Ive always been a Leslie player but wanted it to be portable...i used a Vibratone for awhile.. but sometimes lack of room and my back dont allow for it..so ive been using the Boss RT20...its a bit pricey ..but im getting what i want out of it..anybody use a simular pedal and have success?

here is a live clip with it....sorry for the quality...thats a little Bugera V22...im using all stock except better tubes{JJs} and the bias set at 17MAs....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRxjh1Tz ... er&list=UL

Decades ago I used a Vibratone but today I use an old first-generation A/DA flanger with the original Panasonic bucket-brigade modulation chips. It does a pretty fair job but of course nothing really sounds like a real Leslie -- except a Leslie.

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

I use an old mxr phase 90 in tandem with the tremolo on my DRRI, and my SCXD has a pretty good sounding faux leslie effect onboard.

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Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancin'

I've used an MXR Phase 90 & tremolo before, too, but my current Leslie simulator is the Boss RT20 Rotary Ensemble. Best for the money, IMHO.

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

Yes, Boss RT20 here too.

But I use it on a Korg N5ex Poly synth for all my Hammond requirements. Not brilliant, but plenty good enough for live use - you'd barely know the difference.

Set slow and with some low level overdrive (built into the unit) and you get a wicked groaning throbbing organ (steady at the back).

For guitar, I use pre-set model 3 (tweaked) in the Digitech Clapton Artist Series Pedal.

My collaborator uses a Fulltone Univibe and its superb.

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Fender Highway & Classic 60s Strats, Fender Toronado, Telecaster, Gretsch Projet, Charvel 3, PRS SE Soapbar II & Custom 24, Burns Batwing and many others!

Korg PX5D

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Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

The Danelectro Cool Cat Vibe is a pretty decent replacement for a Leslie as is the Coolcat Chorus.The Vox Valvetronix Series amps have dead-on Leslie simulators that ramp up and slow down just like the real McCoy when engaged.
Suzuki-Hammond has come out with a combo amp Leslie that is 100W and is the real object,they also make a cabinet only model.I did have their website one time but have mislaid it.Reviews I've read of the S-H have been very favourable.The unit has both the rotating drum and horns which can operate independantly of each other so that you can have the drum rotating slowly and the horns spinning fast or vice versa.
Edit:I just did some snooping around and found more info on the Hammond Suzuki amps.They are the G27 Model that is without an amp for $1,325 and the amplified G37 Model at $1,495.You can find more info here: http://www.hammondorganco.com/ These prices may seem steep but compared to what you'd pay for an original Leslie these days these amps are relatively cheap.BTW a musician friend of mine who works at the local Long&McQuade bought a Leslie Model 16 like the one I have and paid $900 for it about 5 years ago and he figured that he got a deal.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

There's this one by me;

http://newyork.craigslist.org/que/msg/2347065252.html

What you think?

I use an old DOD Phasor 401, one knob pedal, I love that pedal.

I use a Dano Cool Cat Vibe, also. For the money (about $47 at MF), it can't be beaten.

First issue Hughes and Kettner Rotosphere. FOR: Ramping up and down; portability; real tone.
AGAINST: Hissy; upper/lower rotor balance knob touchy

Boss DC-2 Dimension C. FOR: 4 presets; Andy Summers
AGAINST: 4 presets; Andy Summers

But these two together are fantastic!

I also have a Leslie 16 (available) and a Leslie 14L. The 14L originally had a 6x9 Jensen spinning in a 14" wooden drum that sounded awesome, but blew up regularly. When it became impossible to find a paper-edged 6x9 recone kit, I modified it to spin a 10" Celestion. I am currently building a cabinet for it; the original was just a drawer in a console organ, and fell apart after two years moving it around. I'll post some pix soon...

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"There's an arse for every chair"

5 guitars
7 amps
4 dogs

I've played through an RT-20 before, it sounded really nice for a what it was. I would have bought one but for the price I might as well save up for a real Fender Vibratone. I still may get the pedal in addition to it, since it's more convenient.

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I bought my RT-20 when they were fresh out on the market, and only paid $220. I've seen them on sale for less than $200.

Have Vibratones recently dropped in price?

Also, at some point you have to factor footprint (size) and weight.

I would still love to own a real rotary speaker someday (and no, not a member of the Rotary club).

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

I use a late '60s Shin-ei Resly Tone (precursor to the Univibe)... it is to Leslie what the Mitsubishi Starion is to a powerful stallion, but it has its own charms...

When I was about 22 years old, inspired by the Arc Angels song “Good Time”, I started looking for a convincing Leslie simulator. At the time there were very few people making any sort of Leslie/rotary cabinet for a decent price, and the weight/price/availability issues made the purchase of one unfeasible. Little did I know that it would take me about 15 years to find something that worked for me.

I tried multiple pedals that supposedly had “that” sound, but all of them fell short in one way or another. Here’s what my experiences were (not in chronological order):

The highly-touted H&K Rotosphere was noisy, shrill, noisy, brittle, noisy and a pricey. And noisy. A pedal that expensive and that (supposedly) well-built should not have that much hiss. I was disgusted by the three different Rotospheres I tried before writing it off.

