That Leslie sim sucks

[rockinredeye]

Let's get something straight. The sound of a Hammond and Leslie in a room cannot be reproduced. The sound of a miked Leslie through a PA can. And that's what all Leslie sims seem to strive for. What I play is a Kurzweil PC4 and the Hammond and Leslie sims are very satisfying for me. I have heard the complaints: too much doppler, bass rotor is not quite right. But one of our guitar players shocked me the other day when he said he loved it when I went from choral to tremolo. I didn't know guitar players cared  about that at all, but he said it sounded exciting to him.

 

At one time, fifty years ago, I owned a B3 and a Leslie, so I know exactly what's cool about that sound. The best example I ever heard was at Shreveport Music ten years ago. A completely refurbished B3 and two refurbished 122's about 30 feet apart. The amps had new tubes, no rust or dust, etc. In 5000 sq. ft. of showroom space with a low ceiling, it started gurgling with the pedal about half way up and only really screamed at full volume. Sound swirling everywhere, bouncing off the walls and ceiling. Delicious! And unreproduceable. My PC4 doesn't sound like that. Not exactly, but very, very good.

 

So, my Leslie sim is great and yours sucks. Or maybe I just like mine fine and so do you like yours.

[skipeb3]

I've always said that Hammond/Leslie clones & sims sound better when you hear them played than they do when you actually play them.

JMHO... 

[MathOfInsects]

That's very well put.

No, Leslie sims do not sound like you are in a room with a Leslie. But in most use-cases, neither do Leslies. In lots of cases I'd rather have the pre-mic'd and -leveled sim than the uncertainty of a live-mic'd Leslie. Not all cases, but most, at least for the playing I do most often. 

[KuruPrionz]

Considering that you have a computer or iPad or whatever anyway, the sim basically weighs zero and does not have a size. 

 

I did sound for a band with a keyboard player who had a Leslie and in most rooms a sim would have worked fine. No, it isn't identical but you don't get that sense of rotary movement in a 500 seat facility anyway unless you are very close to the Leslie and it is near enough walls to reflect. 

 

I was on a band with another keyboard player who due to an accident could not help move his Hammond M1. The bassist and I carried that damn thing up and down 2 flights of stairs at one gig, long ago and far away. Hammond sims may not sound exactly like Hammonds either but they don't weigh a metric f~ck ton either. 

 

And, tube amp sims do not sound identical to tube guitar amps. I don't care, they are much lighter for one and most of them can be pushed to get that "overdrive" sound without being so loud it's ridiculous. The Peavey Vypyr series guitar amps sound amazing if you dial them in correctly, and if you put a better speaker in them. No complaints here. 

 

I'm happy with the new gear, it's much easier to move!!!! I've always felt like I was getting paid to move gear, playing is just fun. Now I get paid to move barely anything, big improvement. 

[EricBarker]

And I had "friend" who insisted that he play HIS upright piano at EVERY gig, no ifs ands or buts. Hired movers for $200 to play a $30 gig outside at the county fair. Sure it was neat, band was fun, but wtf! Band didn't last long.

 

At some point, just shut the F up and get professional. Pro means "make it work, and make money". The audience doesn't care. What counts is your personal enjoyment so you can feel good, and the audience definitely responds to that. But sometimes you gotta modify your expectations. If you're too picky, and causing problems for yourself and others, time to dial it down.

 

If Elton John can play a Clavinova in front of 50,000 people and put on a fantastic show... don't tell me that you NEED to haul an AP or B3/Leslie to every gig. That's just silly. If you've got the back for it, you do you, but don't squander the band's pay on movers.

[Konnector]

It really depends on the application. In a live situation or recording with a rock band including guitar a good sim is just fine and gets the job done. In a jazz trio, then a real Leslie might be the better choice, if the Leslie can actually be heard in the room. I've had real Hammonds and Leslies. They're lone gone now. I use a Hammond clone and various software for recording - mostly in a loud rock context. I'm perfectly happy with the results that modern alternatives offer. I'm definitely not one that goes for a clean, pure Hammond/Leslie sound. Exactly opposite of that. Clones, sims, pedals and VSTs are far more flexible and convenient for me for what I like. 

