E-MU B-3 Organ Module

The preset sounds are very nice. There is a few I think are outstanding. I had a Hammond B-3 and I am almost ready to just use this module. It is nice to just tap the footswitch to turn the Leslie effects on and off so I can keep both hands on the keys. I haven't edited any yet but it seems to be easy. I also inserted another e-mu synth circuit board to get more sounds, but I have 6 synths and just use the B3 sounds as of now. The manual is fairly easy to understand. It does go deep if you want.

The only effects I have used is the leslie, but I also have altered the sound with the Controller keyboard I use. I use an Edirol 61 key controller in the studio and live.

Alot of the sounds are very realistic. It has demos for every sound on the unit; synth and organ. Has a great variety for different types of music.

Haven't had it long but so far no probs.

I would buy another one if I got ripped off or broke it. Has great Growling B3 sound or mellow also.Has nice percussion presets.

Version 1.00
If you are at all familiar with other EMU modules, you will find this one a breeze to program, but a patch editor would make things alot faster as it tends to get tedious.
Manual is very thorough and laid out well

64 voices,limited FX but ok

The real problem with this unit is the sounds have no balls.
The output is very low from the unit.
There are endless presets and stacking is simple and quick.
The Leslie simulator is better than most.

As always, its built very well, never crashes

Althought there are far less organ patches in the new Roland SRX expansion board "Ultimate Keys"Id still chose it over the EMU because the samples have far more attack and grit as well as imaging. furthermore the B-3 modules only have variations on a B-3 and the Roland is much more.

This is an addition to my previous review

This thing seems to me made for studio use only. I had it fitted in a nice and cosy rack - and it doesn't like transport. It did let me down on gigs twice so we had to part.

Customer support is sloooooooow. I had a "backup" luckily with my GEM Equinox but waiting weeks and weeks until it returns from support is not acceptable for me.

I did part with the unit and replaced it with a Voce V5. The E-MU seems to be ok'ish for studio, definetely not for road use.

This review is actually a review of the Definitive B-3 ROM (9083). As with the other EMU ROMs, installation is a breeze and takes less than a minute. Plug and play.

The preset setup effectively consists of "dry" B-3 sounds (no Leslie effects, mono) and "stereo" B-3 sounds. The latter run the gamut from very realistic to weird sound effect stuff. That said, the vast majority of patches are B-3, pure and simple. The "authentic" B-3 patches are named according to the drawbar settings they represent, and the sampled material pretty much captures every useable combination. Key click (percussion), vibrato, rotary effects etc are all well-represented.

Editing is straight-forward if you are familiar with EMU products, but of course it is not as easy as with drawbars. If you gotta have these, you will be disappointed. Too, there is no real way of tweaking leslie (rotary) speaker effects.

No manual comes with the ROM, but EMU products have decent manuals and these are all available online.

Giving "8" for ease of use, since it is not as simple as drawbars. Might have scored lower, I suppose, but on the plus side, the ROM does not weigh a ton, is easy to transport, and is not a pain to service.

Polyphony is limited by the module or keyboard used. I am using a PK-6, so polyphony is 64. In a P2500 module, polyphony would be 128, I suppose. The same situation applies for the sequencing capacities, effects and midi capabilities - they depend on the mother unit.

On the topic of effects, the ROM does not really have a leslie simulator, per se. Rather, it contains copious stereo samples which capture various settings. All the stereo samples come with a leslie fast and a leslie slow variant. The ROM simply cross-fades between the two sounds in the "wet" presets. The "dry" presets have no leslie effects whatsoever, and may be used with an external leslie simulator. With the stereo samples, one is unable to control rotation speed and separation etc.

Will give rating of 6 due to inability to tweak leslie effects etc.

Rating sounds is extremely subjective.... To put my ratings in proper context, it is worth noting that while I love it, I am not a B-3 purist. Indeed, only one thing tends to please B-3 diehards -- real B-3s. For my part, I basically only like and use 4-5 B-3 settings -- 88800000, 88880000, 80000008, 88888888. Yes, the B-3 is cabable of producing thousands of other minor variants, but I do not find these to be especially distinctive. On the same note, I am not a big fan of percussion (key click) or vibrato.

Having qualified my tastes, I give the B-3 ROM a solid 8. It really does capture the warmth and character (defects, if you will) of a real B-3. Like I said earlier, I would prefer more flexibility and control over leslie effects. But hey, I purchased the ROM for $99.

It is a ROM. That said, I have owned EMU products (as well as Yamaha, Roland, and General Music) since 1999 and have never had any quality or workmanship issues.

