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Post subject: It was meant to be.
Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2014 5:44 pm
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This morning I was talking to the lady that I'm buying the Hammond L-122 from and found out that before she bought it, it had spent its previous 35 or so years in a small town church.When she told me this I knew that it was fate,kismet,karma etc. because my mother had been the organist in a small town church for years and my father had been a choir director.My mom taught me my first song on piano when I was only 3 or 4 years old.She had always wanted a Hammond organ but the main floor of our house was too small to hold a piano and an organ.I too wanted a Hammond since I was quite young now I'm finally getting one (Although I already have one,it's a budget,cheaply made MIJ model) I know that my mother would be really happy about that-especially with the provenance it has.The first thing that I'm going to do when I get it home is get a small plaque engraved with her name "Jean" in appreciation for her starting me off playing an instrument and to help me feel that she's still with me in some way.

BTW: I went to the Hammond organ section of an organ forum that I belong to and got in touch with a guy who collects and restores Hammond organs. I found out that the problem with all the voices working except for the "organ" voice on my current Hammond, is a quick fix by just taking off the back and just jiggling the bayonet connectors on the wires that come from the function switches,apparently dust gets into the organ causing the connections to get dirty.

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Post subject: Re: It was meant to be.
Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2014 5:25 am
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That's great news, Derek!
If I had room for a B3 in my studio you know there would be one there.
I have to make do with a new pedal.
Got the new EH B9 on order from L&M.
Make sure to post pics once you get the thing home.
Like a scald cat by.

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Post subject: Re: It was meant to be.
Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2014 6:47 am
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BMW-KTM wrote:
That's great news, Derek!
If I had room for a B3 in my studio you know there would be one there.
I have to make do with a new pedal.
Got the new EH B9 on order from L&M.
Make sure to post pics once you get the thing home.
Like a scald cat by.

You must give us a review and some sound bytes when you get this pedal!

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Post subject: Re: It was meant to be.
Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2014 7:30 am
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A B-9 pedal....yum!!!!I was just knocked for a loop when I heard the demos,it's the most incredible pedal that I've heard.Leave it to Mike Matthews to be able to get a guitar to produce the most desirable organ tones in rock music,all that plus the cheesy garage band Vox/Farfisa and Casavant Freres pipe organ tones.If I hadn't seen that electric sitar for such a great price I would still have the B-9 on the Christmas list.....of course my daughters haven't asked me for my Christmas list yet.....hmmmmm.

BTW: I'd love to hear your take on the B-9 and a demo if possible.The organ that I'm getting has the B-3 sound without its bulk-though it still is a brutal weight as it is- and it's almost exactly the same size as my current one: 43 1/2 W X 36 H X 22 1/2 D.It will fit in the back of my Santa Fe no problem,so now we don't have to use Blinkers' truck.

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Post subject: Re: It was meant to be.
Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2014 1:32 pm
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So I brought the B9 home yesterday and just finished giving it a first trial run.

First impressions:

1) This is not a simple pedal to use. It's not horribly tricky to use but it's not for a novice either. You don't just plug this thing in and start getting great sounds out of it. I'm still learning how to tweak it. The mod knob means different things to different "B" modes. Dialled in it sounds great. Amazing in fact. Dialling it in is the important part. I kind of believe one would have to make a decision on one sound for general use and stick with it because standing on stage bending down to try to make an adjustment between songs would result in the pedal being good for pretty much one song only. I just don't think you'd be able to dial it in during the short moment between songs.

2) There is a slight time lag from the time you pluck your string to the time the sound rings out. I'm not sure if this is by design or simply as a result of the limitations of the circuit. There is definitely a soft start to each note like it's ramping up to volume like some organs do but this seems a little slow to me. You get used to it and adapt your playing to suit but it's a little off-putting at first. Because it is a little slow you learn that it responds better to held notes than fast runs. Also it seems that triads sound better than full 6 note strummed chords. I suspect it may be possible the unit can only process so much before it overloads. You can tell there's a lot of processing going on there. Tons of calculations as the layers of harmonics it adds over the fundamentals are quite complex. That's assuming it is digital in nature. I don't know much about it yet so I can't say for sure.

3) The included adapter must be used or the pedal does not function. When using a standard adapter the guitar rings through in by-pass mode and unit does light up when you step on the button but no sound comes out. I don't know what the issue is. The included adapter appears to be no different from any standard adapter. 9V, pin -, sleeve +. I will have to do some reading I guess.

4) Pick attack is pretty much everything when you use this pedal. Pluck too softly and hardly any sound comes through and the sound is fuddled. Pluck too strenuously and the clipping ruins the whole effect.

There are really only 3 out of the 9 modes that I would ever find useful. The Jazz mode would be my go-to setting for typical organ work. The Bottom End and Bell Organ modes both appear to be useful. The two modes I was expecting to be the best, Fat & Full and Cathedral are both too much. I don't know how else to say it. Just too much.

