Leslie Speed Control -- Foot Switch or Half Moon? And why?

[Old Master Tech]

I started using a push on/push off button switch installed on the expression pedal at my big toe over 50 years ago.  Get used to it and you can rock the switch with no volume change to get real-time control between speeds.  Once you get it, you won't want anything else.

[Legatoboy]

Clones for gigging - Foot Control ... easier to keep both hands on the boards and seamlessly speed switch. But it took time to get used to... having been a rail switch guy for most of my young life gigging real Hammonds out for a lot of years then.

 

Hammond at home - Switch on the Rail.....(tried foot switch)  ... the foot switch is a bit to far on the floor (w/o pedals) on my B3  and have to angle and lower the left side of my body that puts my LH and RH playing positions out of wack for my arms and my hands.   

 

I have become adept at both through the years.....I have a lot of instincts left for rail switching from all those rock gigs I played as a young man.. but I do enjoy being able to keep both hands on the organ and /or piano, EP synth while speed switching in a layers or all organ situation live.... helps me keep the arrangements feels together from a band or arrangement perspective also from my end as I am not lifting my LH as often! 

 

When speed switching on the rail I find I do have to try often and gauge 'the switch' also in regard to music 'seams' and legato with the band  and my LH and set myself up slightly for the switch... so it adds a small additionally layer to consider live, and that has always been there even as a kid using a rail switch. If you gig a lot with the rail your LH switches do tend to get faster over time....  

 

I speed switch live with my left foot with my clones BTW.  

[vonnor]

On 8/26/2019 at 9:24 AM, stoken6 said:

I'm a heretic, but I like aftertouch as a Leslie switch... My old Ensoniq KS32 could do this, and I miss it on my Nord.

Ah yes! I remembered being able to do that on a board in the past, but had forgotten it was the KS32.

 

I still do that today, but through Cantabile on the laptop.

 

~ vonnor 

[kaptainkeys]

18 minutes ago, vonnor said:

I still do that today, but through Cantabile on the laptop.

How do you find the reliability of Cantabile compared to hardware rigs?  I've been looking into it but am still skeptical, especially since it seems like you need a pretty powerful laptop.

[Konnector]

I've always used a footswitch. I play standing up so I don't use bass pedals. 

[Tom Williams]

Whenever I've had a real Leslie (starting in the late 1970s), it was always with the combo preamp pedal, so now I always program clones to use a foot switch on my left, and never the damper pedal.  On my AX-Edge I repurpose the portamento switch for leslie speed if I've been reduced to using the AX organ.

[Piktor]

Like Tom, I have always used the foot switch on the combo preamp whenever I used my actual Leslie, but I also made a separate foot switch that stops the rotors too, because the preamp pedal only had chorale and tremolo.  I want access to stopped rotors.  
When I use a Ventilator I use a half moon switch if I am also playing pedals. If I am not playing pedals, I prefer to use the Vent’s remote switch set to momentary switching. I do a lot of bursts of touch and release, because I mostly like the sound of the Leslie ramping up or down and prefer to use prolonged game show speed (an ancient reference) on certain things. 

I knew a player who had his Leslie momentary foot switch set so that the Leslie defaulted to tremolo when he was not touching the switch. He got chorale only while his foot stayed on the switch. I got to play a set on his rig once and that backwards wiring took some getting used to. (Hey RH, if you’re out there, cheers!)

[Coker]

My Leslie speed switch is mounted on my damper pedal. That way I can control speed and expression concurrently, using different feet.  I don’t usually want to use the damper pedal for the organ, anyway.

[SamuelBLupowitz]

I really need to try the footswitch-on-expression-pedal method. No matter what keyboard setup I have, footswitch or hand switch, I always wind up being one limb short for changing the Leslie speed when I want to.

[Old No7]

2 hours ago, SamuelBLupowitz said:

No matter what keyboard setup I have, footswitch or hand switch, I always wind up being one limb short for changing the Leslie speed when I want to.

 

It's funny you say that, because I also have Mojo pedals, plus the volume & sustain pedals for the synth (MODX6), as well as the pedals for my Hammond and Roland -- so there's no shortage of pedals under my stack!  ("Pedalmania", I've called it...)  And I've recently been reading about adding another pedal to control the synth's Super Knob, and if I do that -- then I think I will wire up a waterproof housing so I can activate the slow/fast Leslie momentary switch by BITING DOWN.

 

And I'm not kidding..........

 

Old No7

[kaptainkeys]

24 minutes ago, Old No7 said:

"Pedalmania", I've called it...

I gotta see that. 😂

[PianoMan51]

Rarely played a real Hammond on gigs. So when I jumped into clone-based (no pedals) B3 trio I found that my musical tendency was to think of the fast Leslie setting as ‘vibrato’. And vibrato as something you want to use as an effect, like a jazz singer as opposed to always on, like many opera singers. 
 

So, my setup has Fast Leslie on only while the foot pedal is down. The constant ramping up and ramping down is to me the essence of getting organ to sound organic.

[Delaware Dave]

Real Hammond I use a half moon, clones I use a footswitch.  Don't ask me why but it is probably because I use foot pedals with the real hammond

[Old No7]

58 minutes ago, GotKeys said:

[quote]Old No7

"Pedalmania", I've called it...[/quote]

 

I gotta see that. 😂

 

New photo needed:

My new (to me) Hammond SK Pro's Leslie switch has replaced the Mojo 61's damper, and a Hammond pedal replaces the FC7 for swell; but to this image I need to add in the extra damper pedal the Hammond uses (as the Mojo 61 used a damper pedal for piano sustain AND for organ Leslie).  And when I add yet another pedal for the Super Knob -- PEDALMANIA will be complete!

 

Old No7

[synthizen2]

I use a footswitch on my PC3 to engage the Leslie Fast option. There is also a button that you can press, in case the pedal is forgotten or gets broken before I get a replacement.

 

While my PC3 was in the shop for repair for a few months early last year, I used my Alesis Ion as a temporary upper board (as a controller only), while I was using the MOX8 for ALL of my sounds, including the organ. For this setup, I couldn't use a footswitch option because the Ion lacked the proper number of pedal jack options on the back. At this point, I was forced to use one of the Mod wheels on the Ion to engage the Leslie Fast. But I thought this would be a good learning curve for me, to learn how to switch a Leslie the proper "Half Moon" way. (Since a Mod wheel is pretty much a "Half Moon" shaped object anyway, this made perfect sense).

 

But I'm very happy to be back at the footswitch again.