What would you do with the spare Speaker assembly? gunna give it away. basically fist person with a decent reason (even just plugging it into their cat thats fine! ha) and can pick it up in kent can have it! EDIT *no one has said wether they can pick it up or not im getting a lot of comments from people who seem to live quite far away, like i said if you can pick it upand have a project you can have it.
I want to see what would happen if you used it as a speaker for a drum set, i imagine that the sound will get quite extraordinary if you either sync up with the rotation or really wacky if you can control the difference in phase - even just hearing it at random would be cool!
I would channel one side to the left with some baffling, and then do the same but to the right on the other side (like divide the spinning part in half) this way you REALLY get it in stereo. I would also try to make it variable speed. and fore two of them I would do the same thing to both of them and make them sync the position of their rotation but out of phase 180 degrees. This way it's the MOST stereo effect possible!!! (oh but I would HAVE to make sure the source is in stereo and has a very pronounced wideness to it - I'm a sucker for stereo and surround sound!!! lol)
I'm kind of amazed someone with your brand of electrical experimental perversion has never messed with a Leslie before! As a grubby kid a few years ago people were literally giving them away for free, old organs are a great introduction to tubes.
I think that way of changing is in part to ensure that they could quickly brake to the slower speed rather than have a motor "spin down" when the voltage drops. My favourite musical moments involving these things is usually when a song has built up and they are playing something with the faster speed, and then everything hits the peak as the speed drops and the notes sound like they are more spacious and "floating". I think, given the primitive motors etc. of the time that was the most reliable way to do it. I'd imagine a modern equivalent would probably use a single motor (maybe even a stepper motor given that the baffle seems to be quite light) and a speed controller instead.
Hey! Long time Leslie speaker fanatic and tech. I will tell you that you really should enclose the backside of the 12 inch speakers in their own speaker box enclosure. Doing so will help the Doppler effect be much more pronounced and sound even better. Organ companies typically just put some dampening on the backside when they were mounted inside an organ because the inside of the organ acted as a separate chamber or box for the backside of the driver. They would then put an opening on the side of the organ chassis that would let the sound escape from just the baffle side of the Leslie. Also, you will probably like the sound of them mounted horizontally like you did in the video verses vertically. Good luck. I’m exited for an update!
HILARIOUS. Getting Leslie "components" and having absolutely no clue of what they are all about or how they were used, ...at least that what is sounds like ....then plugging in the first time ...."OMG" .... Up till then, everything is "old and clunky". Well my friend .....you aren't even close to getting to any Quality "acoustical" point yet. No speaker cabinet. Some little speaker connected. Once you start getting close to a proper enclosure, Quality speaker, with reflex etc., THEN you will start having something acoustically close. Keep in mind, these "things" that are "old and clunky" ...are not only still around, all over the world, but when you buy a speaker system for your audio system at home .....you're buying the same "old, clunky" stuff. It hasn't changed. The rotating baffle is just for use on an instrument ....like an organ/keyboard. Pretty innovative .....eh? YUP .....invented in 1941. Welcome to the world!! .
Couldn't have said it any better. Thank God (as an organ and opera hater) that Leslie speakers were tried (and succeeded) on other instruments. TBH, guitars and synths sound even better with them.
It's amazing just how much "more" the effect is from the real thing. I'd heard loads of emulations and Leslies on records, but the first time I got to play a C3 through a 122, I had the exact same reaction you did at 6:40 or so.
There are a number of decent Leslie emulator devices on the market. Sadly, when people audition them in music stores, they tend to do so in mono, which misses the entire point. Many of these units *will* pan the effect out of two outputs, to mimic the rotation and swirl....but you have to plug it into two amps to get that.
@@Shiba643 Technically, probably. But the question is what the resulting mass would be. The styrofoam drums allow for the belt-drive mechanism to change speeds ("ramp up/down") at a certain rate. Not being involved in the 3D printing game, I can't speak to what the resulting mass of such a drum, using contemporary materials, might be.
Ya, my first encounter was at a Blues gig at a local pub. we're all familiar with the recordings, but it is just part of the sound. the ol hippie bloke I was drinking with had waffled some stuff about some speaker these guys had, but the word didnt mean much to me. anyway, a bit into the set the organist was really getting into it, I said something along the lines "that organ is insane, WTF!!" "yeah, thats the Leslie!". Im glad my first interaction with one was in the proper setting, backroom pub gig, cheap beer, kinda grimy, old hat muso's who just loved to play for people who were feeling their vibe. was also pretty jazzy, there wernt songs or a set they were playing, they just kinda jammed for 2 hours, occasionally syncing up for a swell or drop, but they were just makin music together, probably have been for 30 years. ive seen stadium shows, festivals, raves, bush doofs, orchestras. I think that was one of my favorite gigs.
Fun fact: it is impossible to accurately record that sound. Even stereo mics will produce a signal that then gets played back on some kind of system with two stationary sound sources. There is nothing like being in the room with a leslie with that 3 dimensional sound swirling all around you, it's an amazing thing to experience and I fully understand your joy at hearing it for the first time. Bliss.
HILARIOUS. Getting Leslie "components" and having absolutely no clue of what they are all about or how they were used, ...at least that what is sounds like ....then plugging in the first time ...."OMG" .... Up till then, everything is "old and clunky". Well my friend .....you aren't even close to getting to any Quality "acoustical" point yet. No speaker cabinet. Some little speaker connected. Once you start getting close to a proper enclosure, Quality speaker, with reflex etc., THEN you will start having something acoustically close. Keep in mind, these "things" that are "old and clunky" ...are not only still around, all over the world, but when you buy a speaker system for your audio system at home .....you're buying the same "old, clunky" stuff. It hasn't changed. The rotating baffle is just for use on an instrument ....like an organ/keyboard. Pretty innovative .....eh? YUP .....invented in 1941. Welcome to the world!! .
How absolutely amazing it is, that those rotating assemblies are completely silent. They are like 50-60 years old, heavily used, and still no noise. Mind blown. When you have two of them per channel, you can spin other one slow, and other one fast. Totally interdimentional sound. I just might plug on my headphones to hear that, if you are able to capture it.
You and 29 people didn't use headphones? Even if you watch on a phone and turn it up, the noise is quite audible. It's obviously undectable by humans once the music is playing, but it is far from "silent", you probably have devices in your house with fans that are quieter.
Sewing machine pedals make an excellent speed control for these. Some are nice and small too and would fit quite nicely on a guitar pedal board. Course, they're spring loaded and you have to keep your foot on them but you get more variation than just fast/slow.