I have had good luck with EMU customer support. They responded to my emails in a few days, and I was able to reach a phone customer support representative without much difficulty. Don't know why others have panned EMU on this front....

In closing, I would like to put my review in its proper context - price. The various EMU keyboards are now selling for something like $400 brand new and most, if not all ROMS are $99 apeice. I have not recently priced out a real Hammond, but can state without any hesitation that EMU provides the best budget B-3 sounds on the market. I cant find a Roland, Hammond or other B-3 clone for less than two, heck three, times the price of a PK-6 and the B-3 ROM. Too, while the B-3 ROM certainly has deficiencies, all the other B-3 sims on the market seem to have their share of problems. Like the B-3 ROM, these all tend to centre on leslie simulations.

Vis a vis a REAL Hammond and REAL leslie, I would give the PK-6 / B-3 comba a rating of 7. The real deal will always sound better, but they weigh a ton, are expensive, and require constant maintenance. In terms of what I like, the PK-6 and B-3 ROM cover all the bases. And yes, I would buy them again if they were stolen (although I would buy a Halo or VK-6 rather than the PK-6. See my review of the PK-6 for my views on that board.

BOTTOM LINE - a good, cheap B-3 sim. I you only need a good Hammond sound once in a while, this is your board.

Easy to change sound, plays out of the box. BUT: you can just see one midi channel, changing sound there must be either triggered externally or cusor move, datawheel turn... unusable on a gig. Bought a Behringer FCB 1010 Midi footcontroler for that but with that the volume doesn't get changed on all channels. Bought a volume pedal for my masterkeyboard for that. So: lack of usability must be patched with additional equipment

Polyphony is a bit weak (64), note robbing occurs especially when playing on multiple channels. Expected the turbo upgrade to 128, but it never came. Be careful if you set this beast up in a daisy-chained midi environment (see "reliability"), it could result in ground (?) loops causing clicks (had that).

Wow! Thats killer! I love it! The crossfading leslie is a bit .... strange, but using it in a band together with various other instruments it is ok. The built-in distortion is crap, I route it through a vintage Colorsound Wah into a ADA-MP1 (in the effects loop of my sub-mixer), giving a "where is this hammond?" effect to the people.

I had problems in a daisy-chained midi environment, causing clicks whatever got changed in the environment. EMU wasn't able to tell what it was, changing the order in the chain finally solved that problem.
Giving wrong program changes causes it to lock up with "not installed" and no sound gets produced (sic!), that is fairly awful during a gig (especially if you want to trigger a sound in a "unseeable" midi channel

Friendly but Slow (kept my B-3 for 2 weeks without findding anything). OS upgrade request from EMU-website triggered but never received. Working in a service and technilogy company myself, I could sell them some courses... :)

It's nice and small. Sound is great, if you tweak it a bit with additional gear. I would start thinking, if it would get stolen, most probably I would try to find something with a better user interface - but with the same sound quality. Does this exist? Probably the Voce V5 - but after checking the Electric Piano my confidence in Voce is down through the floor... My other gear: Gem Equinox 61 PRO, Gem Realpiano Expander, Doepfer LMK 2+. I play groove/funk/soul music. Got pointed to the EMU by a fellow Equinox owner (hi Paul!)

My B3 was a a floor demo. Still version one. There are a ton of presets that run the gamut of B3 sounds. I don't edit the sounds often, though it is fairly easy, especially if you're used to the drawbar method of old.

Though the nature of this is primarily to emulate a B3, of course, there are an exceptional number of filters and effects accessible via the front controller knobs. This is most excellent. Also, I put in the strings expansion chip, which of course make this piece more versatile.

The B3 samples are totally money! Dirty sometimes, and heavenly othertimes. My only gripe is that the crossfades (from straight to modulated) are a bit weak, hence my 9.

This was a demo and got a little beat up. I would use it on a gig. Butchanevaknow.

I never spoken to E-mu regarding this product, but I spoke to them about an E5000 sampler, and they were surprisingly helpful over the phone. I'm used to folks trash-talking them. So I will probably be the only one to give them a decent rating. And if they don't deserve it, who cares.

I'm primarily a guitarist, but I've been playing keyboards since I was 16 (that's ten years) for bands and recording. I keep my keyboard rig small on purpose, and so a B3 module is perfect. It sounds awesome. I control it with a digital piano, and use it with an E5000, a Casio VZ-10m (a very bizarre module), and a Kurzweil K2000.
If it were lost or stolen, I'd definitely get another.

