From carmah@northnet.org Wed Jun 12 05:42:38 2002
Subject:Yamaha RA-70

I've had a couple people ask about the Yamaha RA-70 I mentioned a while back. It is a very cool Leslie-type amp. I got it new in the 1970's. I had to go to Montreal to get it. I heard they couldn't be sold in the US because of the Leslie patents. It has a rotating horn speaker, but it rotates in a vertical plane, not horizontal like a Leslie. It is also the speaker itself that rotates, not a baffle or rotor, so you get a very pronounced effect. It is in a tolex covered box a little bigger than a Fender Vibratone with a 70 watt rms amp, full tone controls, regular and overdrive inputs, spring reverb, and a 15" bass speaker. It is sort of like the idea of the Motion Sound Pro-3 but with the bass part built-in. I got it because my Leslie 145 was too big and too quiet for what I needed at the time. You can also vary the fast and slow speeds a lot. One cool thing I never used was an output (I think) for a regular Leslie speaker - so you could use the preamp and speed controls of the RA-70 to control a Leslie. It really is an amazing sounding amp! I'm getting some pictures of it, because I may sell it someday.

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