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Leslie question


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hey guys.. way back I went to a Gregg Allman concert.  I noticed he had a range of Leslies behind him, and the backs of the cabinets were facing him / the audience.  As he was playing and triggering the Leslies, I noticed the horn rotors were moving at different speeds.  I think the speed differences were happening both during the acceleration and braking, as well as during normal playing.

 

This always intrigued me.  His sound was great (of course), and I think the multi-cabinets and multi-speeds really created some great smoky lush textures. 

 

No idea if he was running any other effects or sound tricks.  Moreover, I don't know if he had the Leslies at different settings, it's possible the rotors will always be slightly different, even if hooked up in some type of daisy chain.

 

Now - with Mainstage - there's an opportunity to possibly replicate something like this?  By having multiple instrument channel strips, you can dial up identical organs, but change up the Leslies and the rotor parameters, as well as doing some panning?  Is anyone doing this successfully?  I'm experimenting with this, but not really getting anything dramatic or cool.

 

Thanks!

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There are three pulleys to choose from to 'select' horn speed.  The horn speed is also impacted by belt tension.

 

PS  The belt needs some belt slip.  It acts as a clutch.  If belt tension is too high it is hard on motors.

 

The whole thing is not a very exact process compared to gear in the modern world. :)

 

2 or more leslies is a great swirly experience but usually only one cab is mic'd.  I mic mine with one AKG D-112 on the bottom rotor and 2 EV CO4 s on the horns ( an EV equivalent to a SM57).  One mic panned right and the other left. Usually not a complete hard pan.  How much depends on what sounds best.

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I don't know whether Mainstage can do it, but conceptually, the way to do it would be to take a single instance of the organ, and route it to multiple instances of the rotary effect, in parallel, with the settings you want those virtual Leslies to have. Assuming the Leslie effects are mimicking stereo microphone positions, I'd pan them so that, from left to right, you'd have the left channel of Leslie 1 at the left-most point of the desired stereo field , then the right channel just a little to the right of it, then the left channel of the second Leslie, then the right channel of the second Leslie, and so on. As for how fast fast is and how slow slow is, that's not controlled by the organ. On the real thing, as CEB typed as I was typing this, that's controlled by where you place the belt on the mechanism. Though there's still variation from one Leslie to another, even if you have them set at the same belt positions.

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I would think even if the motors on multiple Leslies spun at the exact same speed, it would be tricky to impossible to get the speakers to face forward in unison.  Lot's of artists use multiple Leslies without issue (I assume they are likely sending 1 to front of house).  Boston and The Dead used to have multiple "monitor" leslies placed around the stage for the rest of the band.  Not sure if other artists did anything similar.  With advances in in-ear monitoring, that approach is pretty much obsolete.

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In terms of running the sound to multiple leslie sims in mainstage (or a daw for that matter) I would have the leslie sims each in a different bus and then use them as effects sends and then set the fader of the organ to -♾.  After that, adjusting the volume of the leslies comparable to each other is just changing the bus levels.

Instruments: Walters Grand Console Upright Piano circa 1950 something, Kurzweil PC4-88, my voice

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As other above have mentioned, unless you could hear the leslie's stage sound from your seat (doubt that) then typically only 1 leslie is mic'd so your still only getting one leslie sound to the audience.  I have played a dual leslie setup before and it does sound pretty wild and loud;  Greg probably needed the additional leslies just to be heard on stage.  

 

Kurzweil with the PC3 series allowed a double leslie effect in order to fatten up the anemic single leslie they released.  Digitally it adds more phaseyness to the sound and many people complained about it.  It did fatten up the leslie but also has its cons; I spend literally over 100 hours trying to a variety of settings, mic angles, panning, speed adjustments trying to get the phasing out; I did get it reduced but never completely eliminated.  I would imagine that you will run into similar issues in mainstage.  One thing that help was removing the panning, i.e. set both leslie to dead center rather than left and right and ensuring speed and accel/decel were identical, this is what removed most of the phaseyness while still providing the 'fat'.  You might want to try that in mainstage and see how it comes out.

 

For the analog leslie as others have mentioned due to variances in belt tension, motor condition, pulley and bearing wear they won't spin or stop at the same exact speed/place so the drivers will always be in a different position. Digitally you could set the accel/decel and speeds to be slightly different but I would doubt from a digital point of view that it would sound as pleasing as the analog real deal.

