Does most modulation just try to be a Leslie?

H13

H13

Inspired
So this thought is influenced by the massive flu that I currently have and the drugs I've been taking in an attempt to deal with it.

So imagine The Dude from Big Labowski going: "Well...that's...all just...like a Leslie man..."

...

I should take less flu medication.

MOVING ON.

Choruses and Flangers are kinda the same, just one is a more extreme version than the other which creates a bit more "movement" within. They're swirly, time-based noisy spacey pretty things which I'm very fond of. However they effectively work the same:

The guitar signal goes in, then comes back out a fraction of a second later, after getting some filter applied to it. The result is a wobbly sound which kinda spins around the room and happens a fraction of a second after you've played the note.

This is pretty much what a Leslie does, but a Leslie physically does the thing. It spits the sound out of rotating horns (a fraction of a second later), spinning everything around the room and blahblahblah. Aside from the glorious throbbing thing that a real Leslie gives you (no innuendo intended, but will take credit for it), most of the chorusy, flangery sorta effects end up sounding Leslie-ish. Phaser pedals kinda work differently, but...not...THAT differently either.

So referring back to my brain-addled state, and the title of this thread, are most modulators basically just trying to be a Leslie or should I back off the cold\flu tablets?
 
are most modulators basically just trying to be a Leslie

Uhhmm no.

Edit, you've just reminded me of this Line6 think I had, was a cool little thing.

jgqu0r9kbxsqffcea5yn.jpg
 
Part of the magic of a rotary cabinet is the effect of the horn spinners speeding up and slowing down.
 
Do most vehicles try to be a pickup truck? Nope. Pickup trucks are just one kind of vehicle. Leslies are just one kind of modulation. :)
 
Chorus, Flanger, and Vibrato are all in essence modulated delay time based effects. The changing delay time stretches or condenses the signal in the time domain. We hear this as a pitch bend. It is the electronic equivalent of the Doppler Effect. Chorus and flanger are basically the same except flanger often uses feedback and shorter delay times. When the wet is mixed back with the dry, it creates comb filtering (notches in the frequency response spectrum). With chorus and flanger, the notch spacing is harmonically related and spread across the whole frequency spectrum. Phaser instead modulates the phase of the wet signal, so it creates only a specific number of comb filtering notches (depending on the number of phase stages) at specific points instead of being harmonically spaced across the whole spectrum. Like flanger, phaser also often uses feedback to make the effect more pronounced. Vibrato is just chorus or phaser at 100% wet and no feedback. Because there's no dry mixed in, there's no comb filtering and you just hear the changing pitch. Tremolo is just modulated volume. Rotary (Leslie) has elements of all of these mixed together but they are all created physically or acoustically instead of electronically. The effect you hear depends heavily on the physical location of both the cabinet and the listener (or microphone) in the acoustic space. This physical interaction is far more complex and often much harder to perfectly recreate electronically. That's why you see many more chorus, phaser, and flanger pedals than Leslie ones.
 
As I understand it a flanger is based on a studio technique that involved having two reel-to-reel tape decks playing back, one slightly faster than the other. The engineer would put his thumb on the flange of the take-up reel of the faster deck, causing it to slow down. By varying the pressure with his thumb he could cycle that deck from slower than the other one to faster and back again. This causes the swirling effect.

Hence, also, the name: "flanger".

But, were they just trying to emulate a Leslie cabinet in the studio? That jet take-off sound from a really slow flanger modulation isn't much like a Leslie at all.
 
One difference is that Leslies produce radical changes in timbre as well as pitch change during a modulation cycle. When the horn or woofer rotator is facing directly at you, it sounds very different than when it is facing at 90 degrees or other angles. The amplitude response changes continuously and periodically along with the Doppler shift. A flanger will produce pitch change, and a phaser timber change, but neither captures exactly what a Leslie does. There are other differences as well. I'm no expert. Plenty of information is available online.

A phaser or flanger may sound similar, but they lack the artifacts that separate them from a real rotary algorithm or device. Even the amplifier in a Leslie is a huge part of the tone. And nothing beats actually standing in front of one....or two.
 
Good discussion. I find that I prefer using the Rotary block instead of the Chorus for most general modulation sounds. Of course if I'm going for a specific chorus sound I'll use it, but I just like the way a light Rotary sounds more than I do the chorus... It just sounds more present.
 
jefferski said:
Good discussion. I find that I prefer using the Rotary block instead of the Chorus for most general modulation sounds. Of course if I'm going for a specific chorus sound I'll use it, but I just like the way a light Rotary sounds more than I do the chorus... It just sounds more present.
Click to expand...

I generally use a pitch shifter so I get the effect without the LFO sweeping
 
Andrew Male said:
are most modulators basically just trying to be a Leslie

Uhhmm no.

Edit, you've just reminded me of this Line6 think I had, was a cool little thing.

jgqu0r9kbxsqffcea5yn.jpg
Click to expand...

I had one of those. I managed to scrounge together all three of the modelers at one time, then Line released the M-13/9/5 series and they basically became really obsolete. Stick an M5 in a rack, hook it up to MIDI and you got all the Pro modeler series + distortion modelers + reverb + looper in one tiny box. Still have the Echo Pro, sold the others. Kinda regret it now, but purely for aesthetic reasons, as together they looked kinda awesome.
 
A real Leslie is a wonderful and physically heavy and large piece of gear. Not practical to velcro onto a pedal board. But a good chorus like a Boss CE-1 or CE-2 do at times seem like an approximation of the Leslie sound. Phaser and flanger not so much. Clapton Badge and Badfinger No Matter What wouldnt have been as cool without the Leslie.
 
Daveis said:
A real Leslie is a wonderful and physically heavy and large piece of gear. Not practical to velcro onto a pedal board. But a good chorus like a Boss CE-1 or CE-2 do at times seem like an approximation of the Leslie sound. Phaser and flanger not so much. Clapton Badge and Badfinger No Matter What wouldnt have been as cool without the Leslie.
Click to expand...

I always thought that the Leslie stuff on "Badge" was George Harrison.
 
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