Electro-Harmonix B9 Organ Machine Guitar Effects Pedal

A fantastic organ sounding pedal. Very realistic. Often copied but never of this quality. Hard to find on a processor.

I use this with my acoustic guitar. Good for a little backing music.

Just kidding, wish I had a keyboard player. I picked this one up used from GC. I think new their a little over priced so I took a risk on a used one, no issues. So far I haven't used it with a band, but next week I'll give it a try. Already figured out a few songs with it, some Doors and Moody Blues stuff and a few nice Blues progressions, nothing hard yet. You have to think a little different when using it and don't over use it too much. Does a pretty good job, but there is a learning curve. I haven't found a good way to mix guitar and organ much that I like, it's mostly organ on or off for some fills with it. I think the bypass is the way to go to mix and swap things, maybe an A/B on/off and /AB blend on/off pedal or a stereo pedal would make this more useful to pan and mix between organ and guitar. For now it's just a toy for my music room.

I tried it out at the Medford store through a Deluxe Reverb (DRRI) with a poorly set-up Jazzmaster, 2 pieces of gear, similar to my own. It did make some good sounds and some bad ones too. Tweaking it was kind of fun to see how much I could get out of it. Some chords don't work well with it so there is a little learning curve to it. The ones that worked well were pretty good and it would be great for a small band without a keyboard player. Down side is the thing feels cheap, and I don't know of it's worth $200+ for me to buy it. Maybe if they drop the price or make some improvements in the sound and construction. Also this particular unit was the display model and they didn't have a boxed one to sell. So in fact I assume it's been used allot. He didn't even offer it to me as a discount, since it was unboxed/used. And, the salesman was kind of pushy, telling me "if I want it I better buy it soon because it's their last one". Really are they flying off the shelf? I'm not a panic buyer, I lived through the Cuban Blockade and all is well. I told him I'd think about it, but I could get it on line just as easily unused with free shipping. I don't know yet if I will buy it or not but I think I could be a lot of fun and useful in my studio.

I bought a used unit through Guitar Center and when it worked it was fine but half that time there was no signal and even when there was a signal the output volume was wildly inconsistent. There were obviously problems with the electronics but the seller basically told me to pound sand and Guitar Center couldn't have cared less. Another reason to never buy anything from Guitar Center. Ever.

In a band with three guitars it's a bit too heavy. With this pedal we really have a great fat sound that a keyboard can do. This is a great fit where I need to take lead on some songs and need to back up with organ on others. This adds a dimension that our band needed and really opens up new song directions for us.