Homemade Leslie cabinet test: Whiter Shade of Pale (v1)

Описание: HAVE UPLOADED A NEWER VERSION WITH BETTER MICS:    • Homemade Leslie cabinet test: Whiter Shade...  

Built for less than NZ$200 from a pair of salvaged Leslie rotor assemblies. The cabinet's nearly full-size (55 x 51 cm, 81 cm high), with louvres cut to shape, trim fitted top and bottom, and the whole thing stained to (approximately) match my organ.

The horns are made from a pair of cheap plastic toy horns fixed into a couple of small funnels, screwed to a small round board, and fitted to the pulley of a rotor assembly (with the styrofoam baffle removed). The first assembly used a simple tweeter in the top, which was painfully inefficient (the horns were something like 4-6bB quieter than they should have been) and soon blew out. Replacing it with a compression driver sorted the problem out neatly.

The bottom rotor is a standard cheesewheel styrofoam baffle, fed by an upward-facing full-range Wharfedale. Putting the speaker on the bottom made it easier to have the two rotors turning in opposite directions, but meant that the louvres needed to be cut much higher than in a proper Leslie. It also means that any replacement speakers have to fit the unfortunately-narrow gap in there, which is the one design decision I now regret.

There's also some relay wiring to switch signals around for guitar, set up so that I can take my amp's preamp out signal to the relays, connect back to both that amp and to a slave amp, take the latter's speaker signal to the Leslie, and select between them with a footswitch. I've got a spare rotor left over, so I'll be building that into a Model 16-style cabinet with similar circuitry.

Recorded with a mix of dynamic mics: left top, right top, centre bottom. (they're too close, which is why there's motor noise in the right channel.)

The organ's a Hammond T-200 with pedals and drum machine removed, housed in a cabinet scavenged from an early 70s transistor Hammond (which was also the source for one of the Leslie rotors).

Played with 6876 000 on the bottom manual, 6868 00000 on top. 6886 00000 is often recommended, but backing off the 8' and pulling out the 4' helps to add some more bite back in to make up for the lack of B3-style percussion.

Apologies for the wobbly timing, keys aren't my main instrument. Might re-record it one day with better mic placement.