WURLI LIBRARY SHOOTOUT -- ALL LESS THAN $35 USD each ​​​​​​​ - VOTE FOR THE BEST

[PavlovsCat]

1 hour ago, Christian Jones said:

Gotta pay your dues abacab. That includes getting slapped on the wrist each time you mess up, no matter how old you are.

You just inspired yet another overshare from me. I took piano lessons from my music teacher mother and she sent me too this nightmare literally physically abusive organ teacher  at Wurlitzer Music Studio that reminds me of Kathy Bates in "Misery" in her level of twisted sadistic venom.  I would hear the student before me screaming before my lesson. If you hit a wrong note, she would slam her hand down on yours against the organ keys and she wore rings on each finger that made it super painful. To make it even more Stephen King-like--  her name was Mrs. Flowers. You can't make that stuff up. Pat Flowers. I regret to say, while I practiced hard, I got hit many times; it was truly terrifying to hit a wrong note. My drum lessons with four different instructors went much better. In fact, I'm still connected to my first drum teacher who was (and I'm sure still is) a really good drummer --  and a super nice person-- who played in a band with my brother,  then a fusion band and a famous band that earned him some gold records.  Let's see if anyone remembers their biggest hit.  The guys from the band are still friends and we've all had music related chats on my former drum teacher's Facebook page. 

 

Edited November 24, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[PavlovsCat]

Back to Wurlis (I still haven't settled on how I want to spell it). My current take on the best sounding Wurli libraries (I only own e-instruments W, the rest are purely based on listening to demos): 

(1) AcousticSamples Wurlie 

(2)  Skybox 200A and 145B / SonicCouture Broken Wurli 

(3)  e-instruments W 

Edited November 24, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[Fleer]

My top 5 picks:

1) Keyscape 140b

2) AcousticSamples (Wurlie)

3) Pianoteq W1

4) Purgatory Creek 140B

5) Soniccouture Broken Wurli

[PavlovsCat]

24 minutes ago, Fleer said:

My top 5 picks:

1) Keyscape 140b

2) AcousticSamples (Wurlie)

3) Pianoteq W1

4) Purgatory Creek 140B

5) Soniccouture Broken Wurli

I don't recall listening to the Keyscape and Pianoteq ones, maybe I didn't because they were out of my budget. But I think it'd be cool if everyone shared their favorites lists. I've become more knowledgeable on the various Wurli models because of this thread. I'm still not completely certain, but I may be picking up the 145B from Skybox. But the more I've played with the e-Instruments W  the more I like it. I love that I was able to put more clunk into the notes and created my own  presets I'm  really  happy with. I realize some of us don't love that clunk, but that is a huge part of what I love about the AcousticSamples Wurlie that I don't hear as much in their VReeds -- which also sounds great, BTW. There are a wealth of high quality Wurli  libraries to choose from. 

Edited November 24, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[chris.r]

7 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

The keyboardist from Jamoarqui (sic?) is a YouTuber who shares his blues and funky electric piano licks and I think I'm going to spend some time...

I'm more into this weirdy lovely type of stuff, so more of a rhodesie and hammondie thing though wurlie could fit easily too... trying to crack in to their heads (or is it hearts more precisely) to see what's there should I need a little bit of the same in mine before making any proper chop on my own  

 

[PavlovsCat]

13 minutes ago, chris.r said:

I'm more into this weirdy lovely type of stuff, so more of a rhodesie and hammondie thing though wurlie could fit easily too... trying to crack in to their heads (or is it hearts more precisely) to see what's there should I need a little bit of the same in mine before making any proper chop on my own  

 

Oh man, that sounds awesome! I love it. I grew up on R&B, gospel and blues on Southside of Chicago and absolutely love stuff like that. Real players with chops and soul.  When I was a kid, I would hang out at the music studio where my mother taught and there was a guitar shop and a bunch of gospel musicians would regularly jam there and at the Guitar Center up the street. From around 9-12 my mother played in a band that did R&B and rock and used to have me work out keyboard parts from songs by Al Greene, Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers... But I later got deep into Black gospel and collaborated with an amazing gospel singer out of Chicago for a while. I was mainly a rock drummer,  but I'm definitely a melting pot of genres, but greatly R&B, blues and gospel and even played some jazz shows. Thanks for the share!