Although the B-3 is simple enough to use out of the box, it has some challenges that make it's ease of use no better than average. First, the enclosed paper manual only contains excerpts from the full manual, which comes on an enclosed CD-ROM in Adobe .PDF format. This makes it cumbersome to complex tasks unless you print out the manual. Second, although the ROM patches have names corresponding to actual drawbar settings, there is no "virtual drawbars" mode to edit or create patches. Third, the manual is not written very well - it is hard to follow, and this comes from one that enjoys sitting and reading a manual cover-to-cover. Finally, this device is so laden with complex synthesizer programming features unrelated to B-3 organs that this keyboard player (who used to program Yamaha Dx7's with some success) was intimidated.

For what it is (a B-3 organ simulator), this device is absolutely loaded down with extra's that go way beyond what one might expect. Envelope filters, LFO's, and digital delays are just a sample of synthesis tools available for the inspired user and most of these features can be routed and re-routed in any order. Expansion boards with additional sounds are available, as are add-on kits to add extra MIDI capability and multiple output channels. Putting all this to work will be the challenge, though.

The sound is absolutely sweet. The slow rotor organ sound is warm and satisfying. The fast rotor organ sound is aggressive. Great pains have been taken to duplicate the responses, both good and bad, of a real Hammond ("monophonic" percussion sounds, etc.) The only drawback is the transition between the slow and fast rotors. The device apparently cross-fades between the two sampled sounds, rather than actually slowing and speeding up the rotor. This is not too big of a problem in live settings, but might necessitate the use of a better Leslie simulator when recording.

First one that came from the UPS man did not work at all. My confidence was shaken.

I am very happy with my B-3, especially for the price. However, if it were lost or stolen, I would look at other gear with either virtual drawbars or actual drawbars before I bought another. I would also look for something with a more realistic transition between slow and fast rotor. However, the price, size and the sound are right and those features make it tough to beat.

I have version 1 and have not felt the need to update, although I believe that software releases are available.
Cutting to the chase, this is the best Hammond emulator that I have heard. I used to have an XM1 sampled Suzuki-Hammond module, which was beautifully made, had drawbars and more presets than you could shake a stick at. The E-mu has sounds which really are much better.
I use the E-mu is a small home studio, and use headphones a fair bit.
The E-mu module itself is quiet, that is, it is noise free although it does an excellent job of sampling the electromechanical noises produced by the Hammond itself.
As others have mentioned,the module is easy to use, as there are so many excellent patches available. Editing is not really a necessity.
A patch editor, available for PC would be really nice though, as although you can get to grips with programming, it is tedious using the front panel, scrolling through the editing menus. If anyone knows of such a programme I would love purchase one.
There are really two main types of patches. Straight Hammond sounds for feeding to a Leslie through a 1/4 inch to combo Leslie pre-amp pedal or one of the rare breed Leslie's which have a quarter inch line in. I have one of these and the E-mu sounds, well, like a Hammond through a Leslie.
The other samples are Leslie patches which feature fast and slow formants on the same preset which morph from one to the other on receipt of the midi sustain command, and mod wheel command and on some of the presets (pr) from after-touch pressure which is very nice.
Mentioned in a previous review is the oddity of the sustain command which needs to be transmitted on all channels being used.
For example I use midi 1 for upper manual and midi 2 for lower manual.
Fortunately my keyboard has the option of setting up the sustain pedal to affect both manuals so I don't have a problem.
I bought an OB3^2 module to work in parallel with the E-mu to provide some drawbar control to the rig but the tuning of the OB was off.
I have had to return the unit and now have settled on two E-mu B-3s.
This will make drawbar sounding changes easy and give me great flexibity, perhaps using one of the units through a Hughes and Kettner Rotosphere and one using the built in Leslie patches.
These Leslie patches are a bit of an oddity IMO. They capture the real sound of a rotating Leslie, no question, something which no simulator has really achieved. This is especially true of the fast settings which supply real power and the scintillation of the real deal.
However to achieve this remarkable sound, I think that E-mu has had to take some liberties with the original samples. As every drawbar setting cannot be captured the samples have to be re-jigged to sound at different frequencies, as is the case on all sampled instruments.
E-mu have achieved this by, it would seem, altering the read out speed of the sample so that whatever notes you play the speed has been stretched so that all notes produce the sound of the Leslie rotating at the correct speed. This does somehow seem to alter the character of the sound just a little which is hard to describe. It is less apparent on the 888800000 type settings than on some of the other patches which are combining various samples to produce a fuller drawbar sound. I think that it is this which has probably adversely affected other reviewers' opinions on the Leslie 'simulation'.
Playing the E-mu with other instruments pretty well masks this and the B-3 can sound awesome. I think that you need to audition this module like no other if you are wanting to use it straight out of the box into your mixer.I still prefer the module's Leslie sim above that of the Rotosphere. However when I get my second module, I will experiment with unit one straight to mixer and unit two, through H & K.
The manual is on CDROM. Over a period of a month I printed this, page by page out onto paper. You need a printed manual and this should be available without needing to ow

