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Vintage threads from the first ten years

Re: Suggestions for leslie simulator?

12/31/1999 11:57 AM
Jsh	Re: Suggestions for leslie simulator? Quadraverb Plus/GT has a very nice leslie emulator. It only has two speeds, but it does similate the changing from state to state. Pass by the preamp on the GT (if necessary) and use the signal ALL wet. Mix it with a dry signal outside the fx-processor, using simple mixing device. Worked for me. [ok, it's digital, but uh.. only $225, second hand]

12/31/1999 1:23 PM
Whit	Humbucker, I know you said simulator, but you said more affordable as well... I'll echo what others have said, only a real spinning something is going to sound like a real Leslie. Here's some more options I've tried with good results... 1- find one of those coffee table sized Leslies. There's a million of 'em in living rooms all across north America. Model 120 specifically... Jensen Special Design 12" speaker, single two speed rotor and a beautiful cabinet... and usually around $100 when you find one... maybe $10 if you find the right yard sale like I did. 2- find an old organ with a built in Leslie, and move the Leslie guts into your own home built cabinet. Same deal here, there's a million of these things out there for cheep. 3- buy a new horn (upper rotor, www.goff.com etc.), at about $30. Then build some sort of box for it, with say an adaptor for a Jensen 8" firing into the horn, with some surplus motor and a light dimmer spinnin' the contraption. 4- put "Item 3" above on top of either Item 1 or 2 for a butt-ugly but functional two spinner Leslie. You really need the two spinners for the best sound, but the single rotor ones are about %90 there... And a home made, well constructed two piece "Leslie" is way easier to move around that the real deal, and a lot easier to interface with guitar etc. If you get lucky, you might be able to rig this up for only $100, it's a dumpster diving quest kinda thing... Enjoy... ... Whit

12/31/1999 1:23 PM

Whit

Humbucker,

I know you said simulator, but you said more affordable as well...

I'll echo what others have said, only a real spinning something is going to sound like a real Leslie.

Here's some more options I've tried with good results...

1- find one of those coffee table sized Leslies. There's a million of 'em in living rooms all across north America.
Model 120 specifically... Jensen Special Design 12" speaker, single two speed rotor and a beautiful cabinet... and usually around $100 when you find one... maybe $10 if you find the right yard sale like I did.

2- find an old organ with a built in Leslie, and move the Leslie guts into your own home built cabinet. Same deal here, there's a million of these things out there for cheep.

3- buy a new horn (upper rotor, www.goff.com etc.), at about $30. Then build some sort of box for it, with say an adaptor for a Jensen 8" firing into the horn, with some surplus motor and a light dimmer spinnin' the contraption.

4- put "Item 3" above on top of either Item 1 or 2 for a butt-ugly but functional two spinner Leslie. You really need the two spinners for the best sound, but the single rotor ones are about %90 there... And a home made, well constructed two piece "Leslie" is way easier to move around that the real deal, and a lot easier to interface with guitar etc.

If you get lucky, you might be able to rig this up for only $100, it's a dumpster diving quest kinda thing...

Enjoy...

... Whit

12/31/1999 3:56 PM
Humbucker	I'll be a little more specific. I guess the effect I'm going for is more the Uni-Vibe sound like Robin Trower. Sorry about my poorly worded question BTW. Someone recommended the Marshall SuperVibe Chorus, anybody have any ideas on this, thanks. Happy Y2K everyone.