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Post subject: Re: It was meant to be.
Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2014 3:17 pm
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Congrats-judging by your review,this pedal is probably better than the RotoChoir but with the same level of sensitivity.With the RotoChoir you have to make minute adjustments and do a lot of twiddling with the controls to get your desired effect and as BMW-KTM said about the B-9 it's not for the novice.Anyway thanks for the review,the B-9 was on my radar,now it's on my Christmas list.

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Post subject: Re: It was meant to be.
Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2014 4:03 pm
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I haven't tried it yet in conjunction with a Leslie simulator. Mine is the Stymon Lex. The Leslie style additional effect on the B9 is not as good in comparison to the Lex so I turned that part of it right off. I will try the combination with the Lex this evening and post my thoughts.

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Post subject: Re: It was meant to be.
Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2014 7:18 pm
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Oh, wow ..... (long low whistle)
Now that's what I'm talkin' about!
:idea: :idea: :idea:

OK, so it's starting to look like most of the modes have some kind of very subtle pulsing effect happening with the Mod knob and it appears this feature may possibly gobble up a great deal of the pedal's power. When I run it with the Lex taking care of the Leslie stuff, which it is far and away better than the B9 at that sort of thing anyway, the B9 now plays full strummed 6 note chords clear and strong. Crank that B9 Mod knob all the way down and let the Lex do it's magic and I kid you not, I have a full blown Hammond B3 in my house. This combination is sheer magic. The one thing the B9's pulse effect is good for is that Who snippet they played in the demo vid. Now that I'm using the Lex for the Leslie effect the B9 doesn't seem quite as finicky for settings. It's still a little temperamental but I believe much less so with the Mod knob taken out of the equation. This one is a keeper. With this addition to the stable as well as that absolutely lovely Moog Delay I bought last month I'm going to have to revisit my pedalboard.

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Post subject: Re: It was meant to be.
Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2014 8:54 am
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I'm wondering what kind of settings they had on the B-9 in the Demos that E-H did with it because it sounded for the world like a B-3 through a 760 or 900 Leslie cabinet.I believe that the only other effect they had in conjunction with the B-9 was a bit of reverb or delay.There must be some kind of setting that you can do to get these tones out of it. Are there any internal switches that can help you tailor the parameters to your liking such as Danelectro has with some of their pedals?It seems that a lot of effects from different makers have these built into them these days.

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Post subject: Re: It was meant to be.
Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2014 9:42 am
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There are no DIP switches.
There is an unused connection socket, presumably for diagnostic but who knows? Maybe future add-ons?
I am getting better with the settings. It's kind of an art. The mod knob is for modulation according to the sheet that came with it. There are 3 types of modulation, vibrato, tremolo and chorus depending on which of the 9 modes the unit is in. In most of the modes the mod knob seems to do very little until you get in the zone and then everything cleans up and gets big. When the unit is not dialled in it sounds muddy and small, like it's being choked off. I think the amount of clean signal you blend in with the organ sim directly affects the quality of the organ sim. I'm still learning it but I am getting some damned nice sounds out of this thing. It's a keeper. I think I'm already very close to the sounds they were getting in the demo vid.

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Post subject: Re: It was meant to be.
Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2014 10:14 am
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I found that with the RotoChoir there is quite a learning curve and what really makes it a challenge is that if you do a minute adjustment on one control,you may have to tweak 2 or 3 of the others to get the sound you want.The Roger Mayer Vision Octavia I have is much the same way,there were just the most rudimentary of instructions with it and it took me a very long time to be able to dial in a relatively clean signal such as in Jimi's "One Rainy Wish" from Axis Bold as Love.It's almost maddening sometimes because of all the twiddling you have to do, I guess that the B-9 is the same type of animal.I'm sure that once you get the hang of it you'll be doing "Whiter Shade of Pale" and "Hold Your Head Up" on the guitar with no problem at all.

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Post subject: Re: It was meant to be.
Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2014 11:59 am
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I think I just learned the most important thing. Use the middle pup. I found the bridge alone was too shrill so I had been using the bridge and middle together. I think the quack was confusing the pedal. Middle alone seems to make the pedal much easier to control and the knobs are a lot less sensitive and there's a wider usable range. I rarely use the middle alone except for a few Clapton songs so I'm used to just passing that option over which is why I hadn't tried it until now on this pedal. The middle pup is the one. Pedal is easier to use.

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Post subject: Re: It was meant to be.
Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2014 12:11 pm
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BMW-KTM wrote:
There is an unused connection socket, presumably for diagnostic but who knows? Maybe future add-ons?


It looks like a JTAG header. So no, not for future add-ons, but diagnostics.
I'm surprised they didn't remove the socket and pins for the production run - it's unnecessary extra cost, which adds up for big production runs.

By making a special cable and connecting it to a parallel(!) port on a PC, you can poke around in IC registers, and even change them. If you really know what you're doing, you might be able to change some of the functionality.


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