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If you’re trying to give your music tracks greater glorious sounds with organ arrangements, then you’re in luck, because in this article review some of the best organ VST plugins you can buy right now.
EZKeys Pipe Organ is the one to get if you’re looking for amazing authentic pipe organs for your production tracks. AiR Music DB-33 is another great option, especially if you’re looking for diverse and excellent organ sounds for pop, jazz, R&B and similar genres.
The above is what we would consider the most recommended, based on popularity, as well as our personal experience. But if you’re looking for something else or a little different, we have you covered with a few more options below. So don’t be afraid to take a deeper look at the options we have reviewed.
Top 5 Best Products
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Arturia B-3 V
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EZKeys Pipe Organ
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AiR Music DB-33
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Lakeside Pipe Organ
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Vienna Symphonic Library Konzerthaus Organ
Best Organ VST Reviews
Arturia B-3 V
Pros
- Standalone
- Stompbox pedals
- LFOs and step sequencer
- Free demo
Cons
- None, really
See price @ Plugin Boutique / @ Sweetwater
Best features and specs
Arturia is a well-known and respected company that has a lot of vintage and analog gear reproductions in its catalog. Their lineup of vintage synthesizers is quite exceptional and realistic, so Arturia B-3 V shouldn’t be an exception and, of course, it isn’t. It sounds just like the real thing would. You can tell that it was made with love and care because of the included 86 factory presets. You can find some of the most famous settings used in some prominent jazz and rock songs from the 60s and 70s.
Being one of the best Hammond organ VST you can find, Arturia B-3 V is not a sampled instrument, it is rather made with what they call a Physical Modeling Engine, which means that each and every sound you can make with this instrument is artificially programmed. This makes room for surgically accurate sound reproduction and meticulous customization.
As if the classic sound of Hammond B-3 wouldn’t be enough on its own, guys from Arturia didn’t stop there. B-3 V, in addition to the controls you would find on the real Hammond, gives you several additional slots where you can put guitar-like pedal stompboxes, as classic B-3 players would do in their time. Here, you have a wah-wah flanger, delay, and other widely used effects. In some unlikely cases that you would be bored with Arturia B-3 V classic sound, you have an option of LFOs with several waveforms and a step sequencer so that you could turn this thing into an analog synthesizer.
User impressions
Users think that Arturia B-3 V is very usable, and all of the presets are great. The feature that is the most likable is the recreation of Hammond B3 sound. Some users tend to agree that Arturia B-3 V is a perfect choice if you like creating rock and blues as well as jazz and ballads.
What we think
It is unbelievably awesome, and realistic. If you were looking for a Hammond VST specifically, you probably shouldn’t look any further than this one. In addition to classic factory presets, you can, of course, save your own presets and recall them at any time. The best part is that you can turn LFOs on at any time and go completely bananas.
Bottomline
If you are not convinced yet, Arturia B-3 V has an indefinite trial period where the VST will stop producing sound after 20 minutes. It has no other limits than disabling an option to save presets.
EZKeys Pipe Organ
Pros
- Standalone application
- Realistic sound
- Doesn’t take much space on a hard drive
- Included MIDI parts
Cons
- None that we know of
See price @ Sweetwater
Best features and specs
Toontrack is famous for its remarkable drums of virtual instruments. We, personally, think that their EZDrummer is one of the best virtual drums you can find. So it isn’t a surprise that their EZKeys line of products also is inferior to none. In fact, Toontrack EZKeys Pipe Organ is simply one of the best church organ VST on the market.
To make the EZKeys Pipe Organ, guys from Toontrack sampled a 13th-century Swedish church organ. Although it does not necessarily sound vintage, it sure sounds realistic and majestic. It isn’t a recreation of a specific church organ, but rather an instrument in a general sense. It gives you 12 organ stops that are most commonly used to form a church pipe organ’s sonic characteristics.
But the EZKeys line is not just about pitch-perfect sampling. The most prominent feature of the EZKeys Pipe Organ is that you can use it easily even if you don’t know anything about church organs or not a keyboard player at all. It has a library of MIDI sequences and phrases pre-recorded by professional musicians and composers. You can transpose any part and combine it with any other part to suit your arrangement. Since it also has MIDI drag-and-drop capabilities, you can place included parts into your own DAW and change it as you see fit without any additional MIDI input.