Edited November 24, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[PavlovsCat]

You know, there was such good vibes throughout this thread, I wish there was some way to keep it going. I started this with my Wurli shootout and everyone contributed so much to this thread. I've learned a lot more about Wurlis. I ended doing trademark searches for a developer (AcousticSamples) who was in the midst of being scammed by someone pretending to be a Wurlitzer family descendent who held the trademark trying to get money, resulting in the dev taking the library off his site for a while until I was able to show him it was a scam and now his library as back and I feel I've made a new friend that I'll eventually buy from. People in this thread have shared about their favorite Wurlis and we've had some PMs and we've all indulged in our love of the instruments. I've overshared so much about how much meaning this instrument has to me that I think I'm changing my username to OversharesAF! It would be truth in advertising. 

I've only been playing again for not even 2 years after 20+ years since an injury stopped me, and it's emotional. Music is emotional. Even though someone can rightfully say this post is wildly off-topic, what matters more to me is the human side of all of this and it's wonderful to see a thread like this. Music brings us together. It literally crosses barriers of nationality, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation. Maybe we're not all listening to the same stuff, but we're here and yeah, it's premised on our spendaholic tendencies, but sometimes it can be beautiful to see that we're united by this shared love of music.   There is something about this old instrument that touches my old soul and reaches back to my childhood that I really can't sufficiently express in words. It's almost spiritual. So, I want to say thank you to everyone who was part of this thread and I would love for it to continue, but if that's all there is, I want to make sure I take the time to say thanks to everyone for being a part of it.

Until next time friends, OversharesAF, signing out. 

Edited November 24, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[oqpoil]

My top 2:

1. Neo Soul Keys Studio (gospelmusicians):

It's not only a Wurli(200 and 300) vst but Rhodes (MK1, 2, 3, 5 and 7), Clav, CP70 too and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4-45ATZl_8

The vst version may not be in your budget for the moment (115$ actually) but the IPAD version is actually at 11.99$ and 24.95 ordinary

demo of the IPAD version (with review of all presets)

 

2. Native Instrument A200

Less grit and dynamic than Neo Soul Keys Studio but is more smooth/soft (like the very good "worlitzer" from pianobook that you have posted, thanks!)

 

[Craig N]

I picked up Skybox Electric + Skybox EP145B yesterday and they're both really good, not necessarily any better than e-Instruments W, but different flavours I guess. Perhaps slightly more consistent tonally thanks to their robotic recording although I noticed a little bit more noise in some of their samples even after turning the noise setting down to nothing. Not necessarily a problem, it's a sampling of a real instrument after all. 

I then picked up Acoustic Samples VTines and VReeds and had so much fun exploring the range of sounds that can be made with these instruments. I'd read that it was possible to get a variety of different tones out of VReeds and that was spot on. I could pretty much match the tone of the Skybox EPs using VReeds, and I got pretty close to matching the tones of the Famous E and the Scarbee EP-88s with VTines. The thing I really like about each of these is they have nice big UIs in UVI Workstation (for some reason they don't look as good at 150% scale in Falcon), load super fast since they're so lightweight, and play with very low latency compared to sampled instruments, the way Pianoteq is. But with Pianoteq you always know you're using a modelled instrument, it's like the idealistic way such an instrument should sound to the point of uncanny valley. Whereas with VReeds and VTines you would swear you were listening to a sampled instrument until you paid attention to the consistency of the tone across the keyboard. Anyway I'm pretty chuffed with these purchases in case that's not already obvious haha. Where with a sampled instrument you're just getting those samples with whatever effects can be applied on top, with these you can get under the hood and tweak the setup like a technician can with a real instrument to really change the tone. It's quite interesting to go into those settings for some of the presets and watch how the settings change as you play across the keyboard - they're not set the same way for every key, eg the Pickup Angle on the VReeds and the Tine Height on the VTines increase key by key for certain key ranges. Fascinating stuff that I assume mirrors the setup of these instruments in the real world. So they seem like far more flexible musical instruments rather than just a snapshots of an instrument. 

