Tricks you used to use for more realistic synth organ sounds

[cphollis]

Yeah, rather than bother with how to make an synth organ less lame, why not go the clonewheel route? I play Nords, totally happy with my organ sounds.

 

Until I buy a real B3, that is.

[JDBlackhawk]

Yamaha sy77 with the B-3 collection-every user preset becomes a different Hammond drawbar setting-but needs an outboard leslie as the SY doesn't have a dedicated leslie simulation. Also, my old Equinox with its drawbars, dedicated percussion and keyclick on/off, leslie emulation not terrible. very dirty sounding. Kept it almost just for this.

[Baldwin Funster]

Probably the only and best thing to try to rescue a synths organ sound is a Neo Vent. Even makes a wk3000 sound decent.

[CEB]

I tried this with Roland synth organ tones. I could not do it. The Vent didn"t help. Too much grease was cooked into the base sounds. It just became swirly shit.

[Doerfler]

I tried this with Roland synth organ tones. I could do it. The Vent didn"t help. Too much grease was cooked into the base sounds. It just became swirly shit.

 

Swirly shit. I like it. The name, not the sound.

[Delaware Dave]

Old synth leslie sims were a disaster; I bought a MS Pro3T and later the Low Pro. That did help; I also purchased Rubber Chicken's (remember them?) samples, they were better than most synth delivered organs. Voce released some stuff that was ahead of hte pack at one point in time. I think everyone tried tricks to recreate the percussion in mono mode; V/C recreations were never really successful. Frustrated I purchased an L100P to gig with but bandmates resisted in helping me to load/unload the mini-beast. Glad those days are behind us.

[eric]

This is a fun older thread and I had a recollection of responding to it. Maybe it was another thread.

 

Before I got my first clonewheel (the old Korg CX-3 which I acquired around 1989), I was using a Roland JX-8P and had a few "ok" synthy organ sounds that worked for the time. I bought the "Brianizer" Leslie simulator and used that with the 8P. It helped, though it wasn't the greatest in general.

 

Once I got the CX-3, I was using a Leslie 145 and also picked up my first Dynacord CLS-222 around 1990 that stayed in my rig for the better part of the '90s.

[allan_evett]

The tonewheel organ sounds in the newer Roland gear has improved somewhat, though they still include the older 'swirly shit' ; guess there's still a market for those sounds. Even some of the the newer sounds have baked-in quirks, so I avoid those.

 

This topic does intrigue me, as I've been doing some programming on an RD-88 for an upcoming band gig. Though a dedicated clonewheel model is my main source for organ, there are several instances where quick-grab organ sounds are needed from the RD. While the instrument does have a handful of newer preset drawbar Tones, there are a few custom registrations I'd like to have on board. The RD-88 Scenes (combinations/multis...) can have up to three Zen-Core Tones layered, and each of those Tones can have four Partials; so that provides twelve possible sound sources. I've created nine drawbars of sorts within those Tones - having experimented with various sine waves and using the appropriated overtone-based tunings. So now I have three, Tone templates: first four drawbars, next four drawbars, then drawbar 9 - plus three Partials on which to add key click, leakage and percussion. I plan to manipulate each of the three Tones - based on the final registration needed. Those would then imported into the RD-88 and layered to create an organ registration-based Scene. Importing these Tones into the RD is necessary because the RD-88 does not have a Tone editing level. I use a Fantom to do the Tone edits, though I believe these could also be done via Zenology software or other Zen-Core hardware.

 

Where I could use some help getting a more realistic sound is with the three Partials I'm planning to use for key click, leakage and percussion. If any of you have experience synthesizing these sounds, I'd value any suggestions/shortcuts for setting up Partials to cover those. Each Partial is a two-osc synth of it's own (automatically panned L&R, respectively - though the final mix can be summed at the hardware output), with a variety of PCM oscillator sources - samples, waveforms, noise, etc..

[eric]

When I was racking my brain on this topic, I remembered and searched for this thread. It's a good walk through the history of Leslie simulators and what our forum members used.

 

I also just remembered that I had a really brief stint, less than a year I think, using Voce's very first product that was available to the public - the DMI-64. This was before the V3 and V5. It was a very unintuitive single space rack that was painful to program and use live, in my experience. I've had Voce products in my rig numerous times, having owned multiple MIDI Drawbars, a few V3 and V5 units, though I never had the newer preset model or the Spin simulator. I still have a V5 in a briefcase somewhere.

[Baldwin Funster]

I think today is too easy to throw an iPad on your synth and run b3x than spend hours trying to rescue a synth organ. With the hopefully upcoming perfection of vb3m it gets even easier. $13app, about $25 in a hub, usb sound stick and cables it's never been this affordable before. And you got your precious smartphone in your pocketses anyways right?

[allan_evett]

 

Before I got my first clonewheel (the old Korg CX-3 which I acquired around 1989), I was using a Roland JX-8P and had a few "ok" synthy organ sounds that worked for the time. I bought the "Brianizer" Leslie simulator and used that with the 8P. It helped, though it wasn't the greatest in general.

 

 

That brings back some memories. My first effort at getting a realistic drawbar organ sound was to run the organ presets of my Arp Quartet into a Leslie 147 - via a Leslie Combo Preamp. While the organ tone choices were restrictive and not the greatest, the Leslie brought that tube amp warmth and shifting sound to the table. For my folk/roots rock band that made all the difference. About a year into the band I picked up a Roland VK-1 (with real drawbars!). Further GAS ensued, and soon we were using a Hammond M-3.

[MikeT156]

I ran an OB-8 "organ" patch through one of these. I started with one of the stock organ programs, but killed all of the modulation, so it was just this sort of flat/dry tone. The Boss Chorus Ensemble gave the patch all of its body. Kind of sounded like the aforementioned EVH organ patch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I still have my Boss Chorus CE1 as picked above in Moonglow's Post. In my case, I used it to improve the sound on VA synths that I had to fatten the sound without carrying any of my vintage RA synths to bar gigs. The last setup I used for live gigs was with my Alesis ION that needed a little help in the FAT department, but it is great for emulating other synths that I owned in the Past. It was very good at emulated Prophet 5 sounds, as well as doing a decent job at emulating some Moog sounds provided I had all the voices incorporated into a lead mono synth. It did the job and the only one that knew the difference in the sound was me. I incorporated the ION with my Motif ES8, both of which I still own.

 

 

Mike T.

[ABECK]

The tonewheel organ sounds in the newer Roland gear has improved somewhat, though they still include the older 'swirly shit' ; guess there's still a market for those sounds. Even some of the the newer sounds have baked-in quirks, so I avoid those.

 

I've gotten great results running dry Roland organ sounds from both the FA-08 and Jupiter 80 through a Neo Vent II. It can be tricky to get a decent CV setting on those though.

[Shamanczarek]

In the early 80s I stopped moving my C3 and two Leslie 147's. I got a Vox Super Continental and used one of the Leslies with it for a while. It sounded good but it got to be too much to move the Leslie so I started using a Boss Chorus pedal. Within a year or so I had little use for organ sounds when polysynths took over. I still have the Super Continental and just finished getting it back into good working order after not being used in over 30 years.

[jerrythek]

Cool thread, never saw it the first time.

 

My best old setup involved using the Casio CT-1000P keyboard (great for additive-type flutey sounds), run through the Multivox MX-2 Full Rotor effect (different from the Little David Steve Nathan has posted earlier. I was a reasonable organ sound, minus the percussion, and any sense of "grit". But it did the job.

 

Jerry

[Mike Warren]

I started using a Boss Chorus pedal.

 

I used one of those for my "Leslie sim" back in the early 80s too.