Leslie Simulators

IDgotI

Looking for a Leslie Sim. I'm trying to learn everything I can about the H & K Rotosphere, Line 6 Rotomachine, DLS RotoSIM and Boss RT-20. Any chance anyone out there has tried them all? Anyone compared a few? I'd be curious to know what you think.

gimmesometruth27

i have a rotosphere that i got for $100 at an estate sale. its beat to shit and painted red (the guy painted cars as well as played guitar) and it sounds pretty good to me. on a slow setting i get a nice warm chorusey sound and the faster setting it sounds cool as well. i really like the "brake" pedal on it, it makes for some cool in between fast and slow sounds. i don't use it enough to justify paying $350 for a new one though. also it takes up alot of room on my pedal board, which is a big con for me because space is always a limiting factor for me. my rotosphere is pretty finnicky though. sometimes it hisses and i have to tweak some knobs but i can get it how i want it to sound in less than 30 seconds at a soundcheck.

i once owned a microvibe i think it is called. i played with it for a few days and took it back when i happened upon the rotosphere because the rotosphere blew it out of the water.

the other guitar player in my band has the rotosim, which sounds great. i tried one out and found it more versatile than the rotosphere but i could not get the tone from it that i can get from the rotosphere. there are more features on the rotosim, which made it complicated for me. i just like to plug things in, twist a knob or two and be good to go.

i would say that in the end its player's preference. personally i think the rotosim sounds cleaner, but i like my tone with the rotosphere better.

i wonder why these things are so expensive? a new rotosim is just over $300 and a new rotosphere is more than that. imo, that is way too much to pay for a single effects pedal.

enharmonic

A Rotosphere for $100? That is tough to beat!

I have owned the Rotosphere, a Roger Mayer VooDoo Vibe, Lovetone Doppelganger, and the Boss RT20. The Boss is the one that stayed.

The overdrive on the boss unit is absolutely worthless, but for leslie simulation, the only thing that tops it is a real leslie...which I have used. The Boss is about 300 lbs lighter

IDgotI

Thanks to you both. That's awesome feedback. Thanks Again!

gimmesometruth27

enharmonic wrote:

A Rotosphere for $100? That is tough to beat!

yeah man, i saw it and was like "how much for this one?" and the lady was like "just give me $100 for it." and i was like "deal".

it was a total steal. it hadn't been used in a long time. i had it serviced and the tube and everything is fine.

i just wish the guy hadn't painted it. its like brick red. i had to get online and look up which knob did what, as he had painted over the name stamp for each knob and button. i tried to strip the paint but its not coming off. i guess i am the only person with a brick red rotosphere.

xtremehardy388

The rotovibe is also pretty good. It's not a H&K or a Line 6 or even the VooDoo Lab but it's very nice and doesn't take up too much space.

keeponrockin

xtremehardy388 wrote:

The rotovibe is also pretty good. It's not a H&K or a Line 6 or even the VooDoo Lab but it's very nice and doesn't take up too much space.

Not a straight Leslie sim, but a cool effect in it's own right!

pnjguy

mojovibe from sweetsounds are awesome, but very expensive, because they're handmade.

BinFrog

I have the Rotomachine and it's a decent effect. Takes some getting used to but once you figure out how to tweak the settings it's a pretty solid emulator.

Pacomc79

keep in mind "vibes" (like the univibe and it's derivitaves) are more chewy and phaser sounding than a true rotating speaker leslie sound. The doppler effect is what you get from a rotating speaker, Univibes are kind of like a 4 stage phaser that throbs. The Univibe was actually such a miserable failure at reproducing the sound of a leslie cabinet that it created a whole other cool new effect sound.

I haven't tried a DLS but they are popular. I agree with Enharmonic that the Boss is very accurate and sounds awesome except for the overdrive. You also get the cool graphic representation of the rotors which is nice. Option 5 also has one that works decently other than the OD. Other than the obvious use by the mr famouses of the world I think the Rotosphere probably owes some of it's success to the tube preamp that warms the thing up and gives it a more accurate version of the originals overdriven sound.

In that light, If possible also check out the EH Wiggler which should give you a decent overdriven sound out of it too. http://www.ehx.com

On the cheaper end of things a used Dunlop Rotovibe is a good one to check out. They aren't the cleanest of options but like most of the Dunlop stuff they are fantastic ideas somewhat murdered by accountants. None the less they work great for about 90% of us and it's a very useable effect. I know the thing says vibe and it's got chorus and vibrato and it's marketed with "Jimi Hendrix" sounds in there, but the Roto has a lot less throb than the Univibe.

