Option 5 Destination Rotation Vs. H&K Tube Rotosphere?

Bigtime Leslie junky here. Got spoiled on my little brother's vintage leslie cab, but he & his hammond have departed for the coast, so I've been making do w.sims.

H&K's the bomb, my opinion. Very convincing sound, beautiful tube distortion, brake function's a blast - but it's too noisy in front of my non master amps. Needs to be in an FX loop.

Haven't played the Option5, but I've read that it's not as good w/overdriven tones as the Hughes & Kettner. As a guitarist, I need the dirty sounds. I've got an old Korg G4 and I only use the drive side. Same with my rackmount DigiTech RPM-1, I've always got the master volume cranked, so the tube's working hard - It's on the noisy side too, but sounds astonishing when running the horns in stereo and the rotor thru' a third (bass) amp up the middle..

 

I certainly haven't tried them all, including the Option 5, but the H&K sounds GREAT. I wish I still had mine.

 

I have not tried the HK, although I was at a small show where the guitar player was using one. On the other hand, I have owned an Option 5 and really didn't like it. It sounded horrible with any sort of gain into it.

 

I've owned both, and as much as I liked the H&K, I gave it away and kept the Destination Rotation. It just did everything the Rotosphere did but better.

I will say that the overdrive switch on it is not to my liking, but I run into this pedal anyway with OD pedals. Now, I know someone else above didn't like OD tones into it, but I've had great success with an OCD and Blackstone into it, and it LOVES the OD on my Bad Cat.

 

Have you looked at the DLS Rotosim???

I just picked up one last week and I'm loving it! Much quieter than the H&K and much more tweakability. You have separate controls for intensity and mix of both bass and tweater rotors, as well as the onboard OD and I think 5 internal trimmers to mess with. I haven't played with them, but from the looks of the manual there is some big control of the effect in there. A "character" control that supposedly one way is "thumpier" and one way more "swirly". It also has an expression pedal input and stereo output - and apparently the A & B outs have slightly different characters for an additional option when running mono. Is there a better leslie sim than this? Only $50 bucks more than the Destination - I did see on in the emporium earlier today for $235 or something if it is still there.

 

oh yea, and on the DLS you can set the speed of both fast and slow independently (12 o'clock is supposedly the exact speed of a leslie cabinet) AND there is a knob to set the ramp up speed from fast to slow (again 12 o'clock is the natural lag of a leslie speaker). Man, this thing rocks!

 

I had the DLS. I liked that it was quiet and that you could power it with 9 volt, PLUS it was a bit smaller than the H&K. The slow speed sounded great, but I couldn't get a sound I liked with the fast speed. I think the H&K was much better sounding. Too bad, because I loved the DLS's features.

 

I'm trying out a friend's Destination Rotation right now and I have to say that even though this pedal has taken some knocks, the slow speed is still outstanding. It's a rich 3D organic sounding chorus that is hard to beat. I think Option 5 should repackage it as a chorus pedal.

John

 

"The slow speed sounded great, but I couldn't get a sound I liked with the fast speed."

Really??? Right out of the box the fast speed impressed me the most
Did you play w/ the internal trimmers at all to try to get the sound you wanted? I dig that the DLS is much more transparent the H&K if you want it to be. But I think it is a viable option for leslie sims for sure....

 

Yeah, I played with it a lot and didn't care for it. I wasn't horrid, but to me it was missing something that the H&K had.

 

what does the Breaker switch do exactly on the rotosphere?

 

Most sims have the 'brake' feature. When you stop a real Leslie, it takes a while to come to a complete standstill, and when you release the break, it slowly ramps back up to whichever speed it was set to. Really cool way to add some "motion* into your playing. When I'm using one, I ride the brake all the time..

 

+1. I have one and completely agree with this. The slow speed makes for killer chorusing. More convincing as a chorus pedal than leslie.

~John II

 

thanks much!

:RoCkIn

 

I tried out an Option 5 Destination Rotation and A) it crapped out on me the 2nd time I used it and B) I was planning on returning it before that, I felt that the Korg G4 stomped the O5 DR. I ended up with a DLS Effects RotoSim and I'm happy with it, although I still wouldn't mind a better small one for my board. My only complaint about the Korg is that it is rather large, takes up too much inventory on my pedalboard.

 

Get a Boss RT-20 and stop looking. I've had or played all of the Leslie Sims and to my ears the Boss beat the competition on all bases.

 

Hey, thanks to you I have one coming, appreciate the tip last night!