I came across this video of Carey Bell. How is he getting that organ sound? It sounds like an octave effect plus an organ effect. Is there a specific pedal he's using? Have a listen... His solo starts around 2:00 There's also a second harp player in the band.
It starts at the beginning of the song. There are two harp players. You can get that close to that sound from a Boss OC2 with all of the controls maxed out. Don't play chords. The pedal doesn't reproduce them and Carey didn't play chords with the pedal engaged.
I would call that a synth effect. There isn't much organ sound about it. You can do that with the Boss OC2 or the Danelectro Chili Dog, Behringer US600, POG, HOG, Micro POG, POG2, etc. The POG stuff will track chords (actually, the Behringer does too), the others are only monophonic.
The octave effects in the Digitech RP series sound really great for this kind of thing too.
For organ sounds, John Popper does some really great stuff. I used to use a rotary pedal a lot, but the only audio I have of it is from 2007.
The intro to this vid uses a rotary effect too...
There was a thread on Harp-l a while back where Richard Hunter decided to tackle the topic of harmonica organ sounds...http://www.hunterharp.com/getting-a-great-organ-sound-on-harp/. Great stuff there. The rig he mentions there - the POG and KORG is THE best sounding "organ" sounds I've heard on harp.
I countered with the fact that something like the M9 or M13 from Line 6 could do that sound for $300ish, but I think I pulled the vid from YouTube as it had a lot of digital distortion from the camera.
For those reading the title and wanting to use an octave effect with rotary, the cheapest route is the Behringer US600 and the Line 6 Roto Machine.
I had a Roto Machine, but I think I upgraded to a DLS pedal shortly thereafter. I had clips, but that band is dead and the site with the music on it doesn't work anymore. I don't think I saved many files from that either. It is the same effect as my vid above, but in a pedal rather than multi-fx unit.
Personally, I gave up on the pitch effects + rotary pretty quick. I like the sound of playing octaves and other double stops into a rotary more. I'd use a pitch effect for a lead effect instead.
From the time when I had temporarily replaced Carey Bell on a tour with Louisiana Red, Carey had to go to Memphis for a recording session and left his gear with the band and what he was using was a Cordovox Leslie unit. Steve Jacobs was the bandleader and Carey had always played thru the PA for ages and Jacobs hounded him to start using an amp (in the old days, the amp was also the PA as well), and so with Jacobs being his bandleader, Carey gave in and eventually also bought the Cordovox Leslie. While I subbed for him on the tour, I got a chance to check it out, which was pretty good as a poor man's Leslie, but like all Leslie cabinets, that's just too much of a pain in the butt to drag around (that's when you need roadies). ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