If you're after a vibe sound as well I suggest checking out Retromans Uber Vibe also as it's a relatively unique approach compared to some of the other designs and many of the features like the side mounted rollable volume pot are well thought out. http://www.retroman-music.com/UBERVIBE%20PAGE.htm

IDgotI

Again, thanks one and all. This is great. It's also tipped me off to the existance of other options I wasn't aware of. At the very least it will give me some interesting new browsing to do while I'm stuck at work. Thanks again.

IDgotI

Just picked up a Boss RT-20 because I spotted one used for $100. Don't think I'll be spotting any $100 Rotospheres anytime soon. Anyway I figured for the money I can't go wrong, plus it got good marks here. I'll post my take on it in a few days after I've had a chance to... er... give it a whirl.

Thank you, thank you... I'm available for clubs and parties.

enharmonic

That is an awesome deal! Just stay away from the overdrive control, and you will get some great rotary sounds out of that box.

It is most difficult to get those sounds from a pedal because you're dealing with a complex speaker system that aside from producing the doppler effect, is also moving air by virture of its own rotating speakers. That sound can only truly be achieved by spinning speakers. At 100 bucks, the Univibe sim alone was worth the price of the pedal.

IDgotI

So I spent some time twidling with the RT-20 last night with mixed results. It's definately an odd bird. There is a lot of potential in there, but there are a lot of problems / quirks as well. First off it's not true bypass. Not by a long shot. Secondly it seems to 'freeze' the high frequencies. It's as though it were sampling them and averaging out what goes on in the high frequencies rather than reproducing them. In fact, since it's a digital modeller, this may be exactly what it's doing. The problem is it seems to do that even when the effect is disengaged.

It also appears to be really tempermental with regard to gain staging and head room. If anything that's encouraging because it suggests that with a lot more time spent learning this box, and how it reacts to being in different effect chains, there might be room to improve on the results I got.

It definately does a neat weepy crying Leslie sound... but it just seems to hammer the tone of instrument it's effecting.

I also looked closer at the Harmony Central reviews, and it looks like everyone who liked it was using it at line / "Keyboard" level and *NOT* at instument / Guitar level. The people who raved about it for guitar were all using it in their mic line feed and not in their pedal board.

I'll get around to trying that too. That could make it great for recording, but a pain in the arse for live. It would be a matter of feeding the guitar output into a protable stage mic pre, and then going from that out to the soundboard.

It would also mean hearing the leslie effect in monitors and mains, but not from the stage amp. Also a problem if using an inline looper which I do from time to time.

I came into work thinking I'd go for the DLS, but the only store in my area to carry DLS effects doesn't have one in stock. For the money I guess I can't have gone wrong, and it will probably be a useful tool for recording. But for the moment it seems as though the RT-20 is largely unusable as part of an extensive pedal chain. At least that's what I found. If anyone (Enharmonic?) has tips on how best to configure / use the pedal I'd be psyched to try them out.

enharmonic

Try it in your effects loop. That way, when it's not in use, it's out of your signal path

xtremehardy388

Is the rotovibe supposed to be in your signal chain or effects loop?

pnjguy

usually modulation effects, like a vibe, should go in the effects loop but its not a rule.

who's_pearljam?

This isn't too portable, but when youthinkyou'reold and I had our own studio building, we duct taped some speakers to the ceiling fan and used one of those rotating electrical junctions for the speaker wire. It actually worked quite well!
There was a bit of art in balancing that sucker, but it was fun and sounded pretty cool.

That might not me too practical in a club, though.

xtremehardy388

Wow, the rotovibe in the effects loop is a GREAT pahser but you can't get a rotating sound unless its in the direct signal-interesting. Mike's set up is nice-his is in he singal

Pearl Jam and toast

who's_pearljam? wrote:

This isn't too portable, but when youthinkyou'reold and I had our own studio building, we duct taped some speakers to the ceiling fan and used one of those rotating electrical junctions for the speaker wire. It actually worked quite well!
There was a bit of art in balancing that sucker, but it was fun and sounded pretty cool.

That might not me too practical in a club, though.

lmao.

IDgotI

who's_pearljam? wrote:

This isn't too portable, but when youthinkyou'reold and I had our own studio building, we duct taped some speakers to the ceiling fan and used one of those rotating electrical junctions for the speaker wire. It actually worked quite well!
There was a bit of art in balancing that sucker, but it was fun and sounded pretty cool.

That might not me too practical in a club, though.

There is such a fine line between madness and genius. This is definately one or the other. Well... maybe both.

Awesome!