 

[PavlovsCat]

@Craig NThanks for sharing that. I suppose if I had a bigger budget, I'd be picking up everything you did. So I own the e-instruments W and was considering also getting the Skybox EP145B,  because it's only $35USD and sounds lovely (although from the walk-through video, only one patch, the natural one, appeals to me). I also wasn't sure there was a significant difference between what I was able to get by creating my own patches on the W from the EP145B, it seems pretty close. But I can't say for sure. Since you own both, comparing the e-instruments W and Skybox EP145B, do you find the tones -- without  effects-- are significantly different from one another? 

[Craig N]

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

@Craig NThanks for sharing that. I suppose if I had a bigger budget, I'd be picking up everything you did. So I own the e-instruments W and was considering also getting the Skybox EP145B,  because it's only $35USD and sounds lovely (although from the walk-through video, only one patch, the natural one, appeals to me). I also wasn't sure there was a significant difference between what I was able to get by creating my own patches on the W from the EP145B, it seems pretty close. But I can't say for sure. Since you own both, comparing the e-instruments W and Skybox EP145B, do you find the tones -- without  effects-- are significantly different from one another? 

There's a big difference in tone between EP145B and the E Instruments W. The Skybox is much warmer, a very pleasing warmth. The W sounds almost anemic by comparison and adjusting the Bass knob doesn't get anywhere near the tone of the EP145B. I've heard people say Wurlitzers are meant to sound nasally, and the W has that kind of tone, so maybe that's accurate for the 200, but I remember seeing Simeon's demonstration of the EP145B and thinking it sounded amazing, and I still think that. 

OK I've just had more of a dig into the Skybox settings. The simple appearance at first makes it look like there's not much you can tweak. Wow, talk about the wrong impression. Elegant simplicity but there's a lot to play with under the hood! There's a bunch of different amps and cabs and effects. I'm really glad I got the two Skybox libraries now. I'm not interested in any of the sound design stuff, and I wish they had a bunch of bread and butter presets from famous songs like some of the other Wurlie libraries do, but if you're happy tweaking, there's some great sound to be had here. 

But coming back to the raw samples, the EP145B definitely has an unmistakably unique warm sound that I really dig. I can't get a tone anything like it using the E Instruments W. I managed to get fairly close with VReeds briefly but then lost whatever unicorn combination of settings was responsible and now I'm way off again. 

[PavlovsCat]

1 hour ago, Craig N said:

There's a big difference in tone between EP145B and the E Instruments W. The Skybox is much warmer, a very pleasing warmth. The W sounds almost anemic by comparison and adjusting the Bass knob doesn't get anywhere near the tone of the EP145B. I've heard people say Wurlitzers are meant to sound nasally, and the W has that kind of tone, so maybe that's accurate for the 200, but I remember seeing Simeon's demonstration of the EP145B and thinking it sounded amazing, and I still think that. 

OK I've just had more of a dig into the Skybox settings. The simple appearance at first makes it look like there's not much you can tweak. Wow, talk about the wrong impression. Elegant simplicity but there's a lot to play with under the hood! There's a bunch of different amps and cabs and effects. I'm really glad I got the two Skybox libraries now. I'm not interested in any of the sound design stuff, and I wish they had a bunch of bread and butter presets from famous songs like some of the other Wurlie libraries do, but if you're happy tweaking, there's some great sound to be had here. 

But coming back to the raw samples, the EP145B definitely has an unmistakably unique warm sound that I really dig. I can't get a tone anything like it using the E Instruments W. I managed to get fairly close with VReeds briefly but then lost whatever unicorn combination of settings was responsible and now I'm way off again. 

Wow, thank you my fellow enabler! That was compelling. I guess I'll soon be joining you as a Skybox customer! Right now I'm on my phone hanging with the fam.  But tonight or tomorrow,  I'll pull the trigger. I really appreciate that thorough and to me, highly compelling description.  Man, you've got my number or more likely,  we're both so in love with this instrument the passion shows in your writing. 

[chris.r]

On 11/24/2022 at 4:21 AM, PavlovsCat said:

...songs by Al Greene, Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers

You've just hit perfectly what I'm currently playing on our blues/soul gigs with a hammond trio  A lady singer who plays bass guit/upright, a drummer and me. A few weeks ago I bought the little baby leslie 2101 to complete my XK3 setup and just had my first gig done on it! No need to tell how jawdropping difference it made to the internal leslie simulation, not exactly same as the vintage 122 but close enough to put a smile on our faces.

