Does the “old and broken” knob have scratchy sliders as part of it?
All I can remember is the weight of all that stuff…
Here’s a good demo of the classic B-3/Leslie sound.
As an undergrad in the mid-’70s, I played keyboards in a garage band. My arsenal consisted of an electric piano, a Wurlitzer organ, and an ARP Odyssey synthesizer.
We played Pink Floyd and other suitably keyboard-heavy stuff. We never made much money—basically chump change—but we had lot of fun.
I always wanted a Hammond B-3 with a Leslie. Unfortunately, a B-3 was expensive, weighed approximately as much as a Buick, and wasn’t exactly ideal equipment for a bunch of college kids hauling gear around.
But I still wanted one. I still do, but I’m sure I’d be thrown out of my condo for playing it (loud).
Don’t it ever get lonely when you go out on the road? That was my first Zappa album.
Whiter Shade of Pale ~Procal Harem
Smoke on the mountain ~Deep Purple
Freebird ~ Skynryd
Black Magic Woman ~Santana
Perfect Strangers ~ Deep Purple
Mr Crowley ~ Ozzy
You got lucky ~ Tom Petty
The Sky Is Crying Stevie Ray Vaughn
It’s not really about the distance or your position in the room - the effect is achieved by a “double doppler effect” of one horn coming towards you and the opposite one moving away, and the resulting change in volume. As long as you’re more than 6 feet away from the speaker, it should sound the same wherever you are. If you are miking one for recording or live sound, be sure to place two mics at the top with a 90° “difference” - that means that one mic is looking at a horn straight, and the other is directly in between horns. That will give the most interesting stereo effect - but you also need a third mic for the bass speaker at the bottom.
Last year, I had the privilege of doing sound for a huge production of Jesus Christ Superstar, and one of our keyboarders had a synthetic B3, but with a real Leslie. It was a real treat watching him go to town on the drawbars and the switches - unfortunately, his half-moon switch didn’t work, and he had to use the foot pedal version, but with his hands.
Well, here I am, boldly showing my nonexistent keyboard chops to the Internet.
Remember, I’m a bassist!
I used a recording of our worship team from our live stream as a backing track.
Heheh, nice!
I get my organ sounds from a Yamaha Reface YC. I can do Hammond, Vox, Farfisa (the one I use most often), Ace Tone, and Yamaha organ sounds. It’s got a dandy Leslie effect that can do the two speeds and the stop sound, and has a believable ramp between them when you switch them. Plus, it’s got distortion, reverb and percussion settings.
Similarly, I get my electric piano sounds from a Yamaha Reface CP. It can do both types of Rhodes sounds, a Wurlitzer, a toy piano, a clavinet and a Yamaha electric baby grand. It’s also got distortion, reverb, phaser, auto wah, tremolo, chorus, and analog and digital delays.
Both of them were about $350 when I bought them about 5-7 years ago, which was a screaming deal. Now they run about $500 each, which brings them up to the cost of your Ferrofish. There’s a couple of Hammond sound modules I’ve seen that can fake a dual manual organ by having two drawbar settings and allowing you to assign a split (low keys on one setting, higher keys on another). That seems pretty attractive to me, but I haven’t picked one up yet. Can the Ferrofish do that?
Very nice!
Speaking of a fat organ sound, you really can’t get much fatter than the Wanamaker Organ in Philadelphia—the largest functioning pipe organ in the world.
I live about a half-hour from it, and as a kid I loved hearing it during the Wanamaker Christmas Show. It was one of those sounds you didn’t so much hear as have imposed upon your internal organs.
When the Center City Macy’s closed, there was some concern about what would happen to the organ. I briefly considered offering to take it off their hands for a few bucks. 
Unfortunately, they decided to keep it in the building.
Probably just as well. I suspect my condo association might have objected to a 28,000-pipe musical instrument being installed in my living room.
Yep. Apparently you can tell it to split the keyboard at an arbitrary note and have the right half go to the “upper” manual and the left half go to the “middle” or “lower” manual.
Then you can set them up with different Hammond settings.
This thing has everything the real deal has and then some. I found it used at Guitar Center in “excellent” condition, and saved quite a bit.
By the way, the drawbars aren’t servo-controlled, like sliders on a fancy MIDI control surface like we use at church. The little display shows images of all 3 drawbar settings, and there is a button to cycle through the active manual. If the physical positions are different from the display, as soon as you start moving one, the display jumps to what the physical position for that one drawbar is.
Ooooooo, three manuals? Nice! Yeah, that one is going to enter my gear browsing rotation. Thank you!
Hehe, it hadn’t even occurred to me that servo controlled drawbars were even a thing. But that matches the operation of pretty much every synth I have that has presets, it loads the values, but if you touch the knobs or sliders it’s gonna take the new value instantly.
I love using the Behringer sound board at our church. When you turn it on, just press “scan” and it finds the mixer on the network and all of the faders simply shuffle into position and the scribble strips light up with things like “Mic 1” and “Lav” and “Bass”
Excellent find !
What’s Lav ?
WAG: Lavalier mic.
Ah, could be. I’ve never heard the term before.
Apparently you can set them up with different drawbar settings, but stuff like drive and crunch and Leslie speeds are all global. So it’s cool that I can split the keyboard or use multiple, but I wish it would allow “Steppenwolf” on one and something completely mellow on another.
Yep. The scribble strips have only 8 characters I think, so we have to be brief.
Hehe, I can see where a complete different set of settings would be desirable, but just the drawbar settings being different is a more realistic emulation of how a multi-manual organ works.
New toys are always fun. I recently acquired a Variax guitar.. had always thought about getting one but they stopped making them.
It’s bittersweet… I inherited it from an old friend who I recorded a couple of albums with over the last few years… he died suddenly at the end of last year…
Was the Leslie used just with a Hammond or could it be used with any organ without cobbling the connections together? Also, can the speed of the horn and woofer be operated separately to get a different sound?
Come on, Magiver, you should be able to rig it all up with a paper clip, a wad of chewing gum (not Juicy Fruit) and a blade of grass! Get busy! The future of the Republic is at stake! 
I actually tried to make stereo speakers as a teenager. And they sounded like they were made with a paper clip, a wad of chewing gum and a blade of grass.
I’ve always been fascinated by Leslies. They were a large part of the music I listened to.