<Quotes repositioned and trimmed by admin> >> Heh. Back in the early 80s I worked with a keyboard player who also >> was a B3 tech; he added a second set of tone wheels to his B3. We >> used to haul that down the stairs (complete with snow in the winter) >> to the basement club we regularly played, along with a Leslie cabinet. > >> All I know is that if he hadn't been a B3 God, we never would have >> hauled that stuff around. Made my dual 15" bass rig seem downright >> lightweight in comparison. It's amazing we never got injured... >yep, with those movers bars you strapped on the sides. Beginning of >my back problems. And of course, >no way around it back then, if you wanted that B3 sound. >James I have a Hammond B3, M3 and M 100 with 2 Leslie 147's and a modified 122 that is bi amped with JBL drivers but use B4 II regularly when the real ones aren't practical. If I fly out to a gig or there isn't transportation or room on stage for the real deal the B4 II laptop gets the call. I used to hate playing without the real ones but it's gotten to the point that I don't really mind playing the emulation. The other issue I've ran into several times this summer where the Hammond became a large keyboard stand is live outdoor gigs where the generator for AC wasn't running at 60 Hz so the organ would be drifting out of tune as the freq varied. The louder u played or the more lights that came on the flatter the organ got. Pretty hard to tune the band to a dynamically variable tuning problem like that. I reworked my Kurzweil K2500 to allow the controller sliders to operate the drawbars and routed the switches to the key switches I need like vibrato and percussion. I've played the real thing for longer than a lot of the members of this group have been around and I have to say the emulations are getting very close. Unless the venue is great and the PA likewise most of the time no one will know the difference except for the purist sitting at the keyboard. I won't say that the emulators for Leslies can duplicate the way a real one interacts with the room but if you're on a big stage thru a PA that swamps the original sound there really isn't a lot of difference to the people in the house. I like B4 II better than B4 in a lot of ways although I still think B4 is pretty decent. My already compressed discs much prefer the emulators to the real deal as well.