Session Organ compared to other Hammond VSTs?

[Lee Shapiro]

I’m pretty excited to purchase the Session Organ on Friday.  I have about a dozen other Hammond B3/Leslie VSTs, including IK’s Hammond B-3X, Blue3, and others, each one has it’s pros and cons, some sounding more realistic than others.   The website samples here sound great, but you never can really tell until you start playing it.
So I’m wondering, those who already purchased it and have other Hammond VSTs as well, how does Toontrack’s Session Organ stack up with some of the others?

Either way, I’m still going to purchase it because Toontrack offers a whole lot of extras (MIDI grooves, Bandmate, Grid Editor, etc.), but I’d like to know about how the overall sound compares to other VSTs.  Thanks!

 

• This topic was modified 1 year, 3 months ago by Lee Shapiro.

Topic

[Clay Howard]

I’m curious as well although I don’t think what I’ve heard so far comes close to my 1k b3.

EZkeys version: 2.0.4
Operating system: Windows 11

[Glenn Stanton]

i bought it after holding out for 2 hours after adding to my cart. i think it sounds pretty decent and the interface is nicely done. i like the split MIDI for upper, lower, and pedal as an option. i don’t own the IK B3 but many people who have experience playing the real thing says its one of the two or three best.

my last personal playing on a real B3 w/ Leslie was back in 1985… so, to my ear (and in a mix where it is not the prominent instrument like say Boston’s Smokin’ etc) the TT B3 is good, and i’ve used the Collab B3 (free) quite a bit, the NI Vintage Organ, Arturia B3, and lately the VB3-II. the TT, Collab, Arturia and VB3 all have good interfaces and for me, all sound good in the mix.

going forward, i’ll mainly be using the TT B3 for composing organ parts and rendering the performance as well as MIDI output. i like the TT B3 Leslie effect which to me has just the right set of speeds and spin up/down rate for a realistic performance.

disclaimer: i’m a guitarist first and multi-instrumentalist second… so buyer beware

EZkeys version: 2.0.4
Operating system: Windows 11

Glenn

www.runnel.com
www.reverbnation.com/fossile

• The post has been modified 3 times, last modified 1 year, 3 months ago by Glenn Stanton.

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Thanked by: Lee Shapiro

[Flemming Poulsen]

I have both, and IMHO the IK’s Hammond B-3X sound better, more fuller and have more tweaking possibilities (the expression pedal function in IK’s Hammond B-3X is fenomenal). For me, Session Organ will work well for composing in the Toontrack environment (EZX, EZB and EZK), but I will most likely replace Session Organ sounds with IK’s Hammond B-3X – so buy them both:-)

If you have to choose one program and primarely are into the Jon Lord sound as I am (biased), the IK’s Hammond B-3X is the way to go – again IMHO.

Another Toontrak user “complained” about the missing Leslie-feature in the Jon Lord preset in Session Organ – I totally agree – that’s what “we” want:-)
I hope Toontrack will provide some signature presets in the future – like IK’s Hammond B-3X have (Jordan Rudess have provided several Deep Purple presets).

Finally, Toontrack did a good job releasing Session Organ and it complements their other products well (super nice integration as allways).

So that might be the choice: better sound/tweaking or better Toontrack integration?

/Flemming

EZkeys version: 2.0.4
Operating system: Windows 10

1

Thanked by: Victor Villasenor

[Stancill]

Hey,

I also have just about every Hammond as well as a physical CX3 and I can vouch for it …….sounds great. Mostly that has to do with the out of the box presets and thats only because I’ve only had it a few days. That being said….a computer should never make hard work of emulating a tonewheel organ, because its just a load of ‘dirty sine waves’ being added together…….certainly not Omnisphere. However the processing/modelling involved are really important to make the instrument playable and I think that Toontrack have done a great job……….only other is IK Multimedia’s effort on the playability. The other great thing with Session Organ is the Midi and that sounds fantastic……..please remember that if you have a big EZ Keys library and you use any keyboard midi except Session Organ stuff with your new purchase then you may need to disable the volume/expression/sustain pedal depending on what you call it……..a piano sustain pedal will fuck up your listening experiance of an organ………and it would be quite nice to use some of the piano midi on an organ……..so Toontrack? an off button?

EZkeys version: 2.0.4
Operating system: Windows 10

2

Thanked by: Glenn Stanton and Henrik Ekblom

[Mick Avoidant]

I’ve put the organ on a few of my backing tracks and folk have asked ‘Is that a Hammond?’

[Author]

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