[Stokely]

Pretty much exactly what guitarists say when playing a modeler vs their tube amps.

I know at this point I'll never gig with a leslie, don't want to carry much to gigs, so I'm happy with the sims.  I know from recordings that the sound can be excellent, playing aside   I know from hearing our guitarist play both out front and in my in-ears that anyone saying "that doesn't sound like an amp" through the PA is full of it.  Felt that way about a few of his modelers, especially the current one the Axe III.

[Stephen Fortner]

There are two standards here. One is being in the room close to a spinning Leslie as a player or listener. Between AM and FM, direct  and reflected sound, and subtly shifting harmonics due to phase, it’s an impossible complex acoustic cocktail. 
 

Then there’s the more approachable standard of listening to a Leslie on a record (or from the crowd at a concert) miked and put through a stereo PA system. A lot of us fell in love with the sound under those conditions, thanks to a track from Steppenwolf or Santana or Deep Purple or Jimmy Smith. So the richness and emotion is still there. 
 

In short, you can only really evaluate sims from the second standard. When I really want to jam out and blow off stress, I fire up the 142 though. 

[Adan]

The introduction of the Space Station and Motion Sound amps introduced a new category of use cases for the leslie sim, because they are so much more portable and can get so much louder than a vintage leslie.  I owned a 122 and, while it was amazing to hear, it wasn't loud enough for even a medium sized club.  The size room you can fill with swirling sound using an stereo amp takes you well into medium room capacity.  Is it the equivalent of a leslie?  No way.  But it's still very cool and worth doing.

 

I'm not talking about the newer "real" leslie and fascimilies with actual spinning speakers because I've never owned one, and also because they don't drastically change the game from a portability standpoint the way Space Station and MS do.

[Baldwin Funster]

If you want to appreciate a good leslie sim, find yourself stuck in a jam with a really bad one.

Hammond xk2 or more currently the baked in leslie in an organ sound in a $300 Guitar Center brand home piano come to mind.

[mrk7421]

There is one thing I don't care for about EVERY leslie sim, I don't care which one you have.

 

That is the way these sims affect PERCUSSION.

 

My opinion is also...percussion does not sound right in stereo. There is a "twang" is the motion simulation

 

My solution is .... get percussion separated from the sim . The way I do this is to run a separate percussion source from a module such as HX3 or whatever. The percussion will not "spin" of course.... but that is fine....a small compromise for accurate tone.

 

 Overall I like clones but there is a real art to getting them to sound authentic. I also do not agree with trying to achieve a " miked" leslie sound. What the F is that?  Miked through what?

 

OK enough....but I can pick out the twang of the percussion in just about every performance or recording I have herad of leslie simulation.

 

 

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[Chummy]

Once the sound comes out of a speaker/headphones, that's it! A real leslie is partly an acoustic phenomenon...

Like every digital piano is trying to emulate a real acoustic piano amplified through a mic and then output via a speaker, that's what you hear basically

 

So.. it comes down to "Which Leslie Sim/Organ tone is the best currently in a Hardware"?

 

I've done a bit of research and gathered from other posts online that:

The Crumar Mojo Classic apparently sounds better than a Viscount Legend but is nowhere near reliable.

Not sure how that compares to the HammondSuzuki sounds, or the new "Viscount Legend Soul"

The SK PRO line is plagued with software and hardware bugs. Apparently KRK (Marco) from YouTube has got his SKX Pro keys noisy/clicky.

However I've read a review of a user that's been comparing the new Legend Soul and XK-5 - the user prefered the XK-5.

The Roland VR730 and Nord is not on par with the others mentioned, esp. with the Leslie Sim but also Roland's Chorus/Vibrato is shakey.

Yamaha YC sound is a bit weird and not authentic compared to HamSuz and some of the other clones, also no high trigger point for the keybed.

 

Seems like no clone is perfect which should be obvious, but every single clone - including the high tier ones are FAR from being perfect as instruments by themselves...!!

