dumb SRV question...

[blanik]

i was listening to the radio during my shift yesterday when a SRV song came on... i'm not a big fan of SRV (i can barely indetify him when he's on the radio...) but my partner told me the song was called "Cold Shot" or something like that, i notice some kind of effect during the whole song, kind of chorus but reading posts from SRV nuts in here  i don't think he had a chorus... could he have used a Univibe? anyway, i don't know the Univibe much but i wasn't impressed with the sound of that effect (the playing, yes  ) it reminded me of a bad version of a Leslie (kind of a cheezy doppler effect... is that a Univibe???)

R.

[The Tone God]

Fender Vibratone. Later on they sometimes used some Dimension D but I'm pretty sure its the Vibratone on that album.

Andrew

[blanik]

is this a stand alone effect or is it part of the amp? (never heard of this!)

[The Tone God]

Fender had for a short time acquired the Leslie brand and made a version of the Leslie that used a spinning Styrofoam drum. I believe it was just a cab with the mechanics. It still needed to be driven by an external amp.

Do a google for it as I'm sure there is info on it around.

Andrew

[gez]

http://www.nmia.com/~vrbass/vibratone/

[trevize]

i thought it was a leslie mod.16 but probably it's the same cab. Wasn't it used also by Jimi Hendrix?

[snoof]

leslie 16, and vibrotone are essentaily the same thing.  i think the connections are just different.

[Mark Hammer]

I've got one of those.  It is the barest-bones version of a 2-speed Leslie type speaker you can get.  The same mechanism and beige styrofoam "cheese wheel" showed up in a variety of things.  Mine was taken out of a Kawai home organ.  It certainly gets "the sounds" but is distinguished from the more commonly heard Leslies by virtue of having a single speaker, rather than separate woofer and horn rotor, and also by virtue of having that single speaker vertically mounted such that the sound is spun down-sideways-up-sideways-down, like a propeller, rather than around on the horizontal axis.  Because you drive it from a separate amp, the quality of tone achieved (aside from the Doppler effects) will depend on the sound of the amp itself.  I drive mine with my 5W Princeton.  I imagine if you drove it with a Twin or solid-state amp, or something else with a relatively clean tone, it would sound more Uni-Vibe or phaser-like.  That's probably why you find it hard to peg down as an effect.

[blanik]

so SRV was known to use the Vibratone in the studio? i guess he has some sort of pedal version of it for live shows (or his roadies must have hated hauling the monster around  )

amyway, the effect sounded weird on the radio...

[The Tone God]

so SRV was known to use the Vibratone in the studio? i guess he has some sort of pedal version of it for live shows (or his roadies must have hated hauling the monster around  )

He actually took it on the road and drove it with a spare Vibroverb.

Andrew

[JimRayden]

so SRV was known to use the Vibratone in the studio? i guess he has some sort of pedal version of it for live shows (or his roadies must have hated hauling the monster around  )

Got a Monterux DVD and the Vibroverb stands proud on stage.

Love the Charley -> Vibratone thing he's got going on in "Life Without You", that concert got me into equipping my Cheri with lipsticks.

--------
Jimbo

[skiraly017]

The Leslie 16 and Vibratone are the same, a single 10" speaker that fires into a styrofoam rotor. The Leslie 18 had a 12" speaker. All three units used a crossover assembly that is usually missing. The set up was a 1/4" male phono jack that was plugged into the speaker out jack of your amp. From there the cable ran into the crossover and then split into two cables. One cable had a female 1/4" jack where you plugged your amp's speaker into and the other which ran to the Vibratone/Leslie. What the crossover did was route the mids to the rotating speaker and sent the highs/lows to your amp. The on/off and slow/fast switches were housed in a Fender style two button footswitch. Most people discarded the crossover unit in favor of running a speaker cable directly from amp to cabinet. I have owned several Vibratones/16's/18's but only a few that had the crossover. IMO the crossover is an integral part of "that" sound. A few years ago, if you were missing the crossover you were kind of screwed. There's one or two place now that build replacement crossovers for the Vibratone/16/18. Last time I looked Vibratones in good condition with the crossover were running about $900 with 16's/18's slighty lower. If you look hard enough you cand find a 16 that's missing the crossover for $400 or less and buy a replacement crossover. You're still spending some serious money for a one trick pony but nothing sounds like the real thing. You just can't replicate 3D sound in a stompbox.

All of the times I saw SRV he was using a Vibratone.

[snoof]

I actually owned a Vibratone for a while, just couldn't justify the weight issue.  But boy did it sounds cool!!   The Motion Sounds products, and the H&K Rotosphere sounded the best to me for low weight options.

[Tubebass]

I have one of the Cordovox ones that Traynor used to sell. Same mechanism as the Vibrotone apparently. It's not working right now but the info given in that article will definately help!

[petemoore]

  Yea, I built a couple box 'leslies', they had 16, 33.33, and 78 Rpm speed settings.
  I spanned boards around the box, it looked like a corral fence.
  Worked good for medium speed leslie tone, fantastic in the living room, maybe not loud enough for stage, I didn't try.
  A good days work, I started with salvaged turntable, made the plywood scoop, and counterbalanced it...kinda tricky, while it's spinning you have to see where' the wobble is to calculate where and how much to counterweight.
  The third was just spinning horns, I used a 1/4'' plug in place of the platter center pin on a phonograph, pinned a contact to the platter which sprung to the tip, and used slant 6 contact points to connect and spin around the 'holding still' phono plug.
  The electronic spin conductor systems worked out fine, the leslie effect was kinda high endy though. It was placed in a 5 sided box for more trem effect...real cool just harsh cause that's it...horns w/capacitor. Horns were screwed to two upright boards screwed to platter, EZ.