Voce Micro-B II

Very simple and intuitive.No programming.

With a MIDI merge can accept two keyboards plus a pedal board.
Full poliphony.22 presets on front panel, up to 36 via MIDI prog. change.
A few parameters(Volume,Vibrato Chorus,Percussion,Leslie speeds etc)
are accessible via MIDI CC.
Strong and compact.No drawbars(If you need them,look for V5 or similars,like Roland VK8m or Viscount DB3e).

I'm a Hammond A100 proud owner.I own the VOCE V5 too and the overall sound character is similar:warm,mellow VOCE sound.
The Micro has a better Vib Chorus(!),and louder percussions(although the percussion's sound in the V5 is better).Leslie effect is so so,
but the basic B3 sound is relly good,and can astonish if you play it through a real Leslie or a good Leslie simulator.
This is a little jem for the pop rock keyboard player who needs a realistic Hammond sound in a half rack box and doesn't care for drawbars missing
(here you find almost all the Hammond sounds well known from fifty years of recordings)

I've bought it used today:seems a few years old but sounds perfect
(hope it goes so on !)

Lovable.A B3 in my pocket!

Very easy to use. No drawbar science required. Don't understand why
all preset sounds aren't available through the front knob.. weird.
I'm using an Alesis QS 6.1 as the master and control the sounds
from my board anyway. As a non-Hammond user, it takes a little time to find
the right sound and effect combination that you want to hear...but
it's not complicated.

Built in effects are good. I find the Leslie simulator much more
realistic than my keyboards mod wheel. In fact I got used to the
Leslie simulator and can't stand my keyboards mod effect. I know it's
below what a real one can do, I can hear the difference, but at the ends
of the songs or if you're soloing, it does what I want it to. I
use a footswitch for the leslie.

This catagory is why I wanted to comment about the Voce unit. My Alesis
has wonderful organ sounds. Gritty, cathederal, ringy, all good sounds.
BUT, when placed in a loud band situation, they fizzle out. The Voce does
not. It sounds nice and full and just as good alone as with four other
musicians(who can play loud). The Micro BII really fills the bandwith
of sound and my band and I love it.

I have had no problems. My backup would be my keyboard.

I would replace the Voce without a thought. At half the cost of a
reasonable keyboard, it was worth it. I have been playing as a
hobbiest for over ten years(no serious gigging). I have always been
wishing for better good organs. I owned an Ensoniq SQ1, Roland U-20, and
my current Alesis QS 6.1. I have owned the Voce for about 8 months.
My initial quest for better organ sounds was for a used Hammond XM-1,
but I got WAY outbid on eBay on that one, just as well. I am very
happy with this unit and would recommend it highly.

This is a half rack organ simulator. Instead of drawbars, there are presets accessible through a rotary switch or via midi.
Very easy to use, except that if you're actually changing operation modes with the front panel knobs on a dark stage, you're in for a hell of a time. That would be a situation where midi control is essential. Plus, you can access additional presets through midi not available on the front panel.

One knob switches among drawbar settings. What you see is what you get, but enough settings are represented to satisfy most of the people most of the time.

Another knob switches among effects, meaning different vibrato/chorus/leslie settings. Here, just about every possibility is represented.

Percussions volume and harmonic, key click, and what passes for overdrive on this unit are changed via the front panel. A switch input on the back allows you to go between leslie fast and slow speeds by remote pedal.

Like other Voce Organ modules, you can get upper and lower drawbards going on separate midi channels and assign different presets to each (pedal too, if I'm remembering right).

Many parameters are controllable via midi.

I'm a huge fan of the Voce organ modules, and this little unit has that same great basic sound quality as the V3 and the V5. In other words, very warm, realistic, and useable throughout the entire 5-octave range. So, to some extent, you're getting the same great Voce sound, just in a smaller, less flexible package. Of course, a major part of the Hammond's expressiveness is in ability to manipulate the drawbars and with this unit you're stuck with switching among presets.

