Wish Improved rotary block

sprint said:
No, but was wondering what specifically you think is missing?
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I wish I was smart enough to tell you technical details, but I’m not. It’s doesn’t sound realistic to me. It sounds more like a vibrato to me. I’ll see if I can post same comparisons.
 
sixtystring said:
not trying to de-rail, but can someone reference me some songs that uses rotary "tastefully"?

i see threads about rotary pretty frequently, but to me it has always felt like an extremely "over the top" effect. even the factory presets that use rotary are borderline obnoxious sounding to me. i know effects can be subjective, but I wonder if i'm missing something or if it just isn't my thing
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DLC86 said:
fender vibratone, yamaha ra-200, maestro rover, doppolas, etc..
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+1
 
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+1.

At fast speed it's not too bad IMO, useful at least, however realistic it is.

Slow however really doesn't capture the organic majesty and grace of the real thing at all, sounds more like a phaser or something.
 
Dave Merrill said:
+1.

At fast speed it's not too bad IMO, useful at least, however realistic it is.

Slow however really doesn't capture the organic majesty and grace of the real thing at all, sounds more like a phaser or something.
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For instance, for guitar Leslie, listen to Blind Faith's Presence Of The Lord. Awesome to me.

Not the same as a wailing B3 through that same speaker setup, but pretty cool, and I don't hear that so much with the fractal version.

It's a hard problem, complex physical interactions on many levels. Lots of device and software makers have run aground on these shoals, and the Fractal version isn't too bad.

But lots of aspects of Fractal are better than that.
 
Dave Merrill said:
For instance, for guitar Leslie, listen to Blind Faith's Presence Of The Lord. Awesome to me.

Not the same as a wailing B3 through that same speaker setup, but pretty cool, and I don't hear that so much with the fractal version.

It's a hard problem, complex physical interactions on many levels. Lots of device and software makers have run aground on these shoals, and the Fractal version isn't too bad.

But lots of aspects of Fractal are better than that.
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"Angel" by Jimi Hendrix is another good example....
 
Joe Bfstplk said:
"Angel" by Jimi Hendrix is another good example....
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Lower key, You're Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bond, Further On Down The Road, and Bacon Fat by Taj Mahal (Jesse Ed Davis on guitar).

Fast Leslie by Jesse Ed, Going Up To The Country Paint My Mailbox Blue.

Smokin guitar and harp, and great band in general, pretty much anything by them, especially early stuff.
 
I've been using my Ax2 for Rotary duty lately (Ax2 spdif'd to the end of Ax3). I use 2 rotary blocks for complete L/R separation (needs 2 preceding vol blocks to do that correctly on Ax2 but not needed to do the same on Ax3 given the addition of "input select" on the Ax3 rotary some time ago). I also have a PEQ dedicated to rotary after. So it's a lot of blocks just dedicated to rotary but I feel these additions offer some marginal improvement to my ear (my fav Rotary sounds are Frampton fast rotary with OD tones, and Frampton slow rotary with cleanish tones). - would be great to have a built in post eq in the rotary block, and (double wish) the ability to have complete Left/Right separation since I like to run rotary at higher mix levels and find it seems to lose some stereo separation from proceeding blocks even thought it tries to put it back with "stereo spread"
 
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iaresee said:
Do you run a stereo amp setup in to them?
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I have in the past but I've lately returned to using a single mono amp block and gotten off of dual L/R amps (too much hassle + cpu to ideally also maintain dual L/R drive blocks). My rotaries come after other stereo fx (delay, chorus and stereo shift / harmoney effects between mono amp and hard panned stereo cab), so configuring 2 rotaries left and right preserves the signal from those previous stereo fx better (mostly delay is the concern as I would not likely run rotary and chorus or pitchfx at the same time). The dual rotaries also adds a bit more interesting rotary goodness along with the dedicated PEQ for rotary.

Edit: Maybe I could go down to 1 rotary block in Ax3 just after the amp and before stereo pitch / harmoney fx and stereo cab - I'll try that to see how I like it, but, for load balancing purposes (all my presets are kitchen sink), I like to offload some functions (rotary / synth) to the Ax2 spdif'd to the end (trading my Ax3-mk1 for an Ax3T would allow me to ditch the Ax2 mostly - but I like that I can have Ax3 + 2 editors open at the same time, as well as having another loop available to use out to an external power amp and back from a load box di out, so the current Ax3+2 config remains).

Edit2: I've heard so may good things about Strymon Lex that I've also been tempted to get one of those and have it in loop2 for rotary, but at $480 Cdn + 50-60$ for their ridiculous proprietary midi cable I don't feel it's worth it with the Fractal Rotary being as good as it is even in Ax2
 
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sprint said:
I have in the past but I've lately returned to using a single mono amp block and gotten off of dual L/R amps (too much hassle + cpu to ideally also maintain dual L/R drive blocks). My rotaries come after other stereo fx (delay, chorus and stereo shift / harmoney effects between mono amp and hard panned stereo cab), so configuring 2 rotaries left and right preserves the signal from those previous stereo fx better (mostly delay is the concern as I would not likely run rotary and chorus or pitchfx at the same time). The dual rotaries also adds a bit more interesting rotary goodness along with the dedicated PEQ for rotary.