 

 

[MathOfInsects]

Flip side, this is a 100% true story: I was hired to stem some organ onto a couple of tracks. The artist sent a couple of his older recordings as a reference, and said he wanted something like that but with "real organ." The reference sounded like 1987 Casio keyboard "Organ" preset. Like a cartoon version of organ with a tremolo on it. I did a few passes and sent them over, and although there was now a nice warm organ bed on his track, he just wasn't feeling anything I sent. After some back and forth it became clear that what he really wanted was that exact Casio preset sound, but created and played on organ. So in this case, the "better" sound, turned out to be the much worse one.

The moral is...we, collectively, are the only ones who find "better" and "worse" of any interest. People just know if they like what they hear, or don't. 

[CEB]

What is the Leslie thing that you speaketh of?  I sounds like an old people thing. 

[o0Ampy0o]

1 hour ago, Stephen Fortner said:

 an impossible complex acoustic cocktail.

Point the way to the bar serving those. 🙂

[ElmerJFudd]

There’s at least one (*cough* Ventilator) Leslie sim that does a decent job of sounding like a mic’d Leslie on a recording.  Which is also just a facsimile of being in the room with the real deal.  And it’s been around over 10 years already.  Amplification choice and monitoring in stereo make significant difference. But for worship, solo organ, and one’s own satisfaction, only you can decide if close enough is good enough.  
 

 

 

[CEB]

Gear is overrated. 

[Baldwin Funster]

1 hour ago, ElmerJFudd said:

There’s at least one (*cough* Ventilator) Leslie sim that does a decent job of sounding like a mic’d Leslie on a recording.  Which is also just a facsimile of being in the room with the real deal.  And it’s been around over 10 years already.  Amplification choice and monitoring in stereo make significant difference. But for worship, solo organ, and one’s own satisfaction, only you can decide if close enough is good enough.  
 

 

 

I personally don't think anything has topped the Vent yet. B3X and Vb3m has gotten good enough to make it not always worth the inconvenience of an extra box. I haven't had hands on the XK4 or XK5 to judge those but I'd bet the Vent hold up.

[D. Gauss]

IMO, this one does a really good job. i run it mono, too.

[AnotherScott]

On 5/19/2023 at 3:34 PM, mrk7421 said:

There is one thing I don't care for about EVERY leslie sim, I don't care which one you have.

 

That is the way these sims affect PERCUSSION.

 

My opinion is also...percussion does not sound right in stereo. There is a "twang" is the motion simulation

 

My solution is .... get percussion separated from the sim . The way I do this is to run a separate percussion source from a module such as HX3 or whatever. The percussion will not "spin" of course.... but that is fine....a small compromise for accurate tone.

 

If you're emulating a mic'd Leslie, with microphones inches from the Leslie itself, then the stereo spread of your two playback channels should be very small. I think what makes it sound weird is the tendency to pan them hard left and hard right. But if the percussion does not sound right when "spun" like the rest of the sound, I'd say the problem is not that percussion shouldn't be spun, it's that the percussion is not being properly emulated in the clonewheel/app/VST you're using.

 

On 5/19/2023 at 3:34 PM, mrk7421 said:

I also do not agree with trying to achieve a " miked" leslie sound. What the F is that?  Miked through what?

 

Miked through whatever you're playing it back through. If you're playing it back through, say, a JBL PA system, then it should sound like an organ miked up and played through a JBL PA system.

[El Lobo]

I've always said there's no substitute for actual moving air. I love the sound when my friend moves his B3 and Leslie to the concert hall for live performance. That said, though, there is also no substitute for the convenience, weight, and dependability of my Nord 5D, with drawbars and fast, slow, and stop rotary speed. Plug and play. Band members can hear the rotary effect slowly speed up or slow down. Not too bad. At what I call my advanced age, I'll go with the single 61-key board, sax, Knox stand, 2 speakers and short poles which all fit into the trunk of my Camry hybrid, which is a small trunk to begin with because of the hybrid battery. EZ duz it.

[Delaware Dave]

5 hours ago, CEB said:

What is the Leslie thing that you speaketh of?  I sounds like an old people thing. 

Leslie, you know the girl we use to date ....  that Leslie.

[ElmerJFudd]

11 minutes ago, Delaware Dave said:

Leslie, you know the girl we use to date ....  that Leslie.