1/2/2000 3:32 AM
Mark Hammer	The topic of Leslie simulation has come up several times in AMPAGE history. Many, including myself as well as those who posted earlier, can attest that there are few substitutes for the whirly thing. In other respects, though, there isn't a phaser or flanger alive that CAN'T get something close to the sound you want. The obstacles to getting it electronically generally are: 1) Twitchy taper on the speed/rate control so you can never easily nail the right speed. I have a cheapo phaser that gives me grief this way. If I had the patience, I'd stick in a re-tapered pot, or a toggle-switchable speed range switch so I could relocate those speeds more easily. If you can identify the cap(s) responsible for setting the speed of the LFO, you can just tack on another slightly smaller value cap in parallel to slow down the range so you can get the exact slow speed you want. 1a) No switchable speed control. If you can build your own, stick it in a 1590BB case (the wide way, like the MXR Flanger and Limiter) and install a bypass and speed-switch. The speed switch can select between two parallel speed pots. Problem solved, although there may be some clicking. 2) Too much resonance. Real Leslie's have no regeneration. Many phasers have a little bit. If you have a resonance/regeneration control, turn it right down. 3) Hard to nail the sweep range. It depends on the specific model to some extent, but Leslie's generally cause Doppler effect notches in the low to mid area. Consequently, you want some way of adjusting the initial sweep starting point on a phaser, or the initial delay on a flanger/chorus. If you have a 4 or 5-knobber, you should be able to adjust the manual/initial and sweep width appropriately to the right part of the spectrum. The sweep shouldn't be too wide, and shouldn't sweep too high. Even on a 2 or 3-knobber, there are ways of shifting the sweep range to something more suitable for Leslie-like tones. I had a Leslie about 20 years ago with an 8" speaker, that I drove with my 6W tweed Princeton. I suspect it was not a real Leslie, but some sort of commercial clone. I picked it up from a local surplus house for $50. The speaker was side firing, and the "rotor" was basically a large styrofoam "cheese wheel" with a pie-shaped hole from the perimeter to the centre. The cheese wheel was mounted in front of the speaker, and as it spun the sound was directed circularly. It had the usual 2 speeds. Part of the magic of Leslie's is that the notch-filtering comes at the very END of the signal chain, after the speaker transformer. Any attempt to simulate that electronically still has to find its way through any additional effects and cables, the pre-amp and amp, and speakers. Little Lanelei makes a small rotary speaker that you may want to check out. This is a single driver system, so miking it is easier. If you are averse to motors, there have been several commercial attempts to produce motorless rotating speakers. The REVO from Roland/BOSS came out in the early 80's, and used electronic panning as a way of getting the sound moving. The technique uses several speakers (4 is probably optimal), each with their own power amp. The power per amp doesn't have to be substantial since there is no crossover to eat power, and all but one of the speakers will generally be "on" at any time. You could probably even use two cheap car stereo amps, and four 5-inch full-range speakers (like the ones in the little bookshelf speakers) if you felt like it. The guitar signal get fed to a 4-way splitter, with each output going to its own VCA (voltage-controlled amplifier). The VCA's are, in turn, fed with a quadrature LFO. The quadrature LFO generates four copies of the same waveform, each 90 degrees out from the the other (so, the original, plus copies at 90, 180, and 270 out of phase). This makes the VCA's each have a different volume setting at any given moment, with one of them driven harder than the others. AS it pans, it creates the illusion of a speaker turning, since the loudest sounds will appear to be shifting positions in rotary fashion. I always wanted to take some of those little 2-1/2" speakers you find on computers, and make the world's tiniest Leslie out of balsa wood, using LM386's.

1/2/2000 3:32 AM

Mark Hammer

The topic of Leslie simulation has come up several times in AMPAGE history. Many, including myself as well as those who posted earlier, can attest that there are few substitutes for the whirly thing. In other respects, though, there isn't a phaser or flanger alive that CAN'T get something close to the sound you want. The obstacles to getting it electronically generally are:

1) Twitchy taper on the speed/rate control so you can never easily nail the right speed. I have a cheapo phaser that gives me grief this way. If I had the patience, I'd stick in a re-tapered pot, or a toggle-switchable speed range switch so I could relocate those speeds more easily. If you can identify the cap(s) responsible for setting the speed of the LFO, you can just tack on another slightly smaller value cap in parallel to slow down the range so you can get the exact slow speed you want.
1a) No switchable speed control. If you can build your own, stick it in a 1590BB case (the wide way, like the MXR Flanger and Limiter) and install a bypass and speed-switch. The speed switch can select between two parallel speed pots. Problem solved, although there may be some clicking.
2) Too much resonance. Real Leslie's have no regeneration. Many phasers have a little bit. If you have a resonance/regeneration control, turn it right down.
3) Hard to nail the sweep range. It depends on the specific model to some extent, but Leslie's generally cause Doppler effect notches in the low to mid area. Consequently, you want some way of adjusting the initial sweep starting point on a phaser, or the initial delay on a flanger/chorus. If you have a 4 or 5-knobber, you should be able to adjust the manual/initial and sweep width appropriately to the right part of the spectrum. The sweep shouldn't be too wide, and shouldn't sweep too high. Even on a 2 or 3-knobber, there are ways of shifting the sweep range to something more suitable for Leslie-like tones.

I had a Leslie about 20 years ago with an 8" speaker, that I drove with my 6W tweed Princeton. I suspect it was not a real Leslie, but some sort of commercial clone. I picked it up from a local surplus house for $50. The speaker was side firing, and the "rotor" was basically a large styrofoam "cheese wheel" with a pie-shaped hole from the perimeter to the centre. The cheese wheel was mounted in front of the speaker, and as it spun the sound was directed circularly. It had the usual 2 speeds.

Part of the magic of Leslie's is that the notch-filtering comes at the very END of the signal chain, after the speaker transformer. Any attempt to simulate that electronically still has to find its way through any additional effects and cables, the pre-amp and amp, and speakers.