User impressions
Users say that EZKeys Pipe Organ is a wonderfully sampled organ that has a variety of samples that are waiting for you to be used in the mix.
What we think
Toontrack EZKeys Pipe Organ is an efficient virtual instrument and one of the best church organ VST. It has a lot of included presets that could always be fine-tuned further. Although included MIDI sequences are truly remarkable, it isn’t likely that you find it useful if you are an experienced keyboard player or a professional composer.
This feature was designed with songwriters and perhaps solo players in mind to make it easier for them to make quick arrangements. That being said, since Toontrack EZKeys Pipe Organ still has a MIDI input option, it could be used as a regular virtual instrument. And quite good, shall we say.
Bottomline
Toontrack EZKeys Pipe Organ is a remarkable virtual instrument that takes only 750 MB of hard drive space. If you are a songwriter who is looking for an easier way to make arrangements for your songs or to make a quick backing track to jam on – this one is definitely for you. But since it sounds realistic and very playable, it also may be of some interest to those who compose cinematic and orchestral music.
AiR Music DB-33
Pros
- Ultra-realistic
- Additional rotary speaker
- Over 120 presets
Cons
- AAX available only in AiR Creative Collection
See price @ Plugin Boutique
Best features and specs
If you are a Pro Tools user, you definitely heard of AiR Music before, since all of the virtual instruments included in Pro Tools are made by this company. So there is no doubt that this developer delivers top-shelf products. AiR Music DB-33 is the finest example of German engineering and one of the best B-3 organ VST you could find.
As in almost every aspect of human existence in the music industry, attention to detail is what matters the most. AiR Music DB-33 amazes with its sonic nuances almost at the brink of perception. Playing this virtual instrument with your eyes closed feels almost as if you play the real Hammond apart from some tactile discrepancies. Usually, real organs are not very dynamically responsive, and virtual instruments typically are, so if you have a MIDI keyboard with a lot of velocity layers, that would be the only thing that wouldn’t let you think that you don’t play the real organ.
Other than that, the sound of AiR Music DB-33 will blow your mind. People from AiR Music took their time to recreate it seems like every possible nuance of Hammond B-3 there is. And as if it were not enough, they also added a very impressive rotary speaker cabinet emulation, which was one of the most commonly used cabinets for B-3 in the 60s and 70s.
User impressions
Users agree that AiR Music DB-33 is an absolutely amazing product as it is as close to the real one as possible. The amount of presets included is quite a bonus for any composer or artist.
What we think
The thing is with virtual instruments that sometimes they do not necessarily fit well with the real ones. Well, AiR Music DB-33 sure does fit perfectly, and that alone is enough of a reason to own one. Even for the most challenging mixing situations, it offers you 120 included presets with further customization options. In case that it wouldn’t be enough for you, they added a very fateful and realistic tube overdrive emulation. Also, the rotary speaker cabinet can be used on its own as a standalone effect.
Bottomline
Since it is extremely reasonably priced and remarkably realistic, AiR Music DB-33 is a very prospective investment in your music production. The only possible drawback that we could think of is that you might find it actually a bit too realistic. Virtual instruments tend to sound quite polished and as mix-ready as possible. This one sounds exactly how the real electric organ would sound without any regard to your mix. So you might find yourself polishing it further with some equalization and compression, as you would treat the real instrument.
Lakeside Pipe Organ
Pros
- Ultra-realistic pipe organ
- Highly-customizable
- 18 rack FX
Cons
- Requires the full version of NI Kontakt
See price @ Plugin Boutique
Best features and specs
It is not very obvious, but church pipe organs are more versatile than one might think. In the right hands with the right approach, they can sound very gentle and romantic, or you can make it sound quite aggressive and even disturbing. That’s why the classical era composers had so much fascination and admired pipe organs. They appreciated the number of emotions and feelings that could be produced by this mighty instrument. Despite their versatility, pipe organs never sound quiet, though.
