On a real Hammond B3 it's possible to set the reverse colored keys at the left of each manual to specific drawbar settings by changing wire routings in the back of the organ. So you had 11 presets per manual. Actually 9 presets were done by the method I just described and the right-most two keys by the two banks of drawbars that each manual had in a real B3. Now I realize Arturia only gave us one set of drawbars for each manual; that's not the problem.
The problem is there's no way to program each reverse key for a particular preset. Thankfully one doesn't have to open up the organ to move the wires around for each preset. But we should be able to program each reverse key for a whatever drawbar settings we want to have. Makes for quick changing of presets without having to go to a menu just like a real B3. Heck even Hammond in their B3 reissues has programmable reverse keys.
For all the supposed changes Arturia did why are we still left with this crippled?
I totally agree. Currently the reversed keys seem almost useless. The C key contains nothing (i'm not sure why) and the Bb and B keys mirror the original preset settings (which might be useful for returning quickly to the original settings); but the keys in between just appear to be settings chosen by Arturia that can not be changed.
There is a great opportunity here to make it possible to either program the reverse keys 'globally' for each manual, or even on a preset-by-preset basis which would be fantastic - each preset could store additional variations on the preset's main drawbar settings or completely different settings. The important thing being that it would all be under the control of the player.
At the moment the reversed keys are just a waste of an octave.
The original reverse keys on a B3 functioned like this: the lowest C was a 'cancel' key so the player could cancel out whatever was selected on the drawbars. Was a quick way to silence the sound of that manual. The Bb and B keys selected either of what was set on the two sets of drawbars. That's right - real B3's had two sets of drawbars for each manual. The rest of the keys were preset at the factory but could be changed by the end user .
To do that you opened up the back of the organ and moved around some wires from one connection to another. It was a cumbersome process that could be dangerous if you were doing this with the organ plugged in (which most people did). Note that the presets keys did NOT change the physical position of the drawbars but the positioning of the wires took the place of the drawbars. Thankfully with digital you don't have to do that.
For whatever reason known only to Arturia they aren't allowing us to program. They did so much with the reprogramming of the instrument why not make it all functional like the original and current versions of the B3? Like you said they are totally useless. Why Arturia why? Maybe the air up in Grenoble is too thin?
Please note that I made a change in the description of the reverse key presets here and I'll make that same change in my original post but that doesn't change the matter at hand.
