anyone ever made a real rotating speaker in a stomp box?

[ulysses]

hey guys

was wondering if anyone has ever made a rotating speaker in a stompbox?

i read somewhere that in the 60's - early delays used a tube with a speaker in one end and a mic at the other..

anyone ever conjured up a speaker that actually rotates with a mic inside a stompbox?

cheers
ulysses

[petemoore]

  Mini Leslie.
  Don't know what it's called but there was a product available, a 'mini-leslie' {IDRC whether it was spinning speaker, tube or scoop], in a box [foot square I guess maybe] microphone picked up the bouncing soundwaves.
  Cool, but not exactly a leslie.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

It would be difficult to make a physically small working leslie, because the action comes mostly from varying the length of the audio path, plus varying ambient reverberatin by varying relative path lengths & intensities. So you need to slow down the speed of sound... I guess you COULD fill the box containig your mini leslie with uranium hexafluoride - it's reasonably cheap if it's depleted - but, really. I think it's a bit of an ask.
Plenty of people have tried to simulate the leslie effect in other ways, though, with lesser or greater success. I'd be interested to hear opinions on the Alesis versions that are in some of their reverb units.

[petemoore]

  Way OT.
  I get these silly 'tube' ideas, not so silly really tho.
  Dude used 4' diameter tubes 20' high, [2' off the ceiling of the room being the limit here] coupled from the top his square bass cabinets to get full wave form @20hz, I forget the page but...true waveform reproduction, much higher amplitudes than with any conventional' cabinets [1000w drivers etc.]...basically tuning a tube to a resonant frequency band like a pipe organ does, effective and cool.
  And having worked different style cabinets and reverberations...
  The only 'problem' with tubes is that they'd necessarily have to be hard, long, and heavy to get sound waves to pass through them without being 'taxed'...that said...Run long tube so that when the sound of the otherwise enclosed leslie directional is over 'here' a tube of say 5' causes the waves to travel and be delayed a litte, when it's pointing 'there' a 10' or 20' tube causes the input of even longer delayed waves to be redirected into the leslie chamber where the mic is.
  The tubes'd have to be long, longer makes longer delays, and it'd have or help to be hard and smooth on the inside..and heavy wouldn't hurt either, it would reject outside waveforms better.
  Anyway for a low down direct way to get delay [not much unless you got a really long tube] enough to shift the phase [valved like a trumpet to longer/shorter paths] some neat stuff could be done...if you happen to have lots of room and lots of tubes, and time...lol.
  Dude says big and little tubes are available like..everywhere they do cement pylons, he used cement forming tubes, relatively inexpensive and sold by contractor warehouses.
  Been meaning to try a 6'' speaker into a 6'' tube different ways, then Mic that...rediculous.
  Maybe the tubes could be 'snail shelled', 'wound' for smaller volume/greater tube length in a package, but that would take alot...to get made.

[brett]

Hi
it would be very cool to use a foot controller to vary the speed.  Maybe a variable speed motor out of a 12V drill?  I'm thinking that a fixed speaker with a rotating baffle in front would be easier than rotating the speaker. 
Experimentation might show whether the mic should go behind or in front of the baffle.
??

[StephenGiles]

Old ground, but a friend of mine made me a leslie in 1967 or thereabouts by welding a metal cylinder to a record turntable, which was set in the cabinet over the speaker cone, with a gap in the cylinder to let the sound out. It sounded OK but a bugger to transport - I had a 1953 Morris Minor then!

[ulysses]

what about throwing sound faster - like a fan over a speaker into multiple static microphones

that wouldnt be to hard - right?

cheers
ulysses

[slacker]

I think has been discussed before. I seem to remember a tube with a speaker at one end a microphone at the other and some sort of spinning blade arrangement in between to disperse and change the sound.

[David]

Ulysses:

There's a thread here from January of 2004 that addresses that exact issue.  I know.  I started it.  You may find it helpful.

[Mark Hammer]

At one point, I thought it might be feasible to use four small speakers (we get those nice little 2" full-range speakers yanked from old Macs for a buck a piece here), and 4 VCAs driven by a quadrature oscillator (with 0, 90, 180, and 270-degree outputs) to produce nonmechanical rotating sound in a teeny box.  The idea of a battery-operated low-power rotating speaker the size of a lunch-box was very appealing.

