EHX B9 Organ Machine – tested by an ordinary person

[sunjamr]

@BluGenes recently posted a SoundCloud demo of his new B9 Organ Machine, and that inspired me to go out and buy one myself. I had heard them before, but never paid a lot of attention to them. I wanted to try making some reggae recordings, and it seemed like the thing I lacked was an organ.

There are lots of cool demos (mostly by highly skilled guitarists) of the B9 on YouTube, but no one ever talks about what it’s REALLY like for an ordinary guitar student to just jump in and try playing with it. So I documented what I’ve learned about it so far, in case anyone is thinking about getting one. It’s not simple to make it sound good. You have to learn to play the guitar in a different way, as I hope I have explained here:

https://youtu.be/YrNGCuH3_-A

Sunjamr Steve

[charjo]

Terrific review, Steve. It’s the kind of balanced review you don’t see from the music store promo videos. I had some interest in the pedal but now I think I would, first, look to software to get an organ sound in my recordings.
John

[Don D.]

Thank you, Steve! You covered a lot of ground.

I tried one in a music store and found it sounded best with double stops and triads played rhythmically (quarter notes and less, not much sustain allowed). It also sounded best when I was playing “Green Onions” chords, mostly on 2nd, 3rd, 4th strings (also 1st string). Thought the the bassline on 5th and 6th strings was horrid, like a sick chorus effect. “Watermelon Man” and “Chicken Shack” were two more I tried briefly (play all 3 in F), with parts on 2nd-4th strings; double stops sounded best—all songs where an organ belongs.

Just as you said, bends sounded terrible to me—but I’ll bet that sound could be made into a plus, because the sound is so weird, if you find the right place for it, it will be good. I think isolated stacatto bends using that might be just the thing for punctuation.

Don D.

[Tim Lee]

Steve,
Great review and who would have thought that it would be so finicky! I think that based on your previous postings and your guitar skills you’ll be able to use it and make it sound good. For players with less skills I can see this pedal would be a real challenge.
Tim

[Maradonagol]

@sunjamr

Thanks Steve that was great!! I haven’t had a chance to try one….but am deeply interested….I did notice on the “pro” demos that one cannot simply play guitar….as Don said and you demonstrated…the playing needs to be adapted to the dynamics of organs and keyboards at some level……no one really says that…..knowing that I still think I will get one…

Thanks for a great review!

Roberto

Roberto

[JohnStrat]

Steve thanks for posting really very helpful. As Charjo points out its the bits the shops don’t explain you have covered, well done a precise and clear review of you points. JohnStrat

[BluGenes]

LOL giving away my secrets there man.. naw, just kidding.. I love mine and barely tapped into it.

My personal tip if you guys get one. I boost the signal to mine with my Hot Tubes pedal. (I also boost the signal when I plug my acoustic in). It makes a difference, just don’t send a crunch or distortion signal to the pedal. If you want that Jon Lords crunchy organ sound, add distortion AFTER the pedal. I think this is mentioned in the user guide when you get the pedal.

Also, some of the online demos fail to mention that a real keyboard player uses both hands. If you want to duplicate that, you have to first record the left hand part (usually the rhythm) then record on a second track of the right hand part..

Don't practice till you get it right, practice till you can't get it wrong.

[sunjamr]

Thanks for the comments, fellow pedal-lovers. And here’s some additional food for thought: For slightly more cost, you could buy an Electro-Harmonix POG 2 octave generator. It does everything the B9 does, and much more. With it, you can also make your guitar sound like a bass, or a mandolin, for example. With the B9, they have just taken the electronics of the POG 2 and set up 7 presets to sound like 7 different kinds of organs. You could do exactly the same thing with the POG 2, since you can program at least 8 presets with it. I’m starting to get into live looping (as opposed to laying down tracks one at a time in a DAW), and I’m wishing I could get a bass sound into one of my loops, and the word on the internet is that the POG 2 is the best pedal for doing that.

Sunjamr Steve

[Patrick van Rijn]

Thank you for this great review, Steve. I do use this B9-pedal in about every backing track I record and recognize a lot of the (im)possibilities you found out and explained very clearly.

Regards,
Patrick

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Patrick

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