I have an old digitech rp-50 which I do not use since it is pretty lousy... but you can get a decent rotating speaker effect which you can conveniently control the speed of the rotation with the foot pedal.

I have it programmed to be slowest speed with the pedal is up, and the speed increases as you depress the pedal. It sounds great.

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!

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.

According to Jimi's equipment manager Eric Barrett the "Leslie" used on Little Wing was a homemade affair cobbled together by him and Gerry Stickells from an Erector(Meccanno) set and an 8" speaker.