Little Lanelei makes a small rotary speaker that you may want to check out. This is a single driver system, so miking it is easier.

If you are averse to motors, there have been several commercial attempts to produce motorless rotating speakers. The REVO from Roland/BOSS came out in the early 80's, and used electronic panning as a way of getting the sound moving. The technique uses several speakers (4 is probably optimal), each with their own power amp. The power per amp doesn't have to be substantial since there is no crossover to eat power, and all but one of the speakers will generally be "on" at any time. You could probably even use two cheap car stereo amps, and four 5-inch full-range speakers (like the ones in the little bookshelf speakers) if you felt like it. The guitar signal get fed to a 4-way splitter, with each output going to its own VCA (voltage-controlled amplifier). The VCA's are, in turn, fed with a quadrature LFO. The quadrature LFO generates four copies of the same waveform, each 90 degrees out from the the other (so, the original, plus copies at 90, 180, and 270 out of phase). This makes the VCA's each have a different volume setting at any given moment, with one of them driven harder than the others. AS it pans, it creates the illusion of a speaker turning, since the loudest sounds will appear to be shifting positions in rotary fashion.

I always wanted to take some of those little 2-1/2" speakers you find on computers, and make the world's tiniest Leslie out of balsa wood, using LM386's.

1/4/2000 1:07 PM
paul perry	What about splitting the highs and lows, & treating them separately? I can't see simulation working where the signal isn't split.

1/4/2000 6:44 PM
Mark Hammer	They CAN be split, but they don't need to be. The mini-Leslie I mentioned in my postin used one 8" speaker and that was it. No splitting whatsoever, and it sounded lush. Now, will it sound lusher with the split? Perhaps, but bear in mind that the lushness will depend on the signal source. Unfortunately, guitars don't have the sustain that a B-3 does, so the fat sound emerging from split rotors may simply not show up with a guitar. Ultimately, it's an empirical question, and I'm happy to stand corrected if wrong.

1/4/2000 6:44 PM

Mark Hammer

They *CAN* be split, but they don't need to be. The mini-Leslie I mentioned in my postin used one 8" speaker and that was it. No splitting whatsoever, and it sounded lush. Now, will it sound lusher with the split? Perhaps, but bear in mind that the lushness will depend on the signal source. Unfortunately, guitars don't have the sustain that a B-3 does, so the fat sound emerging from split rotors may simply not show up with a guitar. Ultimately, it's an empirical question, and I'm happy to stand corrected if wrong.

1/4/2000 1:59 PM
Steve B.	Place it BEFORE distortion or OD..... Before we go any further, it's important to note that to achieve the sound you're after, you MUST put the modulation pedal(phaser, chorus, etc.) before the distortion in the signal chain. Whether you're using pedals for distortion or an amp's distortion doesn't matter, just as long as the mod. pedal is before it. Otherwise you end up with something like the Isley Bros. "Who's That Lady?" sound, which is okay, but definitely NOT thick like Trower. If you're using a fuzz pedal (Fuzz Face, Big Muff, etc.), you can put it before the mod. pedal & use it in conjuction with the distortion pedal or distorted amp. This will give a sound similar to Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner" & the middle solo on "Machine Gun". A phase shifter will get close, but won't have the "wobble" because of the Uni-Vibe's use of a light bulb & photocells. A phase shifter will be more linear instead of lop-sided like a uni-vibe. Choruses & flangers will get close, but have a more hi-tech sound because they use a slight delay on the modulation, producing what sounds like a more metallic sound to me. Good Luck, Steve B.

1/4/2000 1:59 PM

Steve B.

Place it BEFORE distortion or OD.....

Before we go any further, it's important to note that to achieve the sound you're after, you MUST put the modulation pedal(phaser, chorus, etc.) before the distortion in the signal chain. Whether you're using pedals for distortion or an amp's distortion doesn't matter, just as long as the mod. pedal is before it. Otherwise you end up with something like the Isley Bros. "Who's That Lady?" sound, which is okay, but definitely NOT thick like Trower. If you're using a fuzz pedal (Fuzz Face, Big Muff, etc.), you can put it before the mod. pedal & use it in conjuction with the distortion pedal or distorted amp. This will give a sound similar to Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner" & the middle solo on "Machine Gun".

A phase shifter will get close, but won't have the "wobble" because of the Uni-Vibe's use of a light bulb & photocells. A phase shifter will be more linear instead of lop-sided like a uni-vibe.

Choruses & flangers will get close, but have a more hi-tech sound because they use a slight delay on the modulation, producing what sounds like a more metallic sound to me.

Good Luck,
Steve B.

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