The vibrato/chorus effect and the percussion are both very nice and musical.

The leslie effect is not bad in terms of giving a sense of rotary motion and livening up the sound. However, as with the Voce V3, when you engage the leslie simulator, you introduce a fair bit of extraneous noise that may not be desirable. I think in part its an attempt to recreate the leslie distortion, but it comes out sounding more like a little electronic sizzle. Running it through a tube will eliminate enough of that high frequency buzz and it sound a lot better. Better yet would be to bypass the MicroB's leslie sim (which is easily done) and use a different leslie simulator or the real thing.

My opinion is that the basic drawbar sound of the MicroB is on a par with the newer Voce products, i.e., the V5, which is as good as it gets. However, the leslie simulator is not so great and you can find newer products that will do much better in that department.

I'm not likely to gig much with this, since I have a Voce V5. This might be my backup to that. I just love the "would you gig without a backup?" question. Big time musicians probably travel with backup gear, but I think most of us pathetic gigging around town types don't have that luxury. We just grab what we think we'll need and go.

I've emailed DR Strings, who are supposedly the US Distributor for Voce, a couple of times and received no response. None at all. Maybe I should try going directly to Voce in Italy. "Como si quiamo, uno . . . uhhhh . . . wallo warto?"

I picked this up recently from a music store where it had been sitting, new but unnoticed, for several years so they let it go for below-cost. I also own a V5, which I love dearly, and a V3, which I also love but which has proven somewhat unreliable in its old age. So my V3 sits in my band practice space. My V5 sits in a rack gig-ready and prewired with all the appropriate effects. The MicroBII will serve as my Voce unit of convenience, to take to an improptu jam session or perhaps to gigs as backup to the V5.

I miss having drawbars, but there are many situations where I can live without them and the MicroBII will do fine for those.

Once you've become a Voce organ module afficionado, you won't want to play another Hammond simulator. Having this little guy around makes it more likely I'll never have to.

Compact and easy to use. Good rotary controls and pushbuttons make this unit quickly configurable on the fly.
It is refreshing to see quality basic controls on modern electronics. \
Finding a drawbar setting is not as nice as sliders because you have to "hunt" for the right sound by stepping
through the rotary selector - just keep track of the number of setting you need to use. The drawbar list is
on the top of the unit, but it is good for reference only and makes the unit look cool, but this thing is small
enough to get buried in a rack or table top.

This is a half rack sound module so the input is MIDI. Just about all
the basic Hammond B series settings you will need. This is the Micro
BII's strength - its tone generation capability. The percussion and
key click controls are very useful. You also get a plethora of rotary
effects to click through and an overdrive adjustment.

The micro B II simulates a Hammond B tones pretty well, however if you
want something that will give you an awesome leslie effect or gritty
overdrive, don't expect that from this unit. They are there to color
the sound, but are fairly weak as effects go. I decided to pair it up
with a Digitech RPM-1 rotary simulator and got better results that
were fairly convincing in performance, but really, it just doesn't
have balls that a well equipt real Hammond does. It beats hauling
around hundreds of extra pounds of Hammond and trying to find the
space.

Well, perhaps I have been unlucky in this respect. I gigged quite
a bit when I bought this thing and treated it with good care like all my
gear, but my unit on a few occaisions would lock up and it had to be
reset. This isn't easy on stage where I had it in a rack and the on/off
button is in the back. I also on a couple of occaisions emitted a very high
pitched noise that drove us nuts because we couldn't figure out where
it was coming from. Eventually, the unit locked up completely and I
dug out a bad chip that had failed.

So far, I have not had any response via E-mail from DR Music after a
week, so i have sent another request to see if I can buy another chip.
So the jury is still out on this one. I have not called them yet.

Despite the problems and additions I had to make, I really like the
Micro BII. I was fun to experiment to see how close I can get to
getting a Hammond sound in a rack. My results were far better than
most standard keyboard patches I have used. I hope I can get it working
again so I can enjoy hammering out some balzy riffs.