Donny beat me to the Tony Monaco thing. When the Hammond XK3 first came out along with the "New B3" Tony recorded a CD, Burning Grooves, using both his studio A100 and the New B3. Then he had a contest to see who could tell which instrument was on which track. Winner was going to get a new XK3. I was at the time buying, refurbing, and selling Hammonds with a master tech in Northern NJ. Point being I was listening and playing all kinds of Hammonds a lot. Got the CD, listened on and off to it thru headphones and sent my entry in. One night the Phone rings "Hey Bill, its Tony Monaco, you won ! " Wohoo
Spoke to him for awhile and he told me how he had been pushing Hammond for a long time to produce the XK3 and with the full XK3 system of lower manuel and pedals he would no longer be taking a real B3 for his travel gigs.
I think the clones sound and play great and except for the size factor of playing the real deal you don't miss much. Now Leslies are a whole nuther story. There is nothing that can recreate the air movement a Leslie creates. Once you mic it or get far away a sim is just as good there too. Demonstrated that to more than a few churches.
like Donny I'm happy I had my time doing tons of gigs with the B's but damn if the clones were available back then I would have jumped all over them.