The unit is a 64 voice module, whose polyphony depletes with the complexity of the preset being used ending up with note-robbing, which is often apparent when midi'ing two keyboards for upper and lower manuals. In the UK the turbo upgrade is not going to be made available as I understand it, so a module for upper and another for lower will sort this out and would also make changing the presets on the lower manual much easier as the presets can only be changed either with a midi command signal, or from the front panel where you have to scroll back and forth between the two midi channels.
Effects are either reverb options or DSP choruses/ flanges etc and are pretty standard fare. The are super filters though which can really alter the character of the sound patches. You could probably conjure up any Hammond Sound that you have heard and make up any Hammond Sound that you could previously only imagine.
There are 16 midi channels for sequencer use. Computer musicians can drool.
Effects must include the Leslie Sim, which I described, as best I could, in the previous section. Just to repeat though, as the samples are taken from a real spinning Leslie, they can't really come any closer to the real deal. This is especially true in a mix as the very slight idiosyncrasies of the stretching is masked.
A very neat feature on this module is the audition button which plays some nice riffs to demo each preset. You can use this whilst editing to hear you efforts as you twiddle the editing knobs. You can also midi out these riffs and use them as a learning feature as they can be notated in a scorewriter programme. Unique as far as I am aware for a Hammond emulator is the E-mu's facilty for adding more EPROMs for more sounds, a very nice feature as there are some new Orchestral Roms available which could enhance a keyboard rig.

The module is responsive and plays like a Hammond pretty much. It will of course do more than this as it responds to aftertouch which may be used to control the 'Leslie' speed changes, a very nice feature. The module can be used for all types of Hammond type playing and includes many patches with the noise and grit of the real thing including tube distortion. I understand the original samples were made at 24bit and dithered down to 16bit for burning to EPROM and they are just the business.

Reliability? It's been totally reiable. I have had the module for a year with no problems.

Lost or stolen, I would replace. I really wanted to turbo-upgrade but as the product can be bought at a good discount; having two of these things is still a great deal, considering the quality of the units and this option gives great flexibity an ease of use. One thing I love about the B-3 is that the tuning is spot on and does not cause problems such as beating which can drive you nuts.
IMO, if you can forget drawbar control then I think that this is the very best Hammond in a box. Using two modules could give you drawbar type changes using a mixer and crossfading between units which is the option that I have now chosen. The module is well worth the money.

Software version 1.0 (not the latest version). With 512 presets, there are enough sounds to keep me happy for the rest of my life without ever editing the thing. That's pretty easy! The manual is clear (most of it comes on CD-ROM), and considering the incredible level of tweaking possible, the layout is very logical and accessible to anyone familiar with synthesizer configuration. It's very helpful that the user presets can be given nice long names that'll pop up in the LCD screen so I'll remember what they are. (Devices that'll only save numbers are a pain.)

The module has 64-voice polyphony, and in my brief excursions that's been plenty. But read the reviews below regarding "note robbing". I just haven't encountered that yet. It'll transmit on 16 MIDI channels (more with their Turbo upgrade) and it's multitimbral, so different instruments can be triggered simultaneously. (That would be particularly useful if one were to install additional synth ROM cards and use it as a multi-instrument synth. Unfortunately, I haven't heard anything I've liked of the other cards so, like most of the other reviewers here, I'm planning to stick with just the B-3 sounds. That's a disappointment because it would be great to have a single one-space rackmount synth for organ, piano, synth, orchestral sounds. I wish they'd come out with some better sounding ROM cards. If they do, I'll consider the "Turbo" upgrade, which provides four expansion slots and S/PDIF out.) There are a ton of effects, all perfectly suited to the emulated sound. There's a handy "audition" feature that plays riffs while you scroll through the various presets in search of the requisite sound. There's a headphone jack, and real-time control knobs for various parameters. On the back are just MIDI In/Out/Through and a pair of unbalanced, TS-jack left/right audio outputs. There's no internal sequencer.