The more I thought about it, though, particularly given that I have one of the old Vibra-tone "cheese wheel" units, the more it began to dawn on me that the radius of the rotor was a VERY big player in the quality of tone achieved.  Much like the difference between the "inside" and "outside" tracks on a vinyl album, the actual velocity of signal movement at the same overall rate of rotation (lets say 1hz for a slow Leslie speed) is much faster as the radius of the rotor increases and the actual circumference travelled in the same amount of time increases.  That, in turn, creates opportunity for doppler-based cancellations over more of the  spectrum and a more intense effect.  Stated another way, you might be able to get decent sounding bubbly effects at faster speeds with a small unit that you could carry in your arms, but I doubt they would sound dramatically better than a phaser, and the slow speeds would sound pretty limp.  Pity.  The idea of a physically portable Leslie is appealing.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Why not move the mic instead of the speaker? Tie a FM bug to one of those ceiling fans......

[petemoore]

  Hang the speaker cabinet from the cable, spin.
  I made a few phonograph leslies, WLACharm every time.
  One I used HF Horns, a 1/4'' mono phono plug replaced the center pin on the turntable, a Contact was sprung into the tip [contact spins, plug stays still] and contact points [Oldsmobile 88 type IIRC] grabbed the sleeve, this spinning two conductor system worked for long time, flawlessly ...[surprizing, I thought tons of hash would result...good contact somehow, I wouldn't start loading when with current though.
  The other two were just plywood 'scoops' spinning...mounted on the platter, with the speaker cabs soundboard in very close proximity to the top of the spinning 'rotator scoop'...square sides, curved middle scoop board.
  A bit wobbly, and took a little setup to make the scoop get close to the cabinet speaker opening [with out bang bang bang banging into it]...worked great too, 4 speeds on the one TTable which had 78RPM, 45, 33 and 16.5..whatever, the other had a 3 speed.
  I had to put the psycic on the scoop and counterbalance it so it'd mostly go around only, not so much up and down wobbling. I started with lead weights, then finished the C.balancetargetting with metal screws.
  Stereo leslies, greenback drivers...JTM45, filled room with super ambient sound, not much at all for sound 'projection'...just sweetly swirling swishiness.
  Aweful dern gangly to move, ~3' x 3' Base section w/scoop on turntable, + top cabinet, took a while to 'get setup just right.

[MKB]

Might be worth looking into one of those Motion Sound "leslie" type cabs: http://www.motion-sound.com/KBR%20amplifiers.htm  These are supposed to emulate a Leslie in a small form factor.  Our keyboardist has one and it does a pretty good job, isn't very big either; most of it is woofer and amp.  The rotary part only is the top 8" or so of the cab.  IIRC the rotary part is actually a horn speaker, the driver rotates along with the horn.  Apparently the rotating highs gives the impression of the rotation, and the lost low end isn't that big a deal.  I'll have to check with him to see exactly how it is sent to the sound system, now he is micing the horn on both sides of the cab and might be sending a direct signal as well.  I'll also try to get a pic of the inside when I get a chance.

[Gladmarr]

...sounds like a good FX of the month contest topic.... 

[petemoore]

  "Directional" and HF.
  Ears tend to be most directionally sensative to HF's.
  Part of the leslie effect is that the direction of the sound source changes.

[cakeworks]

Just a suggestion but how would taking out the mechanism and bearing from a spin cycle washing machine and modding it for variable speeds? Those things can take a fair bit of weight... It'd be more like a real leslie than a simulator but oh well...

[petemoore]

  You dream it could be done it could be.
  Part of it...but lotsa details.
  Dryers turn kinda slow, you'd need a Binford 9000 super charged electric motor to get the RPM's up...or a bigger gear, stock it'd be like a 'delicate' setting.
  Then you'd have to save enough frame to frame it or drag a whole washing machine around..probably an improvement over dragging a leslie.
  Then you could dry your clothes and Jam on it at the same time, don't forget to check the lint trap.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

An amusing incident when I was at university yrars ago - there was a lunchtime concert featuring a leslie, set up near the path to the faculty club. Anyway as the band started up a couple of academics started to argue about how a leslie worked - half an hour later they were still arguing

[Nasse]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9ifZlu6YKk

Don´t really have the brain to understand how the sound and air works in a leslie but was wondering if it could be made smaller by using some other gas than air. On this video pitch goes down anyway, if it is not faked.

[WelshWonder]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9ifZlu6YKk

Don´t really have the brain to understand how the sound and air works in a leslie but was wondering if it could be made smaller by using some other gas than air. On this video pitch goes down anyway, if it is not faked.

That's mad as f++k!!!!