Very well done, Gabe. Are you playing guitar or keyboards through it? Or both? I saw a blues guitar player use one and it was pretty cool. Anyway good to see such excellent craftsmanship. Thanks for sharing.
Al
Guitar. Just guitar. It doesn't have a built in amp, so I can just use my normal amps to run it. Well, one of them. I need a higher wattage speaker if I want to use my other amp. If I'm completely honest, I made it because I wanted to play Joan Osborne's song
Spiderwebs. I use it for a lot of other stuff, though. I've been playing through it for about a year, but I only just got around to covering it and making the grills.
single rotor?
2 speed?
wood or Styrofoam rotor?
what kind of speaker (s)?
Damn it looks good!
Single speed, single rotor. Its a Styrofoam rotor and motor I bought off of eBay. You can usually find the speaker/rotor/motor/mounting assembly from some kind of old home organ in eBay. I replaced the baffle board it was all mounted to, and replaced the old 10" speaker with a new 12" Celestion Greenback, which is what I have in the amp I use it with. It's just a bit quieter than the speaker in the amp (not too surprising, since the Leslie is essentially a closed back cabinet, and sound goes through the rotor and all, which reduces the efficiency of the speaker just a bit), but it's pretty close.
My plan is to eventually make a variable speed drive for it, but because it is an AC induction motor, it's pretty complicated. I basically know what I need to do, but the implementation is a bit more challenging than I'm up for at the moment - at least until I've got a bit more free time. You can't just use a resistor, because induction motors speed is a function of the frequency of the AC power supply. So, to change the speed, you have to vary the frequency. Easy, except for one thing - as you lower the frequency of the AC, you also lower the impedance of the motor's coil, and Ohm's Law applies, so the excess current a lower speeds can easily burn out the motor. Not good. So, in addition to changing the frequency, you need to increase the impedance of the power supply. Or you can lower the voltage, of course. Either way, while it isn't impossible, it is something I haven't done before, and so it is challenging. I've read about it, but that's not the same thing, you know? Now, I'm getting better at programing microcontrollers, so I'm probably going to go that route, which is easier than trying to do it any other method I can think of (and lighter in weight!).
Here's the rotor/motor/speaker baffle, after I got rid of the crappy particle board baffle it came with:
Gabriel
Topic: Finally finished my Leslie!! (Read 7162 times)