I miss grinding B3's

[uriah1]

I wonder if B3's will ever make a come back....?

I really miss them...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhdIkhEqn5w


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mW9b_KRedQ


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OorZcOzNcgE
...............................................

[brookdalebill]

I miss hearing them too, though I surely do NOT miss moving them.
I'm one of the lucky few who had to help with that "in da day".
I remember the "Porta Bs".
A true misnomer, they were still heavy as hell.
Deep Purple, Sugarloaf, Grand Funk RR, Boston, Lee Michaels, who else?
Jon Lord is (sadly) gone now.
When I was a pup, they were fairly common.

[uriah1]

I was in a band once, where the due had a coffin carrier....with 4 people..it worked...

[Jamie Black]

Wasn't a B3 used in this Hall and Oates song? Whatever it is it sounds heavenly.

[Vladimir]

Jazz guitarists still like to keep the B3 vibe going on, just check Joey DeFrancesco and all the guys he's recorded with.
If I were ever to own a club, a B3 would be the first fixture to be installed, second only to the beer fridge.

[dented]

I saw a story of a guy in LA that converted them to easy travelers. I think he had a rig that was about 1500.00 and it looked sweet and the B3 moved around easy. Of course it wouldn't lift it for you. But we had one in our band forever as teenagers and young adults in the 60's and 70's. Couldn't do without it at that time.

[charlie chitlin]

Best reason to hire a horn section...
To help move the B3.

[idjster]

A friend of mine still plays one with his group. He chopped it down as much as possible to reduce weight but it's still a pig - a very heavy one. He's been playing a B3 since the very early 70s and won't give it up (thank goodness - I love the sound!) which is ok, because he's got to move it!

[goldtopper]

I suffer from no loss of the B3. I listen to the Allman Brother's daily!

[BBill64]

My uncle's band gigs around Birmingham with a proper Hammond/leslie setup (they manage to somehow cram themselves into the smallest of bar spaces with it).

[dman]

I love the sound of a B3 and a churning Leslie 147. Moving them is another matter entirely. In the late '60s, I tore a trapezoid muscle while helping our keyboard player load his B3 into a van....still aches today if the weather turns cold and damp.

I am seriously thinking of getting an M or L series to put in the basement man cave to hack around on. I've seen several on CL going for $200 + or - and in good condition...a lot of folks just want to get rid of the beasts.

[nomadh]

Love them. Id like to get one of the electronic ones but $1500 is tough. I could get the real thing for $200 but its just too big and heavy.

[Larry F]

I loved how good players used the leslie to prepare for a climax or some other important point of arrival. Say, before the chorus of the song, the player starts to speed up the leslie a bar early, then when the chorus hits, the leslie is screaming at top speed. The exciting thing is not the point of arrival, but the build up to it. Similarly after a climactic moment recedes, when you can hear the leslie slow down, as if to say, "glad I got that out of my system."

[kelnet]

The keyboardist in my band has one of the new ones, and it sounds amazing. I'm still buzzed about his "Booker T meets Deep Purple" version of Green Onions the other night. The guy just went off! It was very cool.

[Bongocaster]

After not hearing one live for a long time, I was so happy to hear one at a local bar that I tried to stick my head inside the Leslie

[bowman]

I was in one of those used-instrument stores a few months ago, and they had a complete B3/Leslie rig in there that someone had turned in. It was so old and worn, had to be from the late '60s - early '70s. It was just like the rigs my high school friends had in their big horn bands (Chicago-type clone bands were huge back then). I kept wondering about all the cool songs that must have come out of that Leslie over the years. Love me some B3.

[D_Schief]

The best trio format for a guitar player is a B3 and a good drummer! Full sound, but plenty of space for the guitar to roam.

I was really lucky as a 17-year-old to form my first band with a drummer and a great friend who played the Porta B and a Leslie. (At 135 pounds at the time, I didn't enjoy moving it, but also didn't know any better!) We played a ton of wedding receptions, doing everything from Booker T, Jimmy Smith, pop tunes of the day (late 60's and early 70's), show tunes and other oldies (we both could read fake books) and then eventually working around to Inna-God-a-Devida (sp?), Steppin' Wolf, Santana by the end of the night. What a great education that was....

[TeleTim911]

I had an M3 I used for years with a 122 Leslie....it sounded just like a B3 on stage. LOVE a good Hammond/Leslie sound.

Zac Brown Band still has a B3 on stage.

I see a lot of portable newer Hammonds on stages, like the SK1 or whatever, plus NORD makes some great keyboards that do Hammond sounds really well.

But I really love the Hammond/Leslie pairing, it's just amazing sounding. And yes, they are still using them.

[Chud]

We saw Dave Sanborn with Joey DeFrancesco a while back at the Blue Note. He didn't have a full blown B3 setup with him (small stage there) but had a smaller organ and Leslie, maybe an M3 with one of the new smaller rotary cabs. Sounded full blown awesome though!

[ne4tt]

Big Jimmy Smith fan.

Jimmy Smith Trio - Organ Grinder's Swing



Big McGriff fan.

Jimmy McGriff, Wiggins Park 2001