secrets!

(I'm certainly tempted to try the IK and UA organs since they're so highly regarded, but only out of curiosity, not out of need.)

[sonics]

Yes, the Logic organ is indeed good. I don't recommend it because you can't buy it outside of Logic. I do have some experience of it, and still find my other favourites more flexible and more authentic. But as you'll know, those nuances often matter only to the player, and not the producer.
I also use separate rotary cabinet emulations, and I suspect they would improve the Logic organ somewhat.

The old Native Instruments modeling organ was the first good one IMO, but we all know what happened to that...

[tacitus]

I’ve used a few hardware devices over the years, organ and Leslie. I think it’s true to say I always got a better result with matching different makes or organ and Leslie sims. Haven’t really used software ones much as I have a Nord C2D now (abd more practically, the two Hammond sounds on my Yamaha P121 piano are perfectly usable live in a 10-piece function band.

Is the Logic one related to the GarageBand one? (Just typed that as FarageBand and am considering the implications of that …).

[zenguitar]

Is the Logic one related to the GarageBand one? (Just typed that as FarageBand and am considering the implications of that …).

The latest medical device for weight loss perhaps?

Andy