Where can I find a GOOD rotary effect unit?

[lizardking]

Several years ago I got tired of lugging 2 leslie cabs around & sold them.  I still think it's one of the best sounds aver created for both organ AND guitar.  Anybody make a good pedal (I've tried some, pretty mediocre).  Does anyone have a schematic/design for one?


Thanks!

[MartyMart]

Hughes and Kettner "Rotosphere"
Line 6's new Rotary pedal from the "tonecore" series ( on my list asap ! )
Roland/Boss new RC20 rotory pedal
As for DIY, I dont know of anything up to these specs ..?

Just some ideas !
MM

[BD13UK]

Dont overlook the Marshall Supervibe, it's reasonably priced and as long as You use a regulated power supply it WONT be noisy, it does a good Rotary and Univibe if set correctly plus Chorus, I've had a Roger Mayer Vibe, Voodoo Lab, and tried the Fulltone Dejavibe and I find that the Marshall gets more than close enough without the price tag of other units.

[BrianPhase90]

Maybe an Option 5 Destination Rotation?

[barret77]

well, this is not an effect, but if your main concern is quality... this is a compact real thing:
http://www.songworks.com/pages/7/index.htm

[bwanasonic]

An actual rotating speaker is the only way to capture the *spatial* aspect of a rotary, but any of the previously mentioned pedals can do a decent job. I actually like the leslie sim in my Quadraverb better than most pedals I've heard.

Kerry M

[Doug_H]

The Line6 Roto Machine does pretty good with the "spatial" sound if you run it into a stereo amp setup. Standing in the sweet spot between the amps I can hear the "grind" circling around me on slow speed. Again, A/B-ed with a real Leslie I'm sure there are differences, as there would be with any of this stuff.

Doug

[Plectrum]

The new generation leslies are very compact... I believe one of them models the bass rotor but has a real rotor for treble.

http://www.hammondorgan.co.uk/b3/download/leslie.pdf

Grant.

[Mark Hammer]

As Doug notes, the stereo part is probably going to be pretty essential to the experience of playing with a Leslie.  And I emphasize the *experience* because there are a lot of things (and folks have done a great job listing many of them here) that can probably mimic Leslie sound as recorded in mono, but standing near one while you play just makes you want to play...differently.  I have not played any of the other listed units in stereo, but I can vouch for the Roto-Machine doing a great job and holding up very favourably in an A/B comparison with a real Leslie.  This one works great but the others may also do a very credible job.  What will be key to feeling like you're playing a Leslie, though, is having sound that is distributed and seems to be different-sounding over "here" than it is over "there".  That demands stereo.

You will note that the Roland JC120 Jazz Chorus amp was prized for its chorus tone, largely because of the stereo aspect (dry came out of one speaker and wet out of the other),so it is not just high-falutin' attempts to mimic rotary sound that benefit from stereo, but low-tech ones too.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

The matter of getting a rotary system that sounds good on stage, and getting a rotary sound that is good on record, are two very different things, IMHO.
And the audience is more in the record situation, if they are too far from the stage to hear directly.
But, many musicians judge the success or otherwise of a performance by what they hear themselves while they are performing.... only an actual (old or new) leslie will do for that.

[BD13UK]

If this is for live work then I urge You to look at and try out the Marshall Supervibe, I'm not sure how it would react in a recording situation but for live it's as good as anything I've tried in the past and believe Me I've used or tried just about everything that is available although I only need this particular sound for about 3 songs.

[Mark Hammer]

As good a Univibe-type pedal as the Supervibe might be, one of the things that rotary emulation does is provide a ramp up and ramp down from slower to faster speeds an vice versa.  Unless I'm missing something, the Supervibe doesn't appear to have this capability.  On the other hand, some folks probably don't care about speed-change and the stereo outs might be sufficient for their needs when it comes to swirl.  I like Univibe sounds.  Still, play through a good vibe unit and a real Leslie, and you'll realize what a world of difference there is between them.

(Incidentally, you DO know that the earliest Shin-Ei attempt to emulate true rotating speakers with the Uni-vibe type phase-shift spacing was called the "Resly-tone"?  I doubt the name was intended to be any sort of joke name.  I frequently see thinks that have been transliterated from Japanese to English and have mistakenly inserted an R where an L should be.  In principle, no different than the way many non-English words have been mis-spelled by English speakers because THEY had a hard time pronouncing them.)

[Jayco]

Have you looked at either of these?

http://www.motion-sound.com/rotary_amps.htm

I've heard good things about them and they would definitely be more compacy than hauling two Leslie cabinet.

Jim

[BD13UK]

I would most certainly agree with Mark in regard to what He said but for the most part I feel the Marshall Supervibe would do a decent job negating the need to carry Leslie cabs around, it will cover the Hendrix Trower Stevie Ray sort of stuff although to be fair I have yet to come across anything that perfectly replicates a REAL Leslie cab  but then again who wants to lug those around along with an amp + guitar etc.

[Mark Hammer]

Reading over the entire thread, I realized that there are two issues that might be getting confounded, and misleading readers. 

Lizardking notes that he got tired of lugging a pair of Leslies around.  There is a difference betwen dual Leslies, and the stereo recommendation that both Doug and I made.  I have little doubt that dueling Leslies has the power to paralyze with its majesty.  Mimicking one of them, though, still requires some stereo separation in order to mimic the redistribution of sound around the room.  Because a true rotor will force the sound the musician hears to be reflected off other surfaces, the "here versus there" aspect requires more than one sound source.

