EHX B9 Organ Machine Review

monquixote

I've had one of these for just over a week now and I know plenty of people are curious about them so I thought I'd put together a little review. 

Why Did I Get It?

I bought it to fulfil a specific need. I'm not usually interested in weird pedals as more often than not they equate to an afternoon of joyous twiddling followed by 3 months in a cupboard and a trip to the classifieds. A lot of the soul/funk music that I play has organ parts without which the songs can be a bit lacking and Bill Ruppert's videos for Electro Harmonix had shown that it can be done with an impractical combination of a POG, Freeze, volume pedal etc so it seemed like it was only a matter of time before they put it all in one box.

What Sucks

I'm going to get a gripe out of the way. I bought the pedal assuming I was going to run the guitar sound through my amp and the organ sound through the PA to give a sense of separation and allow me to have distorted guitar with clean organ. On the surface it seems like you should be able to do that with the B9 because it has wet and dry outputs, but the behaviour is pretty dumb. When the pedal is bypassed the guitar signal comes out of the wet output so instead of switching between guitar from the amp  and guitar from the amp + organ from the PA you are switching between guitar from the amp + organ from the PA and guitar from the amp + unprocessed horrible guitar from the PA. 

This makes it completely useless in this context unless you always want to run the organ effect or you introduce additional switching into the equation. The only solution I can think of at the moment is to leave it on all the time and put my tuner in the path of the organ out so I can use the mute switch to turn the organ off and on, but I'd rather not have to piss about with this kind of thing.

How does it track?

I've heard quite a few people claiming it either does, or doesn't track well, but I don't really think this is the right question. It isn't a triggered synth like a Boss SYB it appears to be just a sequence of of fairly conventional FX arranged to create the illusion of an organ sound. To my ears it sounds like some kind of dynamics / gating to manipulate the envelope of the sound, a POG based shifter to add the various drawbars and additional modulation effects per setting.

What is true is that if you want a realistic organ effect you have to alter your playing style meaning vibrato and bending is out and you have to alter the chord voicings you use. Left hand mutes also don't translate well. 

Because it isn't triggered you don't really have to panic about having very clean technique (lord knows it would be very little use to me if it did), but there is a very slight delay which is easily compensated for by pushing the beat slightly.

One thing I did hope it might be able to do (but expected it probably wouldn't be able to) was provide a chord bed under a quick strummed funk part. This did not prove to be the case as the trigger threshold of the pedal will continually retrigger the note including the "key click". Even if you turn down the click it sounds weirdly like someone is tinkling on the keys. If you want this kind of thing you are probably better off with a Super Ego with judicious use of the hold function.

Another thing of note is that you need to keep your guitar in tune as the organ seems to pick up on the beat frequency of an out of tune note and throb horribly. 

So how does it sound?

Pretty good actually it's certainly good enough to pass for an organ pad in a live mix and when I took it to rehearsal both of my bandmates commented on how convincing it sounded. 

It sounds quite nice and gritty with a bit of drive after it and it really pops out if you stick a compressor in the chain. 

If you want to go beyond what was intended then you can get some nice synth effects with single note lines and if you whack a load of gain on then you can get some nasty Jack White solos going on.

The me of a few years ago would have been annoyed that you can't get deep into the presets and had any type of mod with any type of organ etc, but frankly life is too short these days and all the settings are usable and I suspect will cover most of the usable bases anyone will need.

Going through the presets in turn.

1. Fat & Full - This is the guitar shop preset. Full octave up and down and way too fat not to get in everyones way in a band mix.

2. Jazz- Pretty much the "standard" tone, just a nice organ sound. I used this a lot.

3. Gospel- The same as the Jazz preset, but with octave up added. Also very useful, but you need to stick to lower register voicings or it gets shrill.

4. Classic Rock- I haven't got to grips with this yet as it sounded a bit flat when I tried it. I think there might be something to find in there

5. Bottom End- Basically and octave down organ. Probably useful with a looper for laying down bass lines.

6. Octaves- This has masses of high end and is great for big slow chords.

7. Cathedral- Very similar to the octaves preset and probably the best for doing the "Organist Entertains" impressions.

8. Continental- This does a perfect impression of House of The Rising Sun and is perfect for 60s' stuff of that ilk.

9. Bell Organ- Seems like a bit of a stupid gimmick and adds a chimey sound to every note. Perhaps I'll find a use for it.

The gripe I mentioned about splitting it into a mixer notwithstanding it's definitely a very useful pedal and not as much of a gimmick as I'm sure lots of people will expect it to be.

Grunfeld

Nice review.  Ta.

citizen68

Nice review - the big question is will it stay on your board long? I had a Pog2 for a month or two - gigged it once or twice but it ended up as you said 'on the shelf'. I'd be afraid of this falling under the same bracket..I sort of prefer extreme settings on a chorus or vibe pedal for my organ sounds.

Deijavoo

I love my POG2. So does the bass player in Royal Blood, he uses two!

Deijavoo

Excellent review by the way mate. 

monquixote

citizen68 said:

Nice review - the big question is will it stay on your board long? I had a Pog2 for a month or two - gigged it once or twice but it ended up as you said 'on the shelf'. I'd be afraid of this falling under the same bracket..I sort of prefer extreme settings on a chorus or vibe pedal for my organ sounds.

Cheers chaps. 

How long it stays is the big test. At the moment I can see me having it for a while, but time will tell.

I used to use a maxed Mooer CE2 clone for organ sounds and I suspect that done with the right voicings and approach would be more realistic than someone clueless with a B9. You very much get out what you put in.

not_the_dj

Great review. Do you reckon it'd work well for "I'm a Believer"?

monquixote

not_the_dj said:

Great review. Do you reckon it'd work well for "I'm a Believer"?

It expect it would work perfectly for the intro and breakdown sections and provided you modified your strumming you could probably use it in the chorus as well.

not_the_dj

Cool. That's about the only song in our set that I think would really benefit from it. Not sure it's really worth it though, but would certainly be fun to try.

ROOG

Really good review monquixote, always helpful to have a view from someone who has put it to use, as apposed to the suppliers who seem to get it out of the box and try all the settings, albeit with a good player at the helm. Few of em seem to give care as to how they might actually use it.

  

therose789

Great review! 

JohnPerry

Excellent review that

Paul_C

any chance of trying an electro-acoustic into it ?

monquixote

Paul_C said:

any chance of trying an electro-acoustic into it ?

I don't have one I'm afraid.

Paul_C

sounds like a perfect excuse to buy one then!

monquixote

Paul_C;297523" said:

sounds like a perfect excuse to buy one then!

I expect it will work as they recommend using a bridge pickup so a twangy piezoelectric pickup would probably work well

citizen68

monquixote said:

I used to use a maxed Mooer CE2 clone for organ sounds and I suspect that done with the right voicings

Yeah I use an old CE2 that I've had since late 80's - it & my wah are the only pedals I kept since I got them Agree that the CE2 sounds great maxed out 

 Just re-read your review again @monquixote - pity all written reviews weren't up to that great standard 

1st dibs for a trial when you get tired of it.. 

 

:P

Paul_C

I got myself one in the end, first impressions are that it will work well with my acoustic on some settings, but it's going to take a few sessions and some note-taking to get a selection of useable sounds

monquixote

Good video showing how it works in a band context:

equalsql

Here's another nice demo of the B9

guitarcookie1

The birthday elves turned up trumps with one of these today, looking forward to plugging it in