We share passion to same music styles indeed. I just wish I had experience based on close contacts with such awesome bands and musicians like you had, man that's ridiculous! 🤩

Edited November 26, 2022 by chris.r

[PavlovsCat]

Because of  @Craig N and @Bad Penguin, instead of hanging out with my family, I'm spending time trying to clear 4GB of space on one of my 3 filled hard drives to install Skybox's EP145B. I have sooooo many KONTAKT sample libraries. Okay, now that I'm saying that, it sounds terrible. I'll stop and come back later. I am really glad I got that this library -- which sounds great in the demos, but you guys were what really persuaded me (peer pressure???) and honestly, everything I was checking out from this dev just sounds so cool. I just like the vibe of the site and their libraries. It was great to be able to pick this up for only $35USD and I rationalized what I think is probably my 13th or so commercial library by thinking to myself this is a different model than the rest  I have (which are all 200As). 

Edited November 26, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[PavlovsCat]

13 hours ago, chris.r said:

You've just hit perfectly what I'm currently playing on our blues/soul gigs with a hammond trio  A lady singer who plays bass guit/upright, a drummer and me. A few weeks ago I bought the little baby leslie 2101 to complete my XK3 setup and just had my first gig done on it! No need to tell how jawdropping difference it made to the internal leslie simulation, not exactly same as the vintage 122 but close enough to put a smile on our faces.

We share passion to same music styles indeed. I just wish I had experience based on close contacts with such awesome bands and musicians like you had, man that's ridiculous! 🤩

And I wish I could still play (I don't mean play stuff for 3 minutes by myself and making terrible recordings I mean really play again with musicians, like you do; I lived to play). But now you've also set me up for the TANGET OF THE DAY and OVERSHARE OF THE DAY.

I love that set up. Man, I would love it if you shared some audio -- either in the thread or just PM me. We had a Leslie speaker -- but the sad part, it wasn't hooked up to a Hammond but a Gulbransen organ (we didn't have a lot of money). But I loved that Leslie and it has a similar emotional connection when I hear it to the Wurli 200A.  

Okay, it's blues, but I self-financed college by playing drums (okay, that didn't pay dirt), and working selling printing -- and a lot of my customers were indie record labels out of Chicago. One of them was really special to me, Alligator Records, a legendary blues label. And I would get invited to their Christmas parties and I'd hang out with my contact, who was the bassist for Lonnie Brooks Band (a late great blues artist) and got to chat with these legends I adored like Lonnie Brooks and Koko Taylor. True story and not very complementary to me. I was at a club to see Lonnie play and Lonnie walks up to the bar and we're chatting and he said. "Hey, Peter, how about buying your favorite bluesman a drink?" And I was in college and money was tight and I said, "I would love to, but I know that you get your drinks here for free." Lonnie replied, "You're right,  but you'll never get to say that you bought your favorite bluesman a drink." And guess what, I didn't buy him a drink. Stupid young me! That story would be soooo much better. But I was practical! Oh well, Lonnie knew I loved him. But on the day Lonnie died (around 5 years ago), I thought of what Lonnie said to me and it struck me how true his point was and instead for the rest of my days I have to tell the story how I was to cheap to buy a legendary bluesman a drink. 

Edited November 26, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[PavlovsCat]

Now I'm missing Lonnie. RIP, Lonnie Brooks. A very talented man and there was truly wisdom in that silly thing he said to me that night. Just to get to chat with a legend like that, He was part of era of blues artists that meant so much to music. Buddy Guy is one of the last legends left and occasionally plays. I mean, look at who Buddy Guy influenced rock greats like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan and he's still playing at 86. the blues legend who lived only 15 minutes away from my home that I would have loved to have seen play -- my favorite blues artist of all time -- was Muddy Waters.  

