Spin isn’t designed to sound like a rotating speaker spinning all by itself in a large room. Spin provides the sound of a miked rotating speaker, the sound the producer and engineer hear in the control room. But don’t let that stop you from getting the sound you want!
To achieve the sound of a distant microphone capturing the rotating speaker, run Spin using the wide stereo preset. Now apply a room reverb, remove any pre-delay, and adjust the wet/dry reverb balance until you get the distant sound you’re looking for.
Try using the amplitude modulation effects of Spin as an LFO driving the Moogerfooger Lowpass Filter!
To simulate overdriving the tube amp powering the rotating speaker, apply distortion before Spin, since, in the real-world signal path, the amp distorts the signal before the speakers throw the sound around. Among tons of other great distortion sounds, the SansAmp PSA-1 plug-in provides distortion presets for both the model 122 and model 147 rotating speakers.
Likewise, when going for classic organ sounds, route through the Voce Chorus/Vibrato before Spin, as that’s the signal path in the B-3 organ.
In what seems like a particularly dangerous Beatles studio experiment, a Leslie speaker cabinet was dismembered, a microphone was affixed to the rapidly spinning upper rotor, and John Lennon attempted to sing into it. Fortunately the deafening wind noise captured by the microphone put a stop to the proceedings before anyone got maimed. Feel free just to run the vocal through the rotating speaker—that’s what they wound up doing.
Those reverse-vocal and reverse-guitar tricks are even more fun when you run ‘em through Spin. Try reversing the vocal and putting it through Spin, as well as putting the vocal through Spin then reversing the processed vocal.
Of all the sounds to pass through a Leslie, no sound has been amplified more often than the sound of B-3 Organ generator leakage. Even with no notes keyed, a small amount of B-3 sound leaks out.