CLASSIC GEAR
Spin Doctor
The Fender Vibratone rotary-speaker cabinet had the cure for common guitar tone.
BY DAVE HUNTER
MOST GUITARISTS WHO have plugged into a whirling, sound-warping, Doppler effect–inducing Fender Vibratone can recall the major impression that playing through a rotary-speaker cabinet made on them. It’s unlikely any compact electronic rendition of the effect will fully satisfy them.
The occasionally crosspollinated worlds of vibrato and chorus have been immensely popular with guitarists in their many forms since they first became available. From the late-’60s Univox Uni-Vibe to the mid-’70s Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble and today’s contemporary re-creations of those and other beloved analog pedals, each is an electricguitar classic in its own right.
But the trail begins with the granddaddy of them all: the Fender Vibratone. Produced from 1967 to 1972, it’s a hulking electromechanical sound swirler that produced what is still the most hypnotic and enveloping version of this effect. Fender licensed the Vibratone from an original rotary-speaker design by inventor Don Leslie, who introduced his rotary-speaker cabinet for use with Hammond organs in the 1940s. The most popular of these units were formidable beasts that contained their own power amplifiers as well as two different types of rotary speakers. That trenchant swirl you hear from a great Hammond player like Jimmy Smith, Booker T. Jones, the Heartbreakers’ Benmont Tench and the E Street Band’s Danny Fenderici is most often the result of a big Leslie Model 122, 142 or 147. Aptly called Tone Cabinets, these beasts weighed upward of 150 pounds, were housed in louvered wood cabinets, and included a built-in tube amp, a 15-inch woofer firing downward into a ported rotating drum, and a dual-horn tweeter that spins on a horizontal plane. (One of the horns is a dummy that simply acts as a counterweight to its partner to maintain balance.) A crossover splits the lower and higher frequencies between the woofer and horn, respectively, and both the drum rotor and horn spin, speed up and slow down at different rates, creating a veritable maelstrom of sound when the drum and horn are spinning at full tilt. Standing in a room or onstage amid such a storm of sound can be a heady experience. Indeed, play through a Leslie and you’ll discover why many guitarists will never settle for anything less than the sound of a true rotary-speaker cabinet.