@@electroman1996 certainly he is very highly rated by me haha (: but he is not talked about here in America except old stoner musician circles. But his music is some of my absolute favorite!
You know sometimes they say "New Trends are well-forgotten Old-Timers". They initially doesn't look that remarkable and give a impression of old technology past its time - but BOY they sound sweet with synth sound! Impressive! Thank you for sharing it with us!
I made my first Vibratone cab with one of those beige "cheesewheel" rotors in 1979. Important to note that true Leslies will have separate horn and woofer rotors. The Vibratone has the single speaker/rotor. I had to sell the first one due to a move across the continent, but built a second about 8 years ago. They sound *wonderful* . A friend who makes a very well-received clone of the old Boss CE-1 came over to the house once, and I asked him if he had ever tried a rotating speaker. When he said no, I insisted he try mine. He *thought* he knew what a nice chorus sounded like, but I'm still scraping bits of his jaw off the floor. The spatial swirl is a fundamental part of the experience. There is a generation that thought home console organs were cool. They are now much older and moving to retirement homes, and are clearing the contents of their home. The second-hand sites will have one of these beasts for cheap or "free to a good home - must pick up" nearly every day. Many, though not all, have a rotating speaker inside. Caveats. The speaker is usually 8" and rated around 20W power handling. You will need to not only build a suitable cab, but also provide your own speed switching. It will also require a power amplifier. They *can* be made to spin horizontally, but generally behave more reliably spinning vertically.
I’ve been obsessed with Leslie speakers for years. Pink Floyd fed the signal from a piano through one for their track “Echoes”. It sounds just like a sonar ping. Something to try - get two of them set up and mic them up with an X-Y pair and then play the megadrone through them. It will sound HUGE.
Leslies are amazing. See if you can find one with the spinning horns up the top as well as a drum at the bottom, that only makes them better with the frequency crossover.
These look like they would fit into the freestanding Leslie speaker cabinets, with its own amp, that would plug into a Hammond organ. I have a few of these and two Hammonds, with mechanical spring reverbs, vacuum tube amplification and the mechanical tone wheels! They can conjure up some pretty interesting sound combinations. If you want to hear that mechanical rotation effect on sound in a song, Born to be Wild has a very easily identifiable spin up, speed and spin down of these babies. Give it a go!
What really would be awesome, if the speed of the Rotary can be controlled continously so that it can be "synced" to a clock, having it in time to a sequence played ;-)
Maybe with an arduino, some sort of PID controller or some kind of PLL, connected to a phase control with a triac ... the most tricky part will be soft tuning of the parameters
Wow! This isn't what I expected a Leslie to look like. When I was a kid, someone described a Leslie to me as a rotating speaker. I imagined it was like a bookshelf speaker on a turntable spinning around, and I was confused as to how the wires didn't get tangled up. This makes more sense. Thanks for clearing that up. A good day!
Neat - I made a custom cabinet with one of those and used to use it live - full range distortion into a single woofer rotor is how you get that steppenwolf “born to be wild” etc sound - no upper rotor.
Have you seen the ones in the Yamaha Electones where there's literally a speaker being swung around on a counterbalanced arm? They're vaguely terrifying.
same style with some wurlitzers I have one I scavenged from a road-side abandoned organ (sitting with a pile of other untouched future project parts.) I THINK I'll be able to rig it with a sewing machine pedal to vary the speed and use it as a sort-of guitar pedal.
@@euvo_sound Not heard of them either, my mum had a Yamaha Electone back in the 90's, it had a Leslie speaker function, but it was a synthesised effect produced electronically.
Most organ companies used spinning speakers, like Wurlitzer, Baldin, Conn, Allen, etc, when they started making electronic organs, to simulate the pneumatic tremulants on the pipe organs. Hammond went the different route, and used Leslie spinning cones. They were cheaper to make and sounded just as good. Eventually, most of the other companies switched to just licensing Leslies.
Are most people that bad at wiring plugs? It's not rocket science, I've known how since I was quite a young kid and never blew up the house or incurred an injury requiring attention while doing so.
@@davidknoll ...well most are scared to get shocked, even if they know what they are doing. I may have worked in electronics for a small bit but anything above 12V im terrified of sparky incidents happening. Still traumatized when i accidentally touched the ends of a 320V (charged no less) capacitor, even if that wasn't a wire.
@@davidknoll Agreed -- we were taught to rewire table lamps in the 7th grade during Home Economics -- underwriter's knot included. Perhaps folks can better afford to be reckless in the US, given our anemic 120V mains voltage -- I definitely invest extra precaution, when working with 240V circuits. The biggest caveat -- and one that I don't really recall from 7th grade -- relates to polarized plugs/outlets and inadvertently swapping the hot & neutral wires, creating huge hidden electrocution risks. With that in mind, I will recommend that anyone tackling AC wiring around the house first take some time to learn about residential wiring, as some of the concepts involved may seem counterintuitive, and take a little time to wrap one's head around. (I'm sure you know all this, David -- just wanted to include this info, for the sake of anyone emboldened by our remarks.)
yup many people can't wire plugs up...even if it's telling you inside wat gore's where..I always remember it as blue.. remember the l as left brown goes to the right remember the r an ertht to top cos nothing else left
I have an unpainted one that I pulled from a Wurlizter combo organ. I have it wired with a 1/4" input, built an open top wood cabinet and use a light dimmer for speed control. The motor already had an AC cord as part of the original organ. It's a fantastic choice in the studio. I use it with a variety of amps. Great video. Thanks for posting.
I remember seeing a traveling rock band back in the early '70s with a Hammond organ with Leslie speakers. They randomly set up in a park shelter house to play for whoever would watch. They had an amazing setup. It was a great show, despite not many people stopping to listen. I remember them spending a lot of time getting the speed of the Leslies right before playing.
Four Leslies, one in each corner of the room, up by the ceiling. And don't tell anyone they're there until they all kick on at once. Rotating surround sound surprise! A friend of mine pulled one of these out of a church organ a while back and we messed around with it. My friend's a prog rock nut so of course he was geeking out on its musical potential. I was geeking out on the speed control. It had one motor for high speed, one for low, with the high speed permanently engaged through a belt and low jumping in like the bendix on a car starter. It was just a shaded pole motor with a spring in it, so when the field energized, the rotor sucked in and pushed the shaft into engagement with the drive wheel. I thought that was the coolest thing.
