I'm an amateur musician, retired from banking, with some time to spare now on an absorbing hobby.
I have a small converted bedroom/studio that holds my equipment in a cramped but adequate manner. I use one Technics Kn5000 keyboard in there which I use together with a Roland PK5 pedal board as the controllers for my two Hammond Clone modules; an E-mu B-3, the subject of this review, with another module, an Oberheim OB3^2. At present I use both clones together, although this is not necessary.
I also have a Hammond M100 tonewheel organ, circa mid-60s.
I used to MIDI my keyboards (I used to have two Technics keyboards) to a Hammond XM-1 plus XM-1c drawbar controller. I bought the E-MU last year because I had been unhappy with the XM-1, which was not giving me the sound that I was after. I had bought a Hughes and Kettner Tube Rotosphere which had helped improve the 'Hammond plus Leslie' emulation of the XM1 clone to no end, but I was still not getting "the sound." After reading a review of the E-MU, and after having received a demo CD from a kind American gentleman from the alt.music-hammond organ newsgroup, I was hooked.
I had been somewhat disillusioned with clones and the recording on the CD showed that real Hammond sound-alike voices could be coaxed from a Hammond substitute in a box, even when a real Leslie rotating sound cabinet was not available.
The E-MU uses multi-sampling, but somehow they have managed to contrive to eliminate the problem of transposition whereby samples taken at one frequency are transposed so that they can emulate another frequency. (ex: a sample taken, say, from a C note being used to produce perhaps a C# and a D note -- and quite possibly many more tones as well, which can cause an unpleasantness of tone, and phase or beating problems as well. Perhaps there are more multi-samples on the E-MU product and less transposition has been required. In any case the sounds are very musical, especially if you use the non-Leslied patches, which I will try to explain in due course.
The E-mu module is a single rack-mount unit with optional (included in the price) brackets so it can be used free-standing and then doesn't present with ugly attaching mounting holes. There is no wall-wart/mains adapter and it automatically accommodates 110v. or 220v., switching to the correct voltage. The box into which the necessary silicone/metal and plastic has been poured is based on E-MU's Proteus range of synths and can be most easily described as a synth with patches dedicated exclusively to the tonewheel Hammond organ, plus its stable-mate, the Leslie Speaker. (The Hammond Organ being the old valve/tube based, and unique electromechanical musical instrument invented by Laurens Hammond -- as you will most probably know if you are reading this review -- with the Leslie being an amplifier with integral speakers, the baffles of which rotate to provide a unique tremelo effect.) The Hammond Sound has featured on maybe more popular music recordings than any other single instrument, with perhaps the exception of the piano. It is a sound fiendishly difficult to emulate.
The B-3 module has two flavours of patches, the first being samples which have variously been taken from a customised A-100 and B-3 attached to a Leslie (a 122, I believe), sampled at 24bit and burned to CDROM and thence to ROMchip.
The 'org' patches feature two sides of the same coin as it were, in that there are both slow and fast Leslie samples. These morph from one to the other on a smooth and adjustable cross-fade programmed effect, to simulate the slow down/speed up of the rotating horns and baffles in the organ tone cabinet so beloved by organists, and an almost essential part of the "Hammond Sound." This is achieved by a special programme designed by E-MU which takes effect on receipt of a MIDI signal, described in more detail later. The programming is very clever, in that, normally playing this sort of sample would result in speeding up/slowing down of the read-out of the sample, the higher up/down the keyboard you play. (The so-called "Micky Mouse effect.") With a Leslie spinning, this would mean that the higher up the keyboard you played, the faster the speed of the spin would become. E-MU have totally avoided this and no matter what notes you play, the speed of the Leslie spin remains in sync in both fast or slow mode. So full marks for effort, then. However, there is something a little strange about the samples, to my ears, and here I should like to digress a little.
Many years ago, I went to see a movie presented in Cinerama where the screen curved almost half-way around the auditorium. The effect was stunning and "flying over the Grand Canyon" was truly breathtaking. There was one proviso, and that was that it was important to sit in the centre of the cinema; otherwise, the angles distorted with some very odd effects. The Cinerama directors used several methods to camouflage these distortions, like putting objects such as trees in the fore-ground to mask the strange angles caused by the Cinerama process and by the joins on screen, where the three projectors tried to blend their three individual pictures to make one whole. The result was impressive and very engaging even though, in effect, distorted.
Similarly with the B-3 org. patches: There is something which it seems to me doesn't quite gel and I can only guess that this has to do with a time-stretching trick needed to make the "Leslie" spin at the right speed on whichever note that the sample is played. The result is still very effective, though. There are loads of really excellent patches featuring vibrato, percussion, noise leakage, and tube-distortion which are brilliantly sampled, but which somehow perhaps just don't quite sound right, especially higher up the keyboard on fast spin, in particular.
If, however you are a player who mainly plays on rotor stop or slow spin with just occasional forays into fast spin mode, then you may well be absolutely delighted with these patches. Several patches are designed just for this purpose. I don't honestly believe, though, that the org. patches would be used much by most organists who were really hoping to use the E-MU B-3 as a replacement for the real thing. There is a definite "suck it and see" element about this module, and I would advise a potential purchaser to thoroughly audition this unit like no other. For the organist seeking a replacement for a hefty Hammond, there are, however, a whole bunch of other samples called dir. samples which are straight organ drawbar multi-samples which are, for me at least, absolutely the business, as they can be played through a Leslie emulator like the Rotosphere and/or a Leslie, and they are just magnificent, even though there are no physical drawbars. While the spin speed cross-fade on the org. patches is ingenious, and very probably the only way to go when using Leslie'd samples, I'm afraid it does not cut the mustard compared with the sound generated by the spin change of the mechanical rotors, or even the spin change emulation of the Rotosphere, when playing the dir. patches -- and spin speed change is an essential element of playing technique for most organists.
