The Steel Guitar Forum

I remember seeing Rusty Young with Poco in the early '70's, and he just used a Leslie cab for an organ type effect. In fact, I think he had two, stacked on top of one another. YMMV, -sd

Dave Horch wrote:I remember seeing Rusty Young with Poco in the early '70's, and he just used a Leslie cab for an organ type effect. In fact, I think he had two, stacked on top of one another. YMMV, -sd

Fender, Yamaha and Cordovox made speakers that used rotating speakers, rotating tweeters, rotating horms (top end only) or rotating baffles in front of speakers that all were intended to emulate the Leslie sound mechanically. There are modern companies in this arena too, such as Motion Sound. No way this is a complete list, just want to mention that there are options out there besides the Leslie brand. I have the Cordovox, it uses a foam baffle that rotates in front of an 8" Jensen speaker. Sounds nice with my Hammond L-102. There's lots of inexpensive Hammond tone wheels out there if you can live without the key click of the B/C3.

Also, some of the Leslie emulators may or may not mimic the sound of spinning up or spinning down. I have an Alesis keyboard that does this on the mod wheel. It's kind of gimicky, but cool, too.

All the comments about gutting and chord spacing seem right on the mark. You may want to try low tones as pedal notes, and just bar the upper strings while letting these ring.

As I mentioned before, I have quite a few of the foam baffles, should anyone want to build their own. I use a 12" speaker in the one I built.