I remember seeing a speaker system similar to this YEARS ago. The whole cabinet was massive, and there were 3 horn speakers on a 4 foot diameter disk. The entire disk would spin, speakers and all. There was a brush system similar to a motor to transfer the power from the cabinet to the spinning disk, and a 2 speed motor to drive it.
Great stuff! I've never heard a Leslie Speaker system actually working. The early 'tremolo' effect. Thanks for posting this. I'd almost forgotten the Leslie Speaker system. cheers!
My mom worked at the CBS plant in Pasadena for years till they shut it down. She brought home with her everything they were throwing out. I mean a pickup truck bed full of horns, speakers, alot of wood side panels, and organizer drawers full of electronics components obviously from the eng. dept. I was so stoked! I would cp,e to cherish those drawers. I was attending college at the time for my BSEE
That brings back memories. My first job was repairing Gulbransen transistorized organs when I was fourteen back in 1965. My brother had to drive me around on service calls. I spent more time in bars at that age than I ever did when it was legal for me to do so. You really want the rotating tweeters.
WOW WHAT A GREAT HAUL. Never realised the drums were made out of polystyrene! I would actually love one of these to put in a guitar amp. I attempted to bodge a diy Leslie with a tiny brushed motor from a tape deck a few years back - I guess you need a seriously large one like yours to sound right!
I'd LOVE to have a Leslie like that. Pipe synths, voice, whatever through it and stereo mic it! Unfortunately, the drive from Ohio, USA to the UK is a little rough.
Craigslist has many of a Midwest town's freebees and cheap organs all the time. You wouldn't want a 220volt model anyway. Look for a keyboard repair and new dealer in your area. I am in the business and have a few salted away. Some go to the dump.
Welcome to the joy of rotary speakers! I played Hammond a lot in bands in the 1990s, and I had a Sharma Jubilee 7000 twin cab rotary amp - it was 400W and it was HEAVY. The bass cab had a similar baffle to these, but it was wood. The treble cab had two horns that span around, also made of wood I think. It was all I could do to lift the thing in and out of my van, and I ended up with back trouble in the end. The legendary Graham Bond used to have FOUR leslie cabinets, one on each corner of the stage. I can't even imagine the INSANE sound that made. :)
I owned one of these! I think it was a Leslie model 950 and it was huge! It came in a a huge cabinet with all four rotors stacked and weighed a lot. I used it for about a week and decided to cut it in half, with a cabinet of 2 rotors on each side of the stage. It could get incredibly loud and the rotors had psychedelic patterns on the faces. It wasn't exactly a match for the "Leslie" sound but it was great for getting a powerful organ sound.
I just pulled one from an organ two weeks ago! No one around me seems to care or even really know what they are, so it's cool to see someone else with an interest!
Myself.Just never visualized how.Mostly a baffle or horn rotating around the speaker itself , but yeah different designs do spin.How I have no concept.
I have been roadie on a tour using an ancient leslie box with a hammond b3 organ... learned a lot from the dual mic setup on that beast, two mics (i think they were small audix mics), hard panned left and right really filled the room... awesome! Love your channel!
My middle name is Leslie - my Dad gave that to me because of these things. As a kid he was a church organist - starting playing a huge pipe organ at 8 back in the 50s, and went onto play in dance bands with a hammond organ with one of these attached for years.
The fast speed is the same as a human made vibrato, about 7Hz. Faster and it's a razz, slower and it's drunken warbling. The slow speed is to not change the sound but disperse the sound around like a pipe organ. Switching from slow to fast is like adding vibrato to what's coming out weather voice or instrument.
Leslie speakers were used by the group "The Brooklyn Bridge" in the late '60's early '70's. Carolyn Wood was the fantastic keyboardist who made tremendous use of the Leslie in songs such as "The worst that could ever happen". 2 speeds - while the organ was playing the melody of a song it would use the slower speed to get that slow "in & out" sound going, but come crecendos or solos the higher speed would be used the achieve that "surrround echo" sound.
Pads sounds beautiful through a Leslie. Just a little love and maintenance every now and then and you’re good. Only real problem I ever had was with cold solder joints in them.
I used 2 of these to make a very nice Leslie speaker. I placed them sort of "face to face" so one would spin on direction and the second one spun the opposite direction. Sounded really good with an old Farfisa organ.
Here from a short video.. Wow I Love Analog. Digital is alien to me. Analog is organic and of this world. Great stuff I want to build one. The techno effect is amazing 👏
Found one of those after I got my grandfather's Conn organ. He passed in 2009, but I remember the organ was already somewhat old back in the 80s when I first saw it. Really cool sound
You just did Emerson Lake and Palmer proud.. "Welcome my friends to the show that never ends, so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside!" Leslie 101 Cheers & Merry Christmas!
You can try to use a VFD to do speed control. Or even perhaps use the inertia of the speaker to control the speed using a Solid State Relay and a very low frequency pwm. Like 1-0.1Hz frequency pwm.
I have a couple of those out of a mid 80's Hammond Model 142. I use a dimmer switch to speed and slow down the turning speaker. PRO TIP: Put signal through spring reverb then into the Leslie speaker.
That is so cool !!! I bought a storage locker in an auction and it had SIX full Leslie Speakers in it. All original, made in USA with serial numbers and all. NOTHING sounds cooler !!!
Man I am so thankful that you put out videos of stuff I have never heard of before! How awesome these things are! Always fun to watch your stuff. Keep it up
Awesome I finally know now what they r called.... Love your videos and the work behind it.... Have one of em in my organ and I celebrate the sound of it every time.... You just made me think I should build a monster version of it for my backyard...
Dismantled an old organ and it had a unit just like the one you are trying to give away inside of it. I pulled it and used part of the old organ to build a box for the Leslie and then modded the speed control with a rheostat to run my Guitar & Bass thru. It's such a psychodelic sound, and it looks like the old organ's "little brother". Can't wait to see your MegaMachine all done up! BTW-all four Leslie units on LOW speed together is gonna sound so very KRAZEE KOOL playing games thru! I'm gonna bet it like that!
Not gonna lie, this is pretty kool! I know a lot of the older vintage models these were made out of wood so they probably swapped them out (different motors/Drive belts etc...). there's a definite difference in sound when the diffuser is wood.
If anyone in the history of the world was ever a prime candidate for spontaneous human combustion it is you sir. And I truly mean that as a compliment. You don't ignore the alarms and we all are beneficiaries of that
You’d never guess these things are made of polystyrene, they look so heavy. The sound reminds me of a xylophone. I had drum/percussion lessons when I was a teenager at a local council music school. The room not only had a few drumkits but also tuned percussion like a xylophone. It’s a very cool instrument with a very round, sort of floating sound to it. Xylophones have the same sort of principle as a lesly speaker, except that every tube has a rotating / spinning disc in it which is controlled by a small motor. When it is engaged, you get this floating sound. Your Lesly’s remind me of this effect.
