Note: You are viewing an old revision of this page. View the current version.
The first Leslies achieved swirliness by using a fixed driver firing into a rotating horn. Most of these leslies have the distinctive dual-horn shaped horn (of which one was a fake, there only for balance) on the treble driver, and a wooden (later styrofoam) drum shaped horn (called the "rotor") on the bass driver.
Rotosonic Leslies, on the other hand, spin the drivers directly. Two or three car-audio type 6"x9" speakers are mounted in a spinning drum. To surmount the problem of how to make good, low-impedance, electrical connections to the spinning speakers, DonLeslie invented the Mercotac slip-ring (which I'm guessing made him quite a bit richer than Leslie speakers ever did.)
It is pretty much universally accepted that rotosonic Leslies suck. The degree to which they suck is under debate, however.
See also:
The content of this page is Copyright (C) 2000, 2001, 2002 Geoffrey T. Dairiki and
the other authors of the content, whoever they may be.
This is free information and you are welcome redistribute it
under certain conditions; see
http://www.dairiki.org/HammondWiki/opl.html for details.
Absolutely no warrantee is made as to the correctness of
the information on this page.