This one, right?

 

 

[U.Honey]

6 hours ago, mrk7421 said:

There is one thing I don't care for about EVERY leslie sim, I don't care which one you have.

 

That is the way these sims affect PERCUSSION.

 

 

I've noticed that the Leslie simulator affects chorus too. I'm using Nord Stage 3 as clonewheel, and when I play it using the internal Leslie simulator it feels like the chorus is way too intense. C1 is ok, but C2 or C3 are too much. However, if I hook the Stage to my Leslie 145 and bypass the internal Leslie simulator C3 feels just right. So, it must be that the Nord's Leslie simulator somehow affects the Chorus.

[lightbg]

Started gigging with a B-3 and two 122’s in 1970. Went to a Univox Organizer in 1974 with a single 122 with a 147 amp. In 1979 found the Korg CX3 and the RVS II amp. Kept the amp but found the RolandVK-7. Discovered the Nord Electro, then went with the 4D for the drawbars. Now an Arturia KeyLab 61 mk II with B3X on a miniiPad and one or two QSC K12-2’s depending on the gig.

 

None of this was done to please the crowd - they couldn’t care. This was for me only. I play like crap if I don’t hear through the speakers what’s in my head. Damn B-3 spoiled me for life, but I still get to play her every day. Life is good.

 

AND, if the KeyLab craps out my backup is a Reface YC and a Lester K.

 

I’ve got it covered.

[D. Gauss]

1 hour ago, ElmerJFudd said:

This one, right?

 

 

 

i'm playing a fundraiser/benefit for his brother Larry next week (bass player in the the vagrants along with leslie)...

 

 

[Pa Gherkin]

Chummy, You state that the SKPRO line is “plagued with software and hardware bugs.”  That’s a pretty broad statement. Care to elaborate? What are these bugs and where can we Iearn more about them?  Also,is KRK Marcoballa on YouTube.? I’d like to hear more about his clicky SKX PRO keys. Thanks.

[MathOfInsects]

1 hour ago, U.Honey said:

 

I've noticed that the Leslie simulator affects chorus too. I'm using Nord Stage 3 as clonewheel, and when I play it using the internal Leslie simulator it feels like the chorus is way too intense. C1 is ok, but C2 or C3 are too much. However, if I hook the Stage to my Leslie 145 and bypass the internal Leslie simulator C3 feels just right. So, it must be that the Nord's Leslie simulator somehow affects the Chorus.

I never use C3 on my NS3C, for exactly this reason. I usually find C2 to be the thing I expect from C3, but will check out C1 based on your experience. 

[mrk7421]

In reply to Another Scott about leslie sim on spin....

 

As soon as it becomes stereo... the sound of percussion changes. And then when it spins the tone of the whole thing is altered.

 

I am NEVER trying to emulate a "miked" leslie. Why would I want to do that? I want to hear a natural leslie not a miked one. I don't understand this miked business....mike distance and all that as it appears on Crumar Mojo. etc

 

Crumar is NOT my favorite sim by a long shot. I have the module.Too much riff raff on that one.

 

I don't think my problem is an "APP" or "VST". Simulation changes percussion if you listen critically to ANY of them.

 

 I have Mojo, HX3, Viscount and Numa 1. Numa 1 affects the organ tone less than any of them. Numa 1 also has excellent chorus vibrato. But the percussion changes as soon as it becomes stereo. A tonewheel Hammond does not have stereo percussion. That is the problem.

 

Sorry

 

 

[MathOfInsects]

I may have started the "mic'd Leslie" theme.

My point was, if you are performing in any context larger than a room, you are no longer hearing that thing people like about Leslies. You are hearing what your Leslie sounds like with three close mics, sent through the board and then to FOH. At that point, I'd often rather have the simulation, since it controls for a bunch of variables that can't be relied on live. 

In the studio you can set mics farther back and at least get that whoop-whoop sound. In a room you can hear it organically. In a stage-performance environment of practically any size, it's close-mic'd and at the mercy of a bunch of unappealing variables. I'm fine letting tech control for those, even if the result is slightly different from (though not "worse than") the supposed "real" thing.