The difference between hearing a recording of a Leslie speaker and hearing music through a Leslie speaker in person in an auditorium is like the difference between seeing a photo of Yosemite Valley and actually being in Yosemite Valley. A TH-cam video can’t do it justice.
I built a small portable rotating speaker in college and then was talked out of it by an Accourdan player. Later I bought a big Leslie cabinet and ended up giving it to a church because my wife convinced me we didn't have the room. Now in my retired 60s, I want one again, I have studio space and the time but not the cash. I would drive over to Kent to pick one up but the petrol cost to drive across the pond from Texas is a bit high. Thanks for the offer.
The one with the orange foam is an original Leslie unit, with two motors on top of each other, the four ones with the black foam are from another manufacturer. I used to have one with the same motor mechanism with the large and small wheel, but with an actual rotating speaker in a pipe instead of the foam drum. The classic Leslie boxes (122, 147 etc.) actually have 2 rotors: a horn rotating above a compression driver for the trebles (800 Hz up to about 6 kHz - higher did the Hammond organ not go) and this kind of drum for the lower frequencies, originally out of wood, later foam like these. There are also some models from the 70s that have an oval speaker inside a (very heavy) drum for the frequency range of 200-800 Hz, they have a stationary woofer. Both setups create the special effect of the 2 rotors not being synchronous during acceleration and braking.
Many moons ago I was doing lighting art a local dance hall. One night, we had the band The Flies. Rather than power all their gear from the stage sockets, they ran an extension cable up onto the lighting gallery for their Leslie speaker. Part way through their set I had to switch on an amp for a DJ session. I tripped on their cable and pulled it from the socket. Their Leslie speaker wound down, with the amps still running, great effect, but I nearly lost my job!
I absolutely loved this sound on an electronic organ, wasn't long before it was replaced with electronics but they make such a difference to the sound especially with a bit of dope.
A mate of mine here in the States has taken one of those and converted it to have a 12v DC motor on it and an independent motor controller to vary the speed on it. Sounds really cool when you ramp it at different speeds. Also a nod to seeing BigClive here commenting also.
The small spindle is an idler speed so that when the large spindle is activated, there is no delay in engaging the effect. I watched the Leslie on Pink Floyd's, Rick Wright's organ operate this way in Sydney in 1971. He also had the horn type. I watched them idling and speeding up for operation.
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What would you do with the spare Speaker assembly? gunna give it away. basically fist person with a decent reason (even just plugging it into their cat thats fine! ha) and can pick it up in kent can have it! EDIT *no one has said wether they can pick it up or not im getting a lot of comments from people who seem to live quite far away, like i said if you can pick it upand have a project you can have it.
I kinda wanna make a hand powered Leslie with sewing machine foot crank tech but I’m not sure how to do it yet
You’re living the dream man. Wow!
Build a frickn massive MIDI Church Organ.
Yes, I want that one you don’t want. I can make something from it!
I want to see what would happen if you used it as a speaker for a drum set, i imagine that the sound will get quite extraordinary if you either sync up with the rotation or really wacky if you can control the difference in phase - even just hearing it at random would be cool!
Put some drums through it!!!
I would channel one side to the left with some baffling, and then do the same but to the right on the other side (like divide the spinning part in half) this way you REALLY get it in stereo. I would also try to make it variable speed. and fore two of them I would do the same thing to both of them and make them sync the position of their rotation but out of phase 180 degrees. This way it's the MOST stereo effect possible!!! (oh but I would HAVE to make sure the source is in stereo and has a very pronounced wideness to it - I'm a sucker for stereo and surround sound!!! lol)
I wasn't expecting the diverter to be made of polystyrene. The speed change is also really unusual.
I'm kind of amazed someone with your brand of electrical experimental perversion has never messed with a Leslie before! As a grubby kid a few years ago people were literally giving them away for free, old organs are a great introduction to tubes.
I think that way of changing is in part to ensure that they could quickly brake to the slower speed rather than have a motor "spin down" when the voltage drops. My favourite musical moments involving these things is usually when a song has built up and they are playing something with the faster speed, and then everything hits the peak as the speed drops and the notes sound like they are more spacious and "floating". I think, given the primitive motors etc. of the time that was the most reliable way to do it. I'd imagine a modern equivalent would probably use a single motor (maybe even a stepper motor given that the baffle seems to be quite light) and a speed controller instead.
its all pretty funky! time to make one out of fridge packing polystyrene.
Still rather surprising that they used two entire motors instead of one motor driving two different sized wheels.
A regular gear shift would not work smooth like this system. It would crank like the gears in a bike
Hey! Long time Leslie speaker fanatic and tech. I will tell you that you really should enclose the backside of the 12 inch speakers in their own speaker box enclosure. Doing so will help the Doppler effect be much more pronounced and sound even better.
Organ companies typically just put some dampening on the backside when they were mounted inside an organ because the inside of the organ acted as a separate chamber or box for the backside of the driver. They would then put an opening on the side of the organ chassis that would let the sound escape from just the baffle side of the Leslie.
Also, you will probably like the sound of them mounted horizontally like you did in the video verses vertically. Good luck. I’m exited for an update!
YES! and ideally in a room, that has some nice natural reverb to it
HILARIOUS. Getting Leslie "components" and having absolutely no clue of what they are all about or how they were used, ...at least that what is sounds like ....then plugging in the first time ...."OMG" ....
Up till then, everything is "old and clunky".
Well my friend .....you aren't even close to getting to any Quality "acoustical" point yet. No speaker cabinet. Some little speaker connected. Once you start getting close to a proper enclosure, Quality speaker, with reflex etc., THEN you will start having something acoustically close. Keep in mind, these "things" that are "old and clunky" ...are not only still around, all over the world, but when you buy a speaker system for your audio system at home .....you're buying the same "old, clunky" stuff. It hasn't changed. The rotating baffle is just for use on an instrument ....like an organ/keyboard. Pretty innovative .....eh? YUP .....invented in 1941.
Welcome to the world!!
.
Oh - put a piece of reflective tape on the rotor, use an IR led / detector and get a gate output in sync with the rotation...!!
And/or use it as feedback to modulate pulse width of the supply (maybe using a solid state relay) so the speed is effectively controllable.
