The Smiley Smile Message Board

Loads of bands are quite in favour of sticking their guitars or microphones into a rotating Leslie speaker from a Hammond organ to get that swirly sounding guitar solo (eg. Let It Be single or most guitars on Abbey Rd) or that distintive Lennon vocal sound (Tomorrow Never Knows etc) back in the day.

My question is, without buying an expensive rotating speaker or expensive guitar pedal emulator (I'm not financially viable at the mo  ) what is the best way to create this effect using guitar pedals. For example what do I need?

A bit of flanger / chorus / tremelo or...

A bit of phaser / delay / overdrive? etc

Any advice would help!

I found, on a friends amp which has all those setting built in, if you stick on a whole bunch of tremelo and reverb, and no distortion of any kind, you get an ok leslie-sound. A quick phase might help too, but i'm just guessing there.

If you can afford it, the Roland GT8 processor has some very nice "swirly" sounds.
I've been recording my CD using the GT8 and it still amazes me just how all-purpose this processor is.
I've recorded my Guitar, my Keyboards and my Voice thru the GT8 with excellent results. Once you buy the GT8(or the newer GT10)play around with all the settings for a couple of days. There's so many options inside this thing.

Bri

Buy an old Yamaha organ from the 1970s for £15. They've got rotary speakers and a powered phono input you can plug a guitar into. They're a bit big but it's a cheap way to get that authentic sound.

I got a good guitar box  - a Korg toneworks ampworks;

http://www.korgnorthwest.com/ampworks.htm

Not sure if they're still available new but it's got a good leslie sound on there

The Line 6 Roto pedal is to die for if you want that sound.
Nothing compares to it.

Check out demos. All the other one's on the market are just fast-sounding phasers.
It's on YouTube.