(Diagram compliments of http://clonewheel.ashbysolutions.com)

There is no other instrument in the world like a Hammond B3. You don’t turn it on, you start it up. You have to warm up the tone generators by holding a switch down, which is reminiscent of starting a ‘52 Ford 1/2 ton. Then there’s the oily smell and the whirring sound as the spinning Leslie speaker and horn cranks up to speed.

So, have synthesizers copied this sound? Well, first, like a violin or any other instrument, there is no one sound to the famous organ. The Hammond B3 organ has a myriad of tones because of the percussive attack and the tonal drawbars.

Then there is the Leslie speaker. This combination of a rotating horn and lower speaker not only has a sound of its own in rest mode, there is a Doppler effect in fast motion. The sound waves also change as the speaker and horn start to accelerate and then, afterward, the sound “floats” as the twin speakers slow down. So in a synthesizer you would have to have about 5 patches (tones), one for for each operation. And that is just for one organ tone. For every movement on the many draw bars multiply each sound by those five variables.

In 1979 Korg, an upstart synthesizer company, rose to the challenge of creating a portable B3 organ and for 30 years the world saw the Korg CX3 organ synthesizer as the heir apparent of the B3. At first the CX3 and its big brother, the BX3 (double keyboard), took the world by storm as keyboard players left their huge, back-breaking cabinet organs at home. However, even this marvel fell out of favor when digital synthesizers swept the neighborhood. As FM synths pushed the CX3 aside it sat on the sidelines with the B3. There weren’t enough purists left to care about the many tonal qualities of either.

In the late ’90’s the “retro era” began and MiniMoogs and other analogue synthesizers were suddenly in demand. The Korg CX3 was another keyboard that experienced a Renaissance but working models in good shape were hard to find. So Korg relented and began releasing an updated version of their famous keyboard, right to the wood-grain finish.

The new CX3 now uses digital technology to model the original B3 sound. In addition, new breakthroughs in digital sound modeling have allowed Korg to include hundreds of traditional Leslie speaker and amplification quirks in its repertoire. To accomplish this feat the new CX3 is designed with 91 virtual oscillators that can be used simultaneously for a dual 61-note polyphony. The sound is extremely realistic and, in addition, the keyboard can produce other sounds through MIDI technology.

The new boards are around $2,000, which is pretty good for all that punch.