Oh yes man!
and use it to sync all four leslies up so they are in phase
@@guffaw1711 The PLL Leslie Bank?
YEAH - AWESOME advice !!
leslie speakers on organs: "jolly old timey music"
leslie speakers on electronic synths: "this is the future"
Maybe check out the keyboard player Corey Henry who does both.
Couldn't have said it any better. Thank God (as an organ and opera hater) that Leslie speakers were tried (and succeeded) on other instruments. TBH, guitars and synths sound even better with them.
what's wrong with organs and operas?@@mrnasty02106
It's amazing just how much "more" the effect is from the real thing. I'd heard loads of emulations and Leslies on records, but the first time I got to play a C3 through a 122, I had the exact same reaction you did at 6:40 or so.
actual sound being thrown around a room is so much different from a static sound being a bit wobbly. real leslies are such cool things
There are a number of decent Leslie emulator devices on the market. Sadly, when people audition them in music stores, they tend to do so in mono, which misses the entire point. Many of these units *will* pan the effect out of two outputs, to mimic the rotation and swirl....but you have to plug it into two amps to get that.
could the drums be scanned and 3d printed?
@@Shiba643 Technically, probably. But the question is what the resulting mass would be. The styrofoam drums allow for the belt-drive mechanism to change speeds ("ramp up/down") at a certain rate. Not being involved in the 3D printing game, I can't speak to what the resulting mass of such a drum, using contemporary materials, might be.
Ya, my first encounter was at a Blues gig at a local pub. we're all familiar with the recordings, but it is just part of the sound. the ol hippie bloke I was drinking with had waffled some stuff about some speaker these guys had, but the word didnt mean much to me. anyway, a bit into the set the organist was really getting into it, I said something along the lines "that organ is insane, WTF!!" "yeah, thats the Leslie!".
Im glad my first interaction with one was in the proper setting, backroom pub gig, cheap beer, kinda grimy, old hat muso's who just loved to play for people who were feeling their vibe. was also pretty jazzy, there wernt songs or a set they were playing, they just kinda jammed for 2 hours, occasionally syncing up for a swell or drop, but they were just makin music together, probably have been for 30 years. ive seen stadium shows, festivals, raves, bush doofs, orchestras. I think that was one of my favorite gigs.
Fun fact: it is impossible to accurately record that sound. Even stereo mics will produce a signal that then gets played back on some kind of system with two stationary sound sources. There is nothing like being in the room with a leslie with that 3 dimensional sound swirling all around you, it's an amazing thing to experience and I fully understand your joy at hearing it for the first time. Bliss.
big fan (;
HILARIOUS. Getting Leslie "components" and having absolutely no clue of what they are all about or how they were used, ...at least that what is sounds like ....then plugging in the first time ...."OMG" ....
Up till then, everything is "old and clunky".
Well my friend .....you aren't even close to getting to any Quality "acoustical" point yet. No speaker cabinet. Some little speaker connected. Once you start getting close to a proper enclosure, Quality speaker, with reflex etc., THEN you will start having something acoustically close. Keep in mind, these "things" that are "old and clunky" ...are not only still around, all over the world, but when you buy a speaker system for your audio system at home .....you're buying the same "old, clunky" stuff. It hasn't changed. The rotating baffle is just for use on an instrument ....like an organ/keyboard. Pretty innovative .....eh? YUP .....invented in 1941.
Welcome to the world!!
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How absolutely amazing it is, that those rotating assemblies are completely silent. They are like 50-60 years old, heavily used, and still no noise. Mind blown. When you have two of them per channel, you can spin other one slow, and other one fast. Totally interdimentional sound. I just might plug on my headphones to hear that, if you are able to capture it.
They are probably silent because there is little bearing load at the spindle due to the light weight of the polystyrene.
You and 29 people didn't use headphones? Even if you watch on a phone and turn it up, the noise is quite audible. It's obviously undectable by humans once the music is playing, but it is far from "silent", you probably have devices in your house with fans that are quieter.
they make noise , but at first you do not notice , like a TL84 preamp
Sewing machine pedals make an excellent speed control for these. Some are nice and small too and would fit quite nicely on a guitar pedal board. Course, they're spring loaded and you have to keep your foot on them but you get more variation than just fast/slow.
When your leslie has a gas pedal
That was a proper "Oh my God!"
Don't get many of those to the pound these days.
this is the epitome of the phrase "look mum no computer" because this effect takes basically no effort to make in a DAW but is super cool to do IRL
"DAW" ..."IRL". Trying to impress someone?😂😂😎😎😃😃🤣🤣😁😁
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@@taxicamel ahahahaha
(i don't know if you were unsure but it means digital audio workstation and in real life respectively)
I got one of those speakers and set it up to play guitar through. FUN!
I grew up with an organ in the house. Mum played, I played, dad listened. The leslie speaker is no mystery to me.
Today I learned that Sam has a wonderful falsetto.
He sucks at singing tbh but he's super creative 😆
@@MichelLinschoten Depends on who you compare him to. I wish I could hit those high notes :/
@@MichelLinschoten that might be your opinion :) I really like his music and I think he‘s got a great and expressive voice
is this relatively an arpeggio sound 🤔? and possibly the first creation of auto tune 🤘😜
He is a polymath of music!
That sound was EXACTLY what I was imagining when I suggested it! I knew square waves would sound amazing with a Leslie going!
I absolutely love it when Steve hillage would put his guitar through a Leslie.
Underrated guitarist! I love his music :)
@@electroman1996 certainly he is very highly rated by me haha (: but he is not talked about here in America except old stoner musician circles. But his music is some of my absolute favorite!
@@garyiow8482 me too haha (: his tone he would get out of his guitar in the 70s is absolutely phenomenal.
A french leslie tho :) ... Totally love him too, also his tech/trance later stuff is very interesting.
You know sometimes they say "New Trends are well-forgotten Old-Timers".
They initially doesn't look that remarkable and give a impression of old technology past its time - but BOY they sound sweet with synth sound! Impressive! Thank you for sharing it with us!
I made my first Vibratone cab with one of those beige "cheesewheel" rotors in 1979. Important to note that true Leslies will have separate horn and woofer rotors. The Vibratone has the single speaker/rotor. I had to sell the first one due to a move across the continent, but built a second about 8 years ago. They sound *wonderful* . A friend who makes a very well-received clone of the old Boss CE-1 came over to the house once, and I asked him if he had ever tried a rotating speaker. When he said no, I insisted he try mine. He *thought* he knew what a nice chorus sounded like, but I'm still scraping bits of his jaw off the floor. The spatial swirl is a fundamental part of the experience.