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57 Hammond B3; 69 Hammond L100P; 68 Leslie 122; Kurzweil Forte7 & PC3; M-Audio Code 61; Voce V5+; Neo Vent; EV ELX112P; GSI Gemini & Burn

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You can set up a tonewheel organ, switch off the Leslie sim there, and send the raw signal out to two Aux busses, with a Leslie sim on each, set up slightly differently (FX Plugin —> Modulation —> Rotary speaker).

I don't see a way to adjust the slow speed for the cabinet, but the maximum fast speed can be set from almost no increase at all to ludicrously-fast-let's-hope-those-deflectors-are-glued-well. 

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My initial reaction is that multiple amps (leslies or guitar amps or whatever) don't necessarily make for a good idea.  In fact that sounds like it could easily be a phasey mess.  As mentioned above, I wouldn't be surprised if some of that was either for show or just for stage monitoring (though I can't imagine being in a situation where one leslie wasn't enough!  But then I run direct at pretty low-volume shows, using my in-ears....)

For me, I like things simple.  As it is I already have to contend with issues when going from stereo to mono, I'd think multiple leslies would be a problem there.

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Depending on the era, the allman bros guitar players used multiple high powered fender amps and very efficient speakers like JBLs and Cerwin Vega and were loud as all get out. I doubt even 3 Leslies were enough most of the time. If you notice that when Greg took the rare organ solo the guitar players more or less turned almost off to let the solo come through. I don't know but I'm guessing maybe one or 2 of the leslies were on stop to avoid too much swirliness. 

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Doppler effect and phase shifting are part and parcel of the Leslie sound. 

That said, woofers out of phase will cancel low frequencies - which is probably not desirable. 

 

I would try one Leslie sim (IK Multimedia makes a good one but there are others) as the main center speaker and then maybe one to the left and one to the right, both with high pass filters eliminating the low frequencies so they don't phase cancel and both at lower volumes to just sound like air is moving around. Run that in stereo with both speakers close together and behind you and send the same thing to FOH. 

 

Will probably need tweaking, where to cut off low frequencies from the left and right is critical to keeping a big tone. 

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Thanks all, super interesting and helpful.  I've been playing around with Mainstage, trying to replicate what I saw & heard - - nothing good yet, and likely won't get anything usable.  I think they would need to have some presets with some wizard programming to make it happen.

 

I'll continue to mess with this - if anything exciting happens I'll report back.

Some music I've recorded and played over the years with a few different bands

Tommy Rude Soundcloud

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On 6/30/2022 at 9:01 AM, TommyRude said:

Thanks all, super interesting and helpful.  I've been playing around with Mainstage, trying to replicate what I saw & heard - - nothing good yet, and likely won't get anything usable.  I think they would need to have some presets with some wizard programming to make it happen.

 

I'll continue to mess with this - if anything exciting happens I'll report back.


What did this array of Leslies sound like from your position in the room? “…smokey lush textures…” yes, was it noticeably better from the audience POV?

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On 7/1/2022 at 3:09 PM, o0Ampy0o said:


What did this array of Leslies sound like from your position in the room? “…smokey lush textures…” yes, was it noticeably better from the audience POV?

hey Ampy, as I recall I was fairly close to the stage, in front of Gregg, and I believe I was close enough that I could hear the Leslie's themselves, mixed with the FOH.  That may have been an illusion, no way to really tell without strolling around the room.  The sound was great, I could hear the keys clearly (it would be quite odd if the keys were not out front at a GA concert!). 

 

There also may have been some illusion going on with the visual.  For sure, the horns would be in different positions when they were spinning, but I'm confident they were not in perfect synch in terms of speed (whether slow, fast, accel, decel).  It's possible I could be mistaken, i.e. at the slow rotor speed, they may have been spinning at a very closely matched tempo, but the horns being in different positions might have made it seem like they were spinning at diff speeds.

 

It would be easy to test the varying speed myth - just whip out multiple Leslies and give it a go!  Unfortunately I do not own multiple Leslies!

Some music I've recorded and played over the years with a few different bands

Tommy Rude Soundcloud

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