From jblann1@yahoo.com Fri Jan 05 20:38:32 2007
Subject:my take on getting the warm growl out of a clonewheel....

Some of you and including myself in years past have struggled with
the overdrive and overdrive sim to get the leslie or leslie sim to
get that nice warm overdrive that a B3/122 does so naturally.
Like most, I've done the outboard eq thing, which kind of works in
some respects to get the final tonal response of a leslie, but the
overdrive still sounds thin or raspy and digital... While the 122
tube amp plays a role in the overdrive tone, the Ao28 preamp is the
real cause of the warm effect--its simple: the output eq curve
favors the low end and starts rolling off around 1khz (I think...)
Let me put it this way. Our old 122 leslie went bad, and the
geniuses at the time, thought it was a "great idea" to just simply
trade it in for a new one (thus splitting a matched 1957 B3 and
leslie apart) the new leslie had a full range treble driver that was
so shrill, it hurt. I ended up putting a LPF coil on it to roll off
starting at 1.6kHz at 9dB/octave. While this initially worked, it
still sounded too clean for my taste. I didn't get it. After many
experiements, I was hit in the head with the fact that the preamp had
a tone control on it, that was set to the max. Simply turning it
down brought the initial shrillness back to the sweet old tone I
loved. I removed the coil from the treble driver, and was able to
crank the 122 amp back up to what I had it before. This thing
growled like I never heard it growl before-- it turned heads, and it
was good.
The grind seems to come from the heavily overdriven lower freq's
(below 1kHz) that it "modulates" the higher frequencies, as well as
intruducing other harmonics-- all rolled together, the sweet warm
grind we all want.
Now, while most clonewheels don't really give you the flexability to
shape the TWG tone BEFORE the preamp or overdrive modelling--the XK3
does (individual tonewheel modelling) take tonewheels 65 and slope
down the volume level steadily for one octave down to about -9 to -
12dB, compensate for the brightness at the end with the master eq.
The XK1 (only with presets) should be able to do similar with the "B3
Mellow, full flats, or flute lead" TWG settings. Korg CX3 ver2.0
mellow tonewheel option. The electro and V5+ do this quite well
naturally, no real adjustments needed --can't do it on either
anyway : )
If you're running into a rotary or actual leslie, if you don't want
to fork out $600-1500 for a speakeasy tube preamp or AMA, get a
single channel 1/3 octave (31 band) EQ, and gentle slope from 1khz,
to 2.5khz down -6 to -9 db, and level out 2.5 to 8khz at -9db,
eveything above 8khz, kill it to the minimum.... then rebalance your
horn/lower rotor adjustments to match.
This is my $.02 --give it a try, you might just get that tone you're
looking for.
Sorry for rambling, I'm tired...
Regards