Frustration

Mono Monday:  Man Made

Back in 1940, Donald Leslie came up with the idea of a rotating speaker for use with Hammond Organs.  The Leslie cabinet is a big, heavy piece of kit, but the sound it produces combines vibrato and tremolo and other sorts of modulation and proved very attractive, particularly to guitarists from the Beatles onwards (think of the swirly arpeggiated guitar riff in Badge by Cream)  The size and weight of a Leslie cabinet was a bit of a problem however, and nowadays you can get a rotary simulator in a small guitar effects box, like this one that does a very creditable job of mimicking the original in the real world.

This particular model takes as its starting point the Leslie 16 - which was beloved of a particular be-hatted Texan blues guitar slinger with a penchant for adding the letters SRV to his Strat's pickguard.  Stevie Ray Vaughan's guitar sound is much sought after amongst some guitarists, and this little box nails one aspect of it.

So far so good.

Unfortunately, this one is faulty.  I first ordered one of these about a month ago, but when it arrived it had a problem, so I sent it back and have recently received a replacement, only for the replacement to have the same problem.  

For perhaps the first hour the pedal will work perfectly.  But after the problems start.  The pedal will arbitrarily switch itself off.  If you switch it back on it will keep working for perhaps as long as another ten minutes and will then arbitrarily switch itself off again.  Once it has started to do this it will then continue to switch itself off at increasingly shorter intervals, until eventually the pedal cannot be switched on.  If I leave the pedal and come back to it the next day, it again will initially start to work before it repeats the pattern of switching itself off at shorter and shorter intervals. It is sooo frustrating, because I love the sounds the thing produces.

I have emailed the manufacturer this time to see if there is a batch of the pedals with a known defect, but I suspect that this one is going back shortly and I will be asking for my money back this time.  :-(

LATER


As tomorrow's blip makes clear, the manufacturers responded to me within 24 hours and the problem is now sorted.

Today's classic album: Cream - Goodbye