There is a generation that thought home console organs were cool. They are now much older and moving to retirement homes, and are clearing the contents of their home. The second-hand sites will have one of these beasts for cheap or "free to a good home - must pick up" nearly every day. Many, though not all, have a rotating speaker inside.
Caveats. The speaker is usually 8" and rated around 20W power handling. You will need to not only build a suitable cab, but also provide your own speed switching. It will also require a power amplifier. They *can* be made to spin horizontally, but generally behave more reliably spinning vertically.
I’ve been obsessed with Leslie speakers for years. Pink Floyd fed the signal from a piano through one for their track “Echoes”. It sounds just like a sonar ping.
Something to try - get two of them set up and mic them up with an X-Y pair and then play the megadrone through them. It will sound HUGE.
Leslies are amazing. See if you can find one with the spinning horns up the top as well as a drum at the bottom, that only makes them better with the frequency crossover.
For sure nothing like 2 x 3 foot long midrange horns spinning around above your head!
The horn type is what Rick Wright had on his Leslie when Pink Floyd played Sydney in 1971... I watched the horns idling and speeding up for operation.
These look like they would fit into the freestanding Leslie speaker cabinets, with its own amp, that would plug into a Hammond organ.
I have a few of these and two Hammonds, with mechanical spring reverbs, vacuum tube amplification and the mechanical tone wheels! They can conjure up some pretty interesting sound combinations.
If you want to hear that mechanical rotation effect on sound in a song, Born to be Wild has a very easily identifiable spin up, speed and spin down of these babies. Give it a go!
What really would be awesome, if the speed of the Rotary can be controlled continously so that it can be "synced" to a clock, having it in time to a sequence played ;-)
Yes this exactly!!
You would need to account for spinning up and slowing down but it could work
can't you simply plug it to a dimmer? (dmx or otherwise)
Yes tell him this
Maybe with an arduino, some sort of PID controller or some kind of PLL, connected to a phase control with a triac ... the most tricky part will be soft tuning of the parameters
Wow! This isn't what I expected a Leslie to look like. When I was a kid, someone described a Leslie to me as a rotating speaker. I imagined it was like a bookshelf speaker on a turntable spinning around, and I was confused as to how the wires didn't get tangled up. This makes more sense.
Thanks for clearing that up. A good day!
Neat - I made a custom cabinet with one of those and used to use it live - full range distortion into a single woofer rotor is how you get that steppenwolf “born to be wild” etc sound - no upper rotor.
Have you seen the ones in the Yamaha Electones where there's literally a speaker being swung around on a counterbalanced arm? They're vaguely terrifying.
same style with some wurlitzers I have one I scavenged from a road-side abandoned organ (sitting with a pile of other untouched future project parts.) I THINK I'll be able to rig it with a sewing machine pedal to vary the speed and use it as a sort-of guitar pedal.
Can you send me a video of it? i cant find despite HOURS of searching.
@@euvo_sound Not heard of them either, my mum had a Yamaha Electone back in the 90's, it had a Leslie speaker function, but it was a synthesised effect produced electronically.
@@euvo_sound I think it's that: th-cam.com/video/etFMv_rRCWk/w-d-xo.html
Most organ companies used spinning speakers, like Wurlitzer, Baldin, Conn, Allen, etc, when they started making electronic organs, to simulate the pneumatic tremulants on the pipe organs. Hammond went the different route, and used Leslie spinning cones. They were cheaper to make and sounded just as good. Eventually, most of the other companies switched to just licensing Leslies.
Sam: Don't wire plugs without supervision
Me in my late 20's: Yeah that's sound advice, someone should witness the light show when I mess it up.
Are most people that bad at wiring plugs? It's not rocket science, I've known how since I was quite a young kid and never blew up the house or incurred an injury requiring attention while doing so.
@@davidknoll ...well most are scared to get shocked, even if they know what they are doing. I may have worked in electronics for a small bit but anything above 12V im terrified of sparky incidents happening. Still traumatized when i accidentally touched the ends of a 320V (charged no less) capacitor, even if that wasn't a wire.
@@davidknoll Agreed -- we were taught to rewire table lamps in the 7th grade during Home Economics -- underwriter's knot included. Perhaps folks can better afford to be reckless in the US, given our anemic 120V mains voltage -- I definitely invest extra precaution, when working with 240V circuits.
The biggest caveat -- and one that I don't really recall from 7th grade -- relates to polarized plugs/outlets and inadvertently swapping the hot & neutral wires, creating huge hidden electrocution risks. With that in mind, I will recommend that anyone tackling AC wiring around the house first take some time to learn about residential wiring, as some of the concepts involved may seem counterintuitive, and take a little time to wrap one's head around.
(I'm sure you know all this, David -- just wanted to include this info, for the sake of anyone emboldened by our remarks.)
Poor isolation decisions are what get u. Needless to say I take those seriously now lol.
yup many people can't wire plugs up...even if it's telling you inside wat gore's where..I always remember it as blue.. remember the l as left brown goes to the right remember the r an ertht to top cos nothing else left
I have an unpainted one that I pulled from a Wurlizter combo organ. I have it wired with a 1/4" input, built an open top wood cabinet and use a light dimmer for speed control. The motor already had an AC cord as part of the original organ. It's a fantastic choice in the studio. I use it with a variety of amps. Great video. Thanks for posting.
6:39
"OHH MYY GOOOOD!!"
I remember seeing a traveling rock band back in the early '70s with a Hammond organ with Leslie speakers. They randomly set up in a park shelter house to play for whoever would watch. They had an amazing setup. It was a great show, despite not many people stopping to listen. I remember them spending a lot of time getting the speed of the Leslies right before playing.
You old Genius. You Put (or better "pulled") me into the world of synth and music.
Cant thank you enough
Oh, and for the slightest Chance someone might ever read my comment - i am the old one between us.
But still - you are the Genius.
Four Leslies, one in each corner of the room, up by the ceiling. And don't tell anyone they're there until they all kick on at once. Rotating surround sound surprise!
A friend of mine pulled one of these out of a church organ a while back and we messed around with it. My friend's a prog rock nut so of course he was geeking out on its musical potential. I was geeking out on the speed control. It had one motor for high speed, one for low, with the high speed permanently engaged through a belt and low jumping in like the bendix on a car starter. It was just a shaded pole motor with a spring in it, so when the field energized, the rotor sucked in and pushed the shaft into engagement with the drive wheel. I thought that was the coolest thing.