 

Edited November 26, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[Craig N]

5 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

Because of  @Craig N and @Bad Penguin, instead of hanging out with my family, I'm spending time trying to clear 4GB of space on one of my 3 filled hard drives to install Skybox's EP145B. I have sooooo many KONTAKT sample libraries. Okay, now that I'm saying that, it sounds terrible. I'll stop and come back later. I am really glad I got that this library -- which sounds great in the demos, but you guys were what really persuaded me (peer pressure???) and honestly, everything I was checking out from this dev just sounds so cool. I just like the vibe of the site and their libraries. It was great to be able to pick this up for only $35USD and I rationalized what I think is probably my 13th or so commercial library by thinking to myself this is a different model than the rest  I have (which are all 200As). 

$35 is such an attractive price for this library (not to mention the further discount for people who own any of the Core Collection libraries). Once the intro pricing ends it's going to be $79.00 USD.  That's a big jump up in price. 

I'm looking forward to hearing what you think about it, once you have the time to get back to it, understanding family obligations at this time of year of course.

I'm still loving the vibe I get from EP145B. It's so phat. The EQ moves you have to make with the Session Keys W are pretty extreme to get into similar territory. 

I was trying to remember the last time I felt an instrument had a wonderful vibe to it, and it just came to me; the Softube Model 84 (Juno 106 emulation). Another classic instrument. It's a fascinating thing this "vibe" or "mojo". I'm not sure what to put it down to exactly, I just know that an instrument either has it or doesn't. 

[PavlovsCat]

5 minutes ago, Craig N said:

$35 is such an attractive price for this library (not to mention the further discount for people who own any of the Core Collection libraries). Once the intro pricing ends it's going to be $79.00 USD.  That's a big jump up in price. 

I'm looking forward to hearing what you think about it, once you have the time to get back to it, understanding family obligations at this time of year of course.

I'm still loving the vibe I get from EP145B. It's so phat. The EQ moves you have to make with the Session Keys W are pretty extreme to get into similar territory. 

I was trying to remember the last time I felt an instrument had a wonderful vibe to it, and it just came to me; the Softube Model 84 (Juno 106 emulation). Another classic instrument. It's a fascinating thing this "vibe" or "mojo". I'm not sure what to put it down to exactly, I just know that an instrument either has it or doesn't. 

I love it! It definitely does have a fatter, warmer tone to it. But I'm still glad I have the e-instruments W because it has that key clang that I also love. So I do feel I am good for a long time when it comes to Wurlies. Between these two libraries, I feel a lot of ground is covered. So thanks @Craig N and @Bad Penguin. You guys had excellent advice. 

And I'm seriously thinking we all need this next: 

[Craig N]

18 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

Now I'm missing Lonnie. RIP, Lonnie Brooks. A very talented man and there was truly wisdom in that silly thing he said to me that night. Just to get to chat with a legend like that, He was part of era of blues artists that meant so much to music. Buddy Guy is one of the last legends left and occasionally plays. I mean, look at who Buddy Guy influenced rock greats like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan and he's still playing at 86. the blues legend who lived only 15 minutes away from my home that I would have loved to have seen play -- my favorite blues artist of all time -- was Muddy Waters.  

 

I hadn't heard of Lonnie Brooks before, but I really enjoyed the song featured in that video clip, thanks for sharing it! I was bopping my head straight away, what a catchy groove! So I've added a couple of albums that song appears on to my Apple Music library so I remember to check out some more of his music.

I was thinking to myself that you're lucky to have come up in an environment with so many musical greats, but then I remembered that just the other day, when buying a capo for my daughter to use on her acoustic guitar, I got to chatting with a friendly guy who has helped me at the music shop on previous visits. I had overheard someone bring up that he was going on tour a few minutes prior, so I asked him about it and found the name of his band (Osaka Punch), looked them up, and it turns out they're pretty amazing! When I put their album on in the car my daughter declared it was better than any of the other music I'd ever played in the car. Hah! 

I live in Brisbane, Australia, and a few famous bands have started out here, from the Bee Gees way back when, through Savage Garden in the 90s, to Sheppard (Hey Geronimo) more recently. Nowadays there's so much music being made that it seems even people with serious talent will end up in the long tail of the music business, and I guess that's natural as more and more of us start to express our creativity musically with all of the opportunities we have nowadays. It's amazing to me how much great music is in and around us all. 

[Fleer]

Damn, that Lonnie Brooks sure knows the blues.