Eventide Rotary Mod Review & Sound Samples

Hello there and welcome back to another cool plugin review article for you! This time, we will have a look at an excellent Leslie rotary speaker plugin, Eventide Rotary Mod. In this Eventide Rotary Mod review, I will introduce one of the greatest audio technology companies, Eventide and provide you with details for this wonderful Leslie rotary speaker plugin as well as a demo video.

Eventide Company

For those who have never heard of the Eventide Audio company, here’s a quick introduction. Eventide was founded by Stephen Katz, Richard Factor and Orville Greene back in 1971. They first started as a partner to Sound Exchange studio in New York. Since then, they have become an industry standard brand in audio technology and already revolutionised the audio & music industry with their groundbreaking products. Eventide is one of the pioneers of audio effects and unique algorithms that not many audio technology companies can even come close to!

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As you may already know, back in the day the effects or FX boxes did not exist as plugins. Luckily, this great company has been releasing their world-renowned effect algorithms to the masses in various plugin formats! Even though Eventide still ships their legendary, professional effects in rack format and in more compact pedal size, they have also made sure that people who prefer using plugins can benefit from their effects arsenal.

Eventide Rotary Mod (Leslie Speaker Plugin)

Eventide released their H9 Harmonizer effects processor which was one of the most compact formats ever back in 2013. Later on, they also released their world-renowned algorithms in this pedal as plugins. Rotary Mod was also one of the groundbreaking algorithms in H9 Harmonizers.

Eventide Rotary Mod is the plugin version of this algorithm that is rotating cabinet effect also known as Leslie rotary speaker. The rotary sound effect was originally derived from Hammond organ‘s Leslie speaker cabinets that generated a pulse-like vibrato effect that is based on the rotation speed. With Eventide Rotary Mod, you have the ultimate control over the effect parameters and fine-tune any movement you would like.

If you have never heard of the rotary speaker effect, here are some examples to check out. Cream – Badge, Blind Faith – Well Alright, Pink Floyd – Breathe, Buddy Guy – Hoodoo Man Blues, Stevie Ray Vaughan – Cold Shot.

A Brief History of Rotary Speakers & Pedals

If you are still hungry for more information and history on the Leslie rotary speaker effect, you should definitely check out this cool video by Reverb.com.

Eventide Rotary Mod Features

Eventide Rotary Mod is packed with features and an extreme amount of control for the musicians. You can independently change the speed of the rotor and horn, plus adjust the mix of these to have a very special pulsing vibrato effect.

It’s also possible to add modulation to the rotor and the horn speed by using LFO with the ability to select a modulation source. Cabinet size can be also altered as standard or giant depending on your taste as well. As with every Eventide plugin, you also have a tap tempo button (assignable) to easily sync the tempo of the plugin with the desired BPM.

On top of these, you also have a very cool feature, a ribbon control that allows users to change any combination of parameters simultaneously. As this ribbon control is assignable, you can have really cool and unique effects live, such as adjusting modulation depth, blending horn and rotor for transitions or changing the speed.

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Last but not least, you have the Mix Lock feature which is one of my favourite features that comes with all Eventide plugins. This basically allows you to lock the wet/dry ratio so that when you switch preset, you will always have the same wet/dry ratio.

How to use Eventide Rotary Mod?

As with any plugins that you can use in your DAW, using Eventide Rotary Mod is extremely easy! You can use it as an insert or send effect and adjust the wet/dry ratio to your taste. But my preferred way is to use most of the time-based plugins as send effects.

Basically, you need a separate send effect channel or just simply a channel in Reaper. Then you add your effect to this channel as shown below. Next, you want to disable the record for this channel. Lastly, you need to send your guitar or instrument channel to this track.

With this method, when I play the guitar through my KRK Rokit 4 G5 monitors, I don’t need to get my guitar signal to be processed and sent back to me. In fact, I hear my guitar with zero latency dry plus I add the effects on top of it by dialling the volume on the mixer. As you can see Eventide Rotary Mod mix parameter is set to 100%, meaning that this channel will only generate a 100% wet signal.

To summarize, here’s the signal chain:

Fender Stratocaster – ENGL E570 – ENGL Cabloader – RME Babyface PRO – KRK Rokit 5 G4 (100% Dry) + KRK Rokit 5 G4 (100% Wet)

So with this setup, if you record-enable your guitar track and start recording, you will hear the effects while recording but the wet signal won’t be recorded. Once you are done and while playing the track, you will hear both and you can adjust the balance between wet and dry signals. Depending on your preferred way of using any effects, you can also record the wet signal and later on mix it with your dry signal or completely use the wet one in your mixes.

Of course, this way I present here is not a must! For some time-based effects like choruses, phasers or Leslie speaker effects, most guitar players like to add these effects as insert effects. For instance, in my Nux Rivulet Chorus review video, I also preferred it as an insert effect. I think when combined with some boost or used on a crunch channel, these mentioned effects can really generate the best results.

In this Rotary Mod preset walkthrough and demo video, I first tested the plugin without recording the wet signal but hearing a 100% wet signal along with a dry guitar sound. Then decided to record the wet one as well as it sounded way better completely wet!

If you have difficulties understanding this concept, please contact me and I will be more than happy to help! 🙂

Eventide Rotary Mod Review & Sound Demo (no talking)

Here’s an Eventide Rotary Mod preset walkthrough demo featuring my Fender American Standard Stratocaster, ENGL E570, ENGL Cabloader and RME Babyface PRO.

I went through all the presets even though some are not meant to be used with guitars. But why not? 🙂 Most of the presets I played with was awesome and already made me play my guitar all day long. The video you just watched was recorded in an hour, without a break! This shows how much I was into it, I can’t normally play this long without losing my attention anymore! 🙂

As you can see and hear, Eventide Rotary Mod is capable of reproducing as well as enabling you to come up with your own, unique Leslie rotary speaker effect with a couple of clicks.

If you just need to have Rotary Mod in your effects arsenal and you mostly play in your home studio, it’s better to get it as a plugin. However, you can always go for the H9 Harmonizer effects processor that includes all H9 series plugins with the same extreme flexibility and control!

I hope you enjoyed this brief article and demo video of Eventide Rotary Mod. Thanks for visiting my blog and supporting me so far! I will hopefully see you in the next review here!

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