Percussion is available at 2 2/3' and 4', and these correctly trigger on staccato only, and can be edited as to volume and decay. There is foldback, vibrato and chorus, and various flavours of reverb, and, well, just about anything you would need to produce awesome Hammond patches. There are ready-made patches and user patches, which are duplicates of the ready-made (these can be edited to taste and saved easily enough using the knobs on the front panel, although they cannot be fully edited on the fly). With my keyboard's MIDI implementation, these patches can be readily called up to order, so its like baking cakes in the afternoon for eating in the evening. There are so many available user patches that just about any sound you ever wanted, you could probably construct, plus loads that you could only previously imagine, including flanges, sweeps and blah blahs. Org. patches can be combined with dir. patches with interesting results too.
As the B-3 module is based on the E-MU Proteus chassis, it can be fitted with another extra ROM chip from this series of synths for orchestral, synth and piano (an excellent piano at that) and drum kit and drum and bass. The two chips can be used to create mixed patches.
The B-3 was slated to be able eventually to be turbo-upgraded with extra audio outs and MIDI ins, and for its polyphony to be increased to 128 instead of the regular 64 note polyphony, and have even more ROM chip slots available, but as far as I can ascertain, this will not now happen, although this is still mentioned on the E-MU web-site. This would have been extremely useful, as the module could then function as a multi-synth where the regular instrument patches could be directed out to a straight channel, and the organ patches could be directed to a separate 'rotary' channel.
If this feature is now available, or does become available, it would greatly enhance the features of an already excellent product. An increase in polyphony would be good in that adding patches together (problematic only on org. patches for the most part) can soon reduce the number of notes that will sound, and can lead to "note-robbing." At present, there isn't an effects send/return facility either, so its all or nothing through the Leslie or simulator. With the up-grade, the orchestral voices on the extra ROM chip that I have fitted could be routed through a straight channel, whilst the organ voices rotated merrily.
The module can be set up to receive on multiple MIDI channels, so it's easy to send to three of these channels for upper, lower, and pedal-board, and also to send to other channels for the instrument voices.
The organ samples are awesome, but I wouldn't recommend the B-3 for use as a Hammond clone where the organ sound was to be the main item in a keyboard set-up, mostly because there is little 'on the fly' editing apart from tone and some filter control and percussion volume. Unless you are prepared to set up all the send patches for the upper and separate lower manual on the MIDI control keyboard and then keep these changes in your keyboard's memory for recall, it is not possible to change both upper and lower patches on the module itself without having to do this first for one MIDI channel, and then for the other channels, using the illuminated front panel display and control knobs, scrolling from one MIDI channel to another.
The module, although easy enough to edit and then store simple drawbar position settings, is cumbersome in its method of calling up the parts that you want to edit, in that you have to scroll through menus and sub-menus. Once you have sorted out the patches you want though, again provided you can transmit the required panel memory changes from your MIDI keyboard, the Hammond emulation is second to none. All the patches are provided with audition riffs so that you can hear the results of your editing as you edit, without having to keep playing the keyboard. This is a very nice touch, and the riffs are rather nice too and quite educational for the intemediate player. They can be MIDI'd out and viewed on a P.C.
There are some odd features, however, in its MIDI implementation. It responds to volume, but not expression. I have to use an in-line stereo volume pedal, as my keyboard transmits expression data when using the keyboard's volume pedal which if my memory is correct, is CC#11 rather than CC#07, and is the standard control number for this information. If your keyboard can be programmed to send the volume control data CC#07 from your keyboard's expression pedal then this is may not be a problem.
Another oddity is that if you are using the org. patches and you want to change spin speed, then your keyboard must be able to copy down a 'sustain' (the spin controller) message from the upper-manual side of the keyboard to the lower-manual side, other-wise only the right-hand patch will switch to the new, say, fast spin speed, leaving the other manual still on slow rotor. This is not a problem, of course, for the dir. patches which are routed through a Leslie or simulator which have their own speed controllers.
Patches can be zoned across the keyboard with either straight switches between settings or crossfades. Left-hand bass is available.
To summarise: The dir. patches are superb, and they don't exhibit any of the nasty beating problems that can arise with sampling clones, but the user interface is pretty tricky to say the least. The org. patches are quite interesting and extremely clever, but can sound perhaps a tad unusual from a purist point of view, and yet they can sound awesome and be very playable.
I believe that the E-MU can probably lay claim to being both the best of clones (because of its impeccable samples) and also one of the the worst of clones at one and the same time (because it is basically using a synth module format with an inappropriate (for organists) user-interface, a unique achievement, really, but excellent of course for computer musicians.
The above is my personal take on the product, and your view may well be different, but I have tried to take an objective view on a subjective matter. Can you tell the difference between butter and a low fat spread? None of the low fat spreads taste just like butter but some make a better stab at it. The E-MU's emulation of the Hammond sound is exceedingly good. Would I buy the product again if I were in the market for a Hammond clone? Most probably; and very definitely, if the turbo-upgrade were to be available. Thomas Adamson. UK.
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