Where Lakeside Pipe Organ succeeds is in recreating the emotional range of a classic church pipe organ. Its Victorian-era stylized GUI gives you an impressive amount of options when it comes to crafting a perfect and suitable pipe organ sound. The versatility is truly impressive – you can make it sound like the 19th-century composer’s dream, or you can make relatively modern and edgy cinematic pads. It seems like, in terms of sound crafting, it will go as far as your imagination would go.
That being said, a lot of presets are included, with room for further customization. In addition to conventional pipe organ controls, it has an FX rack with 18 effects to choose from. As you would expect, it has reverbs and delays with some quite unusual addition of amp simulators and tape saturation.
User impressions
Users like the Lakeside Pipe Organ for different organ settings as well as for natural release samples and long infinite sustaining notes.
What we think
Personally, we enjoyed a very handy and quite surprising addition of LFOs with different waveforms and a step sequencer. There is something attractive about synthesizers that use organic samples instead of traditional soundwaves. It is quite enjoyable to transform something that was a conventional pipe organ into a moving synth pad. It even has an arpeggiator to push it one step further.
Bottomline
Lakeside Pipe Organ is an inexpensive and ultra-realistic virtual instrument, which in turn makes it one of the best church organ VST. And you can always turn it into a synthesizer, which is a pleasant thing to do.
Vienna Symphonic Library Konzerthaus Organ
Pros
- Fateful symphonic organ
- Realistic sound
- Requires a free Symphonic Sample Player
Cons
- Requires ViennaKey
See price @ Sweetwater
Best features and specs
Vienna Symphonic Library is widely known for its policy of recreating and preserving styles and sounds of classical era compositions. And at that, they are succeeding. Most virtual instruments developers are trying to give their customers as much versatility and utility as possible. Vienna Symphonic Library took a different path and instead gave you a very recognizable and specific sound of classical symphonic music. So if you always wanted to become a Viennese composer, don’t miss your chance.
Vienna Symphonic Library Konzerthaus Organ sounds exactly like an organ would sound in symphonic composition. It is big, epic, and at times even threatening. It is highly unlikely that it is possible to make a modern cinematic pad of it or use it in a loud rock tune, but it wasn’t made for any of those things anyway.
It was made for serious and academic, if you will, music compositions.
User impressions
Users like Vienna Symphonic Library Konzerthaus Organ for its classic sound and the wide variety of samples.
What we think
No matter what is your primary line of work, it is always fun and refreshing to step out of your limitations. Vienna Symphonic Library Konzerthaus Organ gives you exactly that opportunity – to express yourself as a classical composer.
Bottomline
Where it lacks in utility and other blows and whistles, Vienna Symphonic Library Konzerthaus Organ gains in its own territory of traditional classical music. It goes without saying that it fits better with other VSL products. It is almost as if this instrument tells you that it is not a toy. It is a serious instrument for very serious composers.
Organ VST Buying Guide
For starters, to be on the same page, let’s distinguish the types of organs. Depending on our musical background and personal tastes, each and every one of us imagines different organs with a great probability when the subject turns up.
If you enjoy classical music, there’s a chance that you think about a pipe organ. Pipe organs vary in size, but usually, they are quite big. and the most valued often are enormous and reach the height of a 5-floors building. You can find those in various churches, cathedrals, and concert halls around the world. It is a well-known fact that Mozart called the pipe organ the ‘King of instruments.’
Since humanity always tends to move towards practicality and usability, consequently, a 5-floors high musical instrument is not so practical, reed organs were introduced. The most famous variant of the reed organ is called Harmonium. Being half-a-size of a regular piano made it possible to use it outside churches and classical music halls.
The next obvious step would be to make an organ using the magic of electricity. The famous electric organ is the Hammond. It was released in the 1930s, and since then, it became the pinnacle of every jazz and funk musician all around the world. That being said, Deep Purple used it quite a lot at some point.
The next evolutionary step of the organ was Vox Continental. It was designed in 1962 with touring musicians in mind.
Of course, nowadays, it would be tough and expensive to acquire any of those instruments. In the case of pipe organs, you’d actually have to buy an abandoned church with the instrument in it. Luckily for us, the world has been digitized for quite some time, so here are 5 of the best organ VSTs for you.