Hi Sam some time ago we replaced the ac motors with dc motors to a foot speed control amazing on a lead gut
I remember seeing a speaker system similar to this YEARS ago. The whole cabinet was massive, and there were 3 horn speakers on a 4 foot diameter disk. The entire disk would spin, speakers and all. There was a brush system similar to a motor to transfer the power from the cabinet to the spinning disk, and a 2 speed motor to drive it.
It's always an interesting surprise to see what you've come up with. Here's to many many years of more cool fun discoveries!
Great stuff! I've never heard a Leslie Speaker system actually working. The early 'tremolo' effect. Thanks for posting this. I'd almost forgotten the Leslie Speaker system. cheers!
Gosh, that flex. I've been looking for a damn Leslie speaker in Canada and they're impossible to find.
:O. time to hunt for one of the organs!!!
Keep your eyes peeled on your local Kijiji. I see one nearly every day.
Silly idea, but can't you get something like this 3d printed.
@@sonixthatsme Given that these are polystyrene, it's probably not too silly an idea...
@@MichaelObed You don't need a lot of infill so it can be scaled and printed pretty light I think. Maybe with a brushless motor, direct drive.
My mom worked at the CBS plant in Pasadena for years till they shut it down. She brought home with her everything they were throwing out. I mean a pickup truck bed full of horns, speakers, alot of wood side panels, and organizer drawers full of electronics components obviously from the eng. dept.
I was so stoked! I would cp,e to cherish those drawers. I was attending college at the time for my BSEE
That's awesome! You should try to control it with a VFD or a BLDC motor and ESC, you could have a dial to fully control the speed.
cheap vfd one phase with 0-10v control would probably work well. Could be fed a slow sine wave
I always wondered what a synth would sound like through a Leslie. Moog was a good choice to use too!!! Thanx 4 sharing dude. 😎👍
That brings back memories. My first job was repairing Gulbransen transistorized organs when I was fourteen back in 1965. My brother had to drive me around on service calls. I spent more time in bars at that age than I ever did when it was legal for me to do so. You really want the rotating tweeters.
Those are very interesting, I gotta get one for my synthesizer, or use it with my Commodore 64...
I love how excited you get over the old school tech and how you mash modern day tech together with the old school.
I'd use it to set up to my electric drum kit, I'd love to hear what it sounds like when you shred on a kit at full speed!
WOW WHAT A GREAT HAUL. Never realised the drums were made out of polystyrene! I would actually love one of these to put in a guitar amp. I attempted to bodge a diy Leslie with a tiny brushed motor from a tape deck a few years back - I guess you need a seriously large one like yours to sound right!
I'd LOVE to have a Leslie like that. Pipe synths, voice, whatever through it and stereo mic it! Unfortunately, the drive from Ohio, USA to the UK is a little rough.
Craigslist has many of a Midwest town's freebees and cheap organs all the time. You wouldn't want a 220volt model anyway. Look for a keyboard repair and new dealer in your area. I am in the business and have a few salted away. Some go to the dump.
That's way cooler than I expected. It _really_ impacts the sound in a neat way.
I love Leslie so much... These things really are so special! They make your synth come to life beautifully too :) Maybe on the next record? x
Welcome to the joy of rotary speakers! I played Hammond a lot in bands in the 1990s, and I had a Sharma Jubilee 7000 twin cab rotary amp - it was 400W and it was HEAVY. The bass cab had a similar baffle to these, but it was wood. The treble cab had two horns that span around, also made of wood I think. It was all I could do to lift the thing in and out of my van, and I ended up with back trouble in the end.
The legendary Graham Bond used to have FOUR leslie cabinets, one on each corner of the stage. I can't even imagine the INSANE sound that made. :)
Mom: _you alright son?_
Me watching a spinning sound: all good!
I owned one of these! I think it was a Leslie model 950 and it was huge! It came in a a huge cabinet with all four rotors stacked and weighed a lot. I used it for about a week and decided to cut it in half, with a cabinet of 2 rotors on each side of the stage. It could get incredibly loud and the rotors had psychedelic patterns on the faces. It wasn't exactly a match for the "Leslie" sound but it was great for getting a powerful organ sound.
megamachine? cant wait!
Quadraphonic megamachine! ;)
I just pulled one from an organ two weeks ago! No one around me seems to care or even really know what they are, so it's cool to see someone else with an interest!
From the days when everything had to be done mechanically.
Well not EVERYthing!
Analouuugggguuueeee!!!
Your excitement at the sound these produce is exactly what I felt when I first got my Leslie hooked up as an external cab to my guitar amp
I was always under the impression that the speaker span in these organs.
Some leslie's do spin.
rotosonic speaker
Myself.Just never visualized how.Mostly a baffle or horn rotating around the speaker itself , but yeah different designs do spin.How I have no concept.
It's pretty amazing that there's such a difference in sound between off and the first quarter turn.
id say make it cv controllable haha
I have been roadie on a tour using an ancient leslie box with a hammond b3 organ... learned a lot from the dual mic setup on that beast, two mics (i think they were small audix mics), hard panned left and right really filled the room... awesome! Love your channel!
"Central spinny bit" - great quote from this channel, terrible quote from an auto mechanic.
Just hearing that little demo of the tones being played through it makes me wanna build one!
Now I know what made Jimmy page's [Led Zeppelin ] guitar sounds "warbley"...on the first 2 albums
As soon as that spin came on I was like this sounds so much like the IT Crowd opener :D Love it
hook a Variac up to it for more controll of the speeds
Variac will only change the voltage. The Leslie's speed depends on source frequency.
My middle name is Leslie - my Dad gave that to me because of these things. As a kid he was a church organist - starting playing a huge pipe organ at 8 back in the 50s, and went onto play in dance bands with a hammond organ with one of these attached for years.
Make the speed adjustable! (Y)
The fast speed is the same as a human made vibrato, about 7Hz. Faster and it's a razz, slower and it's drunken warbling. The slow speed is to not change the sound but disperse the sound around like a pipe organ. Switching from slow to fast is like adding vibrato to what's coming out weather voice or instrument.
Leslie speakers were used by the group "The Brooklyn Bridge" in the late '60's early '70's. Carolyn Wood was the fantastic keyboardist who made tremendous use of the Leslie in songs such as "The worst that could ever happen".
2 speeds - while the organ was playing the melody of a song it would use the slower speed to get that slow "in & out" sound going, but come crecendos or solos the higher speed would be used the achieve that "surrround echo" sound.