The B-3 emulation is really good, and there are convincing presets that'll suit rock, blues, gospel, fusion, theatre right out of the box. Triggering seems good when playing, and I think it responds just like the Hammond. I haven't tried it with a sequencer yet, so I don't know about its latency and so forth. The effects are mostly good, except the Leslie simulator which, as you'll read from almost all reviewers, isn't the unit's strongest point. I'm considering getting a dedicated speaker simulator. On the other hand, I'm using it mainly for background tracks in pop/rock recordings, so I may not need anything more realistic.

The first one I bought was defective; it must have had a bad chip, and was fuzzing out and randomly emitting all sorts of wierd harmonics. I exchanged it for another easily enough, but when I removed the protective sheath over the LCD, the faceplate came right off with it! So how much confidence do you think I have in its durability?

Don't know, but I'll probably be finding out soon enough.

I stopped playing keyboard and took up the guitar for several years, but this box has sparked my enthusiasm for keys again! As a staff person in a university music department, I have regular access to lots of synths: Roland JV-80, emu UltraProteus, Yamaha SY-99, Kurzweil K2000, Korg M-3, Yamaha TG500, and on and on. This one sounds the best to me out of all of them. It only does one thing, really, but it does it well. The Korg CX-3 keyboard may sound a bit better, and is reported to have a more convincing Leslie simulator, but it costs three times as much, and I didn't want another keyboard; just a module. I also tried the Native Instruments B-4 synth software ($200), which sounded pretty good, too, but it was much more limited, and the demo didn't trigger very well for me at all. The B-3 is just right for me; I love it.

i find it very easy to use. you can do alot of important editing on the fly. my alesis qs-7 and the emu b-3 are a match made in heaven. ive only had it for a day and a half, but its already very easy to understand. ALRIGHT........IT SOUNDS ON ALL OF MY QS-7'S KEYS. now i can assign it a low and high key and have pleanty of room for my horn section.ITS EASILY TRANSPOSES. THERES NO OTHER B-3 MOD. THAT DOES THIS ON THE MARKET. VERY VERY EASY TO USE...THANK YOU SYNTH GODS.

the emu b-3 has 64 note poliphony. i havent gotten into layering yet so ill have to check that subject matter out on a later date. i think the effects are really good.emu didnt have to load all these effects into a b-3 module.....BUT ILL TAKE THEM. THE SOUNDS ARE GREAT. i went to music store three days ago and tried out the v-5. they were also very good, but the drawbars seemed very cheaply made. i play in a band where i have to take advantage of all the keys on my rack. the fact that the voce v-5 only sounds on 61 keys(the traditional b-3 octive range) really turned me off. i think the emu sound better. the leakage is alot more realistic. the distortion effect is also alot more gritty. OK....THE LESLIE SIMULATOR. for what im doing, i think its going to do just fine. i think it sounds better than my old korg g-4. it doesnt really have the low end speaker rotation, but i like the high end loop. the voce didnt even have a leslie simulator.

this is as close to the real thing as your going to get. im giging in palms springs in three days and i cant wait to break this puppy out of the hanger. their is so many great b-3 patches to choose from. they all souns so exellent. you can edit the release on a fly and save it immediatley.VERY VERY GOOD.... emu did a great job with the vibrato and key percusion. im not getting any circuit humm at all.my mackie 1202 vlz loves the emu b-3 alot. i really like the fact that i can take this module into B-3...THE NEXT GENERATION... with all the effects and options in this thing,the possibilites are endless.

ive only had it a day and a half. its seems to be put together quite well. it fits well and protected im my rack. i love this thing. i think it will be just fine. if it did break down...no worry...ive got the internal organ sounds of my qs-7 and my korg g-4. YOU THINK IM DUMB?.....SAVE YOUR BACK UP SOUNS ON A VOICE CRYSTAL. its going to get a real work-out in the next 4 months sonly time will tell.

i haven't delt with emu on a one on one basis yet. i do know that you can download the owners manual for free.THAT TELLS ME SOMTHING GOOD ABOUT THIS COMPANY.

if it were lost or stolen, id buy it again. nothing else...ive been playing from singapore to alaska the last twenty years and have owned alot of different keyboards. this things going with me. i dont have rich parents so i have to make due with what i have on hand. a peavey dpm-si,alesis qs-7, a kurzweil micro piano....AND THE EMU B-3...IM A HAPPY CAMPER. the fact that you can edit the emu b-3 like a synth makes all the difference in the world to me. 2 keyboards on stage with me is enough