Edit: Maybe I could go down to 1 rotary block in Ax3 just after the amp and before stereo pitch / harmoney fx and stereo cab - I'll try that to see how I like it, but, for load balancing purposes (all my presets are kitchen sink), I like to offload some functions (rotary / synth) to the Ax2 spdif'd to the end (trading my Ax3-mk1 for an Ax3T would allow me to ditch the Ax2 mostly - but I like that I can have Ax3 + 2 editors open at the same time, as well as having another loop available to use out to an external power amp and back from a load box di out, so the current Ax3+2 config remains).

Edit2: I've heard so may good things about Strymon Lex that I've also been tempted to get one of those and have it in loop2 for rotary, but at $480 Cdn + 50-60$ for their ridiculous proprietary midi cable I don't feel it's worth it with the Fractal Rotary being as good as it is even in Ax2
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Get yourself a Centerpoint Space Station and you can have an awesome pseudo stereo via mid-side processing from a single little powered monitor. Totally fills the room and you swear there were moving horns, drums etc inside that little thing when you give it a stereo rotary block signal
 
lqdsnddist said:
Get yourself a Centerpoint Space Station and you can have an awesome pseudo stereo via mid-side processing from a single little powered monitor. Totally fills the room and you swear there were moving horns, drums etc inside that little thing when you give it a stereo rotary block signal
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But how do you record that thing?
 
lqdsnddist said:
Get yourself a Centerpoint Space Station and you can have an awesome pseudo stereo via mid-side processing from a single little powered monitor. Totally fills the room and you swear there were moving horns, drums etc inside that little thing when you give it a stereo rotary block signal
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I'll have to look into it more - someone else here has one if I recall correctly, and showed some pix of it (maybe it was you), but I did not completely understood it's use case at the time. Another rotary experiment I did that sounded quite good was to use one rotary block out through output 1 going to 1 set of studio monitors via audio interface, and a second rotary block out through output 2 to a second set of monitors via audio interface - then setting up the 2 rotary blocks to be kind of L/R opposite and a bit delayed from one another to make a more swirling surround sound. I didn't keep things hooked up that way as I needed the output for other things but it sounded pretty cool. Space Station sounds interesting - depending on price may be better investment than Strymon Lex in terms of bettering rotary sounds through Axfx (or maybe Ax2/3 rotary can better Lex showcase presets, just need to find the right settings).
 
sprint said:
I'll have to look into it more - someone else here has one if I recall correctly, and showed some pix of it (maybe it was you), but I did not completely understood it's use case at the time. Another rotary experiment I did that sounded quite good was to use one rotary block out through output 1 going to 1 set of studio monitors via audio interface, and a second rotary block out through output 2 to a second set of monitors via audio interface - then setting up the 2 rotary blocks to be kind of L/R opposite and a bit delayed from one another to make a more swirling surround sound. I didn't keep things hooked up that way as I needed the output for other things but it sounded pretty cool. Space Station sounds interesting - depending on price may be better investment than Strymon Lex in terms of bettering rotary sounds through Axfx (or maybe Ax2/3 rotary can better Lex showcase presets, just need to find the right settings).
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Paging @Joe Bfstplk...
 
sprint said:
I'll have to look into it more - someone else here has one if I recall correctly, and showed some pix of it (maybe it was you), but I did not completely understood it's use case at the time.
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That might be me. :)

Love the rotary through my Spacestation XL....
20230402_035226.jpg

So does Benny....
 
Joe Bfstplk said:
That might be me. :)

Love the rotary through my Spacestation XL....
20230402_035226.jpg

So does Benny....
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Benny is ready to rock!! (Benny and the Jets!)

So how do you set it up? Attached to a 2nd output, and having a branch off from the main Axfx signal chain to a rotary block and then to the 2nd output / Space Station?
 
sprint said:
Benny is ready to rock!! (Benny and the Jets!)

So how do you set it up? Attached to a 2nd output, and having a branch off from the main Axfx signal chain to a rotary block and then to the 2nd output / Space Station?
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All goes through the Spacestation. Stereo out from FM9 or FX3. The side speakers on the Spacestation are powered by a separate internal amp from the front speaker and get fed the L - R signal to mix in-air with the L + R (mono) from the front speaker. It's more or less the reverse if the "mid-side" stereo mic technique....
 
sixtystring said:
not trying to de-rail, but can someone reference me some songs that uses rotary "tastefully"?

i see threads about rotary pretty frequently, but to me it has always felt like an extremely "over the top" effect. even the factory presets that use rotary are borderline obnoxious sounding to me. i know effects can be subjective, but I wonder if i'm missing something or if it just isn't my thing
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No quarter?
 
sixtystring said:
not trying to de-rail, but can someone reference me some songs that uses rotary "tastefully"?

i see threads about rotary pretty frequently, but to me it has always felt like an extremely "over the top" effect. even the factory presets that use rotary are borderline obnoxious sounding to me. i know effects can be subjective, but I wonder if i'm missing something or if it just isn't my thing
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I love how he has it mixed into overdriven tones:
 
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