I learned something today. Thanx man. I know quite a bit....so this for me...is genuine.
I took apart a scrap organ a while ago and was really interested how they did the Tremolo. Crazy old stuff.
Pads sounds beautiful through a Leslie. Just a little love and maintenance every now and then and you’re good. Only real problem I ever had was with cold solder joints in them.
I used 2 of these to make a very nice Leslie speaker. I placed them sort of "face to face" so one would spin on direction and the second one spun the opposite direction. Sounded really good with an old Farfisa organ.
Here from a short video.. Wow I Love Analog. Digital is alien to me. Analog is organic and of this world. Great stuff I want to build one. The techno effect is amazing 👏
Found one of those after I got my grandfather's Conn organ. He passed in 2009, but I remember the organ was already somewhat old back in the 80s when I first saw it.
Really cool sound
And THIS, my friend, is why I collect old organs and parts, and know so much about the keybeds and bit lol! Nice!!
Very nice demo of just how cool this effect was...
That’s some AWSOME sound, when spinning even better🤯
You just did Emerson Lake and Palmer proud.. "Welcome my friends to the show that never ends, so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside!" Leslie 101 Cheers & Merry Christmas!
You can try to use a VFD to do speed control. Or even perhaps use the inertia of the speaker to control the speed using a Solid State Relay and a very low frequency pwm. Like 1-0.1Hz frequency pwm.
I have a couple of those out of a mid 80's Hammond Model 142. I use a dimmer switch to speed and slow down the turning speaker. PRO TIP: Put signal through spring reverb then into the Leslie speaker.
You are absolutely certifiable! But I love it! Turn the smallest boy in the biggest machine ever! Hitting speakers crazy! And impressive!
That is so cool !!! I bought a storage locker in an auction and it had SIX full Leslie Speakers in it. All original, made in USA with serial numbers and all. NOTHING sounds cooler !!!
Man I am so thankful that you put out videos of stuff I have never heard of before! How awesome these things are! Always fun to watch your stuff. Keep it up
Oh man! I have an 70's small marshall stack with just 12w amp. The cabinets use leslie elements and looking for ages to find original ones..
Awesome I finally know now what they r called.... Love your videos and the work behind it.... Have one of em in my organ and I celebrate the sound of it every time.... You just made me think I should build a monster version of it for my backyard...
Dismantled an old organ and it had a unit just like the one you are trying to give away inside of it. I pulled it and used part of the old organ to build a box for the Leslie and then modded the speed control with a rheostat to run my Guitar & Bass thru. It's such a psychodelic sound, and it looks like the old organ's "little brother". Can't wait to see your MegaMachine all done up! BTW-all four Leslie units on LOW speed together is gonna sound so very KRAZEE KOOL playing games thru! I'm gonna bet it like that!
Not gonna lie, this is pretty kool!
I know a lot of the older vintage models these were made out of wood so they probably swapped them out (different motors/Drive belts etc...).
there's a definite difference in sound when the diffuser is wood.
If anyone in the history of the world was ever a prime candidate for spontaneous human combustion it is you sir. And I truly mean that as a compliment. You don't ignore the alarms and we all are beneficiaries of that
You’d never guess these things are made of polystyrene, they look so heavy. The sound reminds me of a xylophone. I had drum/percussion lessons when I was a teenager at a local council music school. The room not only had a few drumkits but also tuned percussion like a xylophone. It’s a very cool instrument with a very round, sort of floating sound to it. Xylophones have the same sort of principle as a lesly speaker, except that every tube has a rotating / spinning disc in it which is controlled by a small motor. When it is engaged, you get this floating sound. Your Lesly’s remind me of this effect.
The difference between hearing a recording of a Leslie speaker and hearing music through a Leslie speaker in person in an auditorium is like the difference between seeing a photo of Yosemite Valley and actually being in Yosemite Valley. A TH-cam video can’t do it justice.
I've seen one of those once when I was a kid. my dad brought it home from a scrap yard, I didn't have a clue what it was for, but sure was loud
Awesome! What a crazy design lol! Polystyrene was unexpected!
Recordings never capture the beauty of being in the same room as a Leslie speaker. They sound fantastic.
I love to get my hands on one to make portable Leslie guitar speaker. You got great find.
I built a small portable rotating speaker in college and then was talked out of it by an Accourdan player. Later I bought a big Leslie cabinet and ended up giving it to a church because my wife convinced me we didn't have the room. Now in my retired 60s, I want one again, I have studio space and the time but not the cash. I would drive over to Kent to pick one up but the petrol cost to drive across the pond from Texas is a bit high. Thanks for the offer.
ive always wanted one of those, no current plans, but they are super cool, maybe i could build a cabinet for my friends band
The one with the orange foam is an original Leslie unit, with two motors on top of each other, the four ones with the black foam are from another manufacturer. I used to have one with the same motor mechanism with the large and small wheel, but with an actual rotating speaker in a pipe instead of the foam drum.
The classic Leslie boxes (122, 147 etc.) actually have 2 rotors: a horn rotating above a compression driver for the trebles (800 Hz up to about 6 kHz - higher did the Hammond organ not go) and this kind of drum for the lower frequencies, originally out of wood, later foam like these. There are also some models from the 70s that have an oval speaker inside a (very heavy) drum for the frequency range of 200-800 Hz, they have a stationary woofer. Both setups create the special effect of the 2 rotors not being synchronous during acceleration and braking.
Many moons ago I was doing lighting art a local dance hall. One night, we had the band The Flies. Rather than power all their gear from the stage sockets, they ran an extension cable up onto the lighting gallery for their Leslie speaker. Part way through their set I had to switch on an amp for a DJ session. I tripped on their cable and pulled it from the socket. Their Leslie speaker wound down, with the amps still running, great effect, but I nearly lost my job!
I absolutely loved this sound on an electronic organ, wasn't long before it was replaced with electronics but they make such a difference to the sound especially with a bit of dope.
Thanks, I am so glad that I have found your channel. We called those thigs twerlies.
A mate of mine here in the States has taken one of those and converted it to have a 12v DC motor on it and an independent motor controller to vary the speed on it. Sounds really cool when you ramp it at different speeds. Also a nod to seeing BigClive here commenting also.
The small spindle is an idler speed so that when the large spindle is activated, there is no delay in engaging the effect. I watched the Leslie on Pink Floyd's, Rick Wright's organ operate this way in Sydney in 1971. He also had the horn type. I watched them idling and speeding up for operation.