The Line 6 POD (vs. 1) had a decent rotary simulator for studio work, but it was hard to use live and in conjunction with an amp (I use one extensively in the studio). The various Line 6 pedals that had a Leslie simulation were all too “vanilla” sounding, without the dynamic Doppler sound needed (even when played in stereo) and they tended to sound a bit too digital…and several of the sounds were too brittle and bright as well (no warmth).

Dunlop Roto-Vibe wasn’t bad, but it was more of a poor-man’s Uni-vibe type clone, and it just didn’t “cut it” for me. Ditto for the Uni-Vibe (both the original, which I can’t afford and the reissue, which I can afford); it’s a very cool effect, but it’s not the same as a Leslie.

I bought a Digitech Eric Clapton Crossroads pedal, and I wanted it to work so badly I could taste it…the tone was really good, the size was perfect, but it was just too noisy. I took it back within two weeks.

Motion Sound started making some real rotary speaker cabinets, and they sounded great…but they were expensive and the real estate on a stage is pretty expensive.

The Little Lanelei (spelling?) cabinet looked cool and sounded like a good idea, but I had a hard time letting go of that kind of money, sight unseen (or sound unheard, as the case may be). I didn’t have high-speed internet at the time, so I couldn’t listen to the sound clips, and they would not take the unit back if the customer didn’t like the sound.

The Danelectro Rocky Road just didn’t cut it, and on the other end of the price spectrum , the Electro Harmonix Wiggler didn’t either. Both were just a bit too vanilla…

There was a pedal called the Peavey Delta Stomp that had a bunch of digital effects such as chorus, flanger, ping-pong delay, tremolo, etc., (some were good, some were “meh”); believe it or not, this was the best of the rejects. I had one for about two years. The only problem it had (and this is a problem with many digital effects, especially in the early days) was the occasional digital “artifact” that would make the tone just go to crap. The only way to correct it was to disconnect it from the power supply, count to twenty and plug it back in. The second time it did that during a performance was the last time I used it. I sold it a week later.

Something I did that actually didn’t sound bad (although it was far from a true Leslie sound) was set my MXR Phase 90 to a very fast setting and then put a slower tremolo pulse (from my Vibroverb’s vibrato circuit) at the same time. It was a cool, funky setting, but it still wasn’t “right”.

Then I found the Boss RT-20…
I generally don’t go ga-ga over Boss effects, although there are a few that I like. I love my old TU-2 Chromatic tuner—it is truly transparent and dead-on accurate. I like the Blues Drivers, and if I weren’t overdrive-pedal-poor, I would add one of those to my arsenal. Their Tremolo and Octave effects are both great, especially for the money. My drummer loves the orange Boss DS-1 distortion I gave him years ago for his guitar excursions.

But the RT-20 Rotary Ensemble had that funky headwhack tailspin (to quote Chris Duarte) that I was looking for…

I initially tried it at Guitar Center with a maple-fret-boarded Telecaster’s bridge pickup through a bright little solid state amp; I figured if put the effect into the brightest, shrillest rig I could find, it would tell me if this was “the one.”

It played beautifully—rich, dynamic, warm and a well-developed sense of space (which is hard to digitally replicate)...you could almost feel the air moving. Later, I took my own Pedalboard and played it through an amp similar to my Vibroverb, and it didn’t disappoint—in fact, it blossomed and sounded even richer. I played through one of these pedals multiple times before getting one, and each time I liked it a bit more. This was a good sign, because that meant it wasn’t just a “lust at first sight”/later buyer’s remorse situation.

Settings #1 & #2 were my favorite, but each of the settings had their own charm, and setting #4 (the Uni-vibe model) was pretty dang accurate as well. I like the spinning display (don’t look at it if you’re nauseas—it will put you over the edge). The only thing I didn’t like about the unit was the built-in overdrive (it just made the tone go to crap very quickly).

I can get the SRV “Cold Shot” sound, the Jimmie Vaughan “Tip On In” sound, the Kenny Wayne Sheppard “Blue on Black” sound, and it fit perfectly with my own creations that were craving a Leslie cabinet—“Monkey Hips” and “Travis County Line”…in short, it fulfilled what I had been looking for since I first heard the Arc Angels’ “Good Time” fifteen years prior.

I will continue to try new Leslie simulators, but I think this one is going to be it for quite a while.

PS—What was even cooler was the fact that the Lady Armadillo and the Armadillo Child bought the pedal for me for our wedding anniversary…very cool!

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

I've been watching ebay and craigslist for a little while and I've seen them go for somewhere in the $500 range. If I'm already going to be spending $200, I might as well save up the extra $300 for the real deal. Although the more I think about it, the better the RT-20 looks. Much, much easier to get around and since the guitar store I work for deals Boss pedals I get a substantial discount on Boss products with their (Boss') employee program.

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