Fender Vibratone 1x10 Rotating Speaker Cabinet

Serial Number: 1866

Check out this Great early Fender Vibratone! This is Fender's version of the Leslie 16 cabinet, and it an absolute tone monster and featured on Stevie Ray Vaughn's "Cold Shot"!

Condition: This Early Version of The Fender Vibratone 1x10" Rotating Speaker Cabinet is in Very Good Condition with no heavy blemishes or dings. The Unit is 100% original! The electronics and speaker are original and completely unmodified and unmolested. The footswitch, crossover, and motor function perfectly, and it sounds fantastic at both slow and fast speed. The stock black footswitch is included with the original paper label, and all of the assorted connections are present and work as intended.

Perfect addition to any Stage, Studio or Collection !

Introduced in 1967 and famously utilized throughout 1968, the Fender Vibratone is a passive rotating speaker cabinet designed to bring the lush, organ-like modulation of a Leslie speaker to electric guitarists. Unlike typical Leslie speakers designed for organs, the Vibratone lacks an internal amplifier and must be powered by an external guitar amp.

The Mechanics of a Vibratone ()

"The Fender Vibratone is a variant of the Leslie Model 16 and 18 speaker cabinets.  (CBS bought both Fender and Leslie in the mid-1960s.)  Like other Leslies, the Vibratone contains a rotating drum mounted in front of a 4-ohm speaker (a 10" in the case of the Vibratone and Leslie 16; a 12" in the case of the Leslie 18).  This drum is hollow, with a curved chute which acts as a deflector for the sound, directing the signal around the room and causing interesting and uniquely characteristic phasing effects.  This is the basic principle of the Leslie cabinet, and the Vibratone is just a type of Leslie.  They all produce phasing effects by firing their speakers into rotating diffusers which bounce the sound off of everything around them.

Like most Leslies, the Vibratone has two speeds, dubbed chorale (slow) and tremelo (fast).  The chorale speed, also called chorus, is about 40 revolutions per minute, while the tremelo is about 340 rpm.  The chorale effect is a slow, shimmering kind of sound on which the familiar chorus pedal is based.  It can be very subtle or can wash over the whole tonality of the instrument, depending upon how it's miked.  You may or may not even notice it unless you're listening for it.  On the other hand, the tremelo effect is a fast, warbling effect that is immediately recognizable and unmistakably organ-like, though again miking will make it more or less prominent.

But there are some differences that make the Vibratone a unique variety of Leslie.  Unlike most Leslie speakers, these cabinets are unamplified, acting as an extension speaker for an instrument amplifier.  And unlike other Leslie cabinets, they take 1/4" phono plug inputs, like a guitar speaker cabinet.  And they're built like guitar cabinets, with a Tolex covering, sparkly grillcloth, and handles, while the classic Leslie for organs is an elegant piece of hardwood furniture.  Most likely, the intent was to give players of "combo" organs (e.g. Vox, Farfisa) access to the Leslie sound.  They already had amps, so all they needed was the cabinet.  But the chart successes of several songs with Leslie guitar sounds in 1965 and 1966 may have alerted them to the larger market for the cabinets.

The other functional difference between the Vibratone and the Leslie cabinets used for organs, besides lack of internal amplification, is that the Vibratone has only one speaker/rotor.  Some Leslie models (e.g. 25) and built-in Leslie units have the same mechanism, but the sound usually associated with organ Leslies is produced by models like the 122 or 147, which have a large bass speaker (15") with a rotating drum, similar to the Vibratone, but also route the high frequencies to a compression driver in the top of the cabinet.  This driver feeds a spinning plastic horn which rotates in the opposite direction to the drum, adding to the density of the phasing effects.  Additionally, the treble horn and  bass rotor turn at slightly different speeds, so they don't produce the same sound every revolution.  As a result, the phasing effects gained from one of these cabinets is more complex than the Vibratone's.  But the fundamentals of the sound are the same, and both are immediately recognizable.

The Leslie design has the deflectors rotating in the horizontal plane (radiating from the louvres in the cabinet), while the Vibratone's rotor moves in a vertical plane (radiating from the sides and top, not from the front grill).  Thus, the Leslie "sprays" the sound around the room at the same level, while the Vibratone "sprays" the sound to its side, then above itself, then to its other side.  This makes putting the sound out to your audience a little more challenging, which will be considered later. Some of the cabinets listed below in "other Leslie and similar speakers" duplicate the two speaker, horn-and-drum arrangement, and some have only the spinning horns. Thus, there are several variations on the Leslie theme as amplifier extension cabinets.

The Fender Vibratone is the exact equivalent of the Leslie 16 (which is identical except for the logo and the way the back panel attaches) and Leslie 18 (basically identical except for the logo and full-range 12" speaker).   Virtually the same mechanical arrangement was also used in many Leslie organ cabinets such as the Model 25, but they are not included in this overview.  The song list below relies mostly on my ears and their ability to distinguish between the Leslie sound and an electronic phaser or chorus.  That's usally pretty easy to do.  What's much more difficult is to tell whether a Vibratone is being used, or a Leslie cabinet with an internal amp and a preamp pedal (an add-on interface allowing 1/4" phono jacks to provide input to ann organ Leslie).  The many ways to mike these cabinets for recording makes it virtually impossible to identify a "Vibratone sound" as opposed to a "Leslie 25 sound" or even a "Leslie 147 sound"."

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