Simple analog emulation by things like the Rolls emulator essentially apply differential flanging to higher versus lower tones.  That mimics what you would hear if you were farther away (like the audience, as Paul wisely and astutely notes) and all reflected sound has become combined.    Being closer to the actual rotating speaker, though, provides a different sensation than merely having an audible doppler effect created, and is different than "mere stereo".  Because the location of the doppler effect is constantly changing, and because what you hear out of one ear is constantly different than what you hear from the other as the rotor goes round, "mere stereo" is not enough.  What you need is a type of adaptive stereo in which the sonic properties of what comes out of A change, relative to those coming out of B, and vice versa.  My guess is that only a dynamic digital emulation will manage to capture this in solid state form...at least in any cost effective way.

The kicker is that most people who might have knowingly heard a Leslie on record have never actually played through one.  As I might have mentioned before, my buddy Tim who makes a very nice CE-1 clone (which itself was intended to make Leslie emulation affordable, given the dual speeds) came over and I forced him to plug into my little Leslie.  He thought he knew what good chorus ought to sound like before, but was hypnotized once he found himself enveloped in the swirl of true speaker rotation.  And that's not even a "good" Leslie.

Bottom line for me is that if the player wants to derive maximum benefit from Leslie emulation, they need to have the experience of rotors, and that demands multiple sound sources, whether you're trying to mimic one Leslie or more than one.

Brother BD13UK,
For whatever reasons, the Line 6 website does a piss poor job of demonstrating how really good the Tone Core pedals are in stereo.  For things like the Echo Park or Liqui-Flange, the stereo thing is, in a sense, simply showing off.  Those pedals can still sound pretty good and give you a sense of their virtues in mono.  For the Roto-Machine, though, the stereo is pretty much fundamental to demoing the basics of the pedal.  Try one out in stereo in a store (and most sales staff will not likely have done so), and let me know what you think.

To others,
The Digitech Clapton emulator pedal has "Badge" as one of its Clapton signature tones.  Haven't heard one in either mono OR stereo.  Has anyone tried one out, and if so, how convincing is the rotary emulation?

[BD13UK]

Mark I'm not advocating the Line 6 pedals, frankly I haven't heard one yet that I like, what I'm trying to say is that for the most part guitar players get by using stuff that is similar in sound to the Leslie although I feel that substitutes are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination however We usually have enough junk to lug around without the extra inconvenience of Leslie cabs and having tried just about all the Rotary/Vibe clones available I found that the Marshall Supervibe was a pretty good cheap option and rather lighter than a Leslie Cab hence My reason for suggesting this as a possible alternative to the very highly priced products that sometimes claim to be what they are not.

[Mark Hammer]

Fair enough.

A couple of years ago, forum regular Brian Duguay invited me to see his band at an outdoor festival.  I parked myself as near the stage as I could (it was wet and outdoors, so that meant about 20 yards back), and was pleased to hear what I thought was a Leslie in places.  Post-performance, Brian noted that it was in fact not a Leslie (which wouldn't have been out of keeping with the alt-country vibe of the band) but a Deluxe Electric Mistress.  Of course, at that point, it had been some 20 odd years since I had parted with my beloved Leslie, and a couple more before I would be re-united with it.  Maybe I just didn't remember the tone right.  Maybe what makes a difference for the musician makes none for the audience.  Maybe Brian knew exactly how to use it in a seamless manner for that song (he's a decent player).

Those things from Leslie and Motion Sound that look like little Bose 901s are kinda pretty, though, ain't they?

[Jayco]

The motion sound stuff is cool, which is why I metioned it.

I believe they have one model that is a true rotating horn with a simulated baffle output for the speaker... then the other model is a true rotating horn and a true rotating baffle.

Best part is that they are about the size of an average keyboard amp.

Jim

[BDuguay]

Thanks for the compliment Mark!
I strive to be a decent player and, if I keep at it long enough, I might get there
My good ole EH Deluxe Electric Mistress does a bang up job of Leslie simulation. The kinda music we do has made me more than a little curious about the guitar-through-a-Leslie sound that's for sure Mark. Recently I was given the opportunity to test drive a Destination Rotation by Option 5. When used with 2 amps this thing has SRV's 'Cold Shot' nailed, screwed, and glued! It's almost too good in that mimics a Leslie's limited 2 speed selection, but just like a Leslie it can ramp up or down between these 2 speeds.
If you want to hear the song Mark is referring to, just go to the download section of our website and check out 'Barroom Lullaby'
Let me know what you think.
B.

[Doug_H]

The motion sound stuff is great and I wish I could afford it.

My wife and I used to follow a local blues band pretty regularly who had a B3 player with a 122 cabinet. I was pretty up close and personal with the sound of it in a smoky bar for a long time. I agree with Paul that the "spatiality" is going to depend a lot on where you are positioned relative to the cabinet. Which is why I believe it's going to be fundamentally impossible to emulate completely without an actual rotating speaker (or maybe 4 spkrs or a new technology that had the ability to throw sound around a room from a point source), etc... And IMO that's why it is of secondary importance anyway. Most people associate "leslie" sounds with sounds they hear on records in mono or from a cabinet at concert from a distance or due to any myriad number of mic-ing techniques. So IMO any spatiality at all that you get from a stereo setup is good stuff and probably "good enough" for most purposes.

Doug