cphollis wrote:Since reverb is a room effect, I tend to put it at the very end of my signal chain.
and picking up from some other posts here... There are multiple approaches to traditional Hammond/Leslie reverb sound:
1. as you say, a room effect. The sound of the "room" a Leslie was in was created by, well, the room... and you'll similarly have the sound of "the room" just by having your amp play in the room. A complication here is that the Leslie physically threw the sound around the room, which would also affect how the sound interacted with the room space. To try to get closest to that effect, I think I would go with close-mic'd Leslie settings, and put the result into a pair of speakers located right next to each other but angled 60 to 90 degrees away from each other (each 30 to 45 degrees off axis).
2. But what if you don't want your organ to sound like a Leslie is in the room with you, but rather that you and your Hammond and Leslie are in another room altogether (say, a church)? For that room effect, I would add reverb as last in the chain.
3. Another scenario is that when used on a recording (or in a PA when playing in a venue that is big enough that people would not be hearing you directly out of your Leslie), the Leslie would be mic'd up, and the sound engineer could put reverb on it for effect or to create some other room illusion. This would be replicated again by putting your reverb device last in the chain.
4. Or you might want to duplicate the effect of a Leslie that actually had a built-in spring reverb unit. This was not so common, the most ubiquitous Leslie models did not have reverb units in them, but they're out there, and you might want to emulate that sound. The designers of the RV-equipped Leslies apparently felt that sending reverb through the rotating speaker may not be so desirable, so the incoming signal was split and the reverb was sent out its own stationery speakers, parallel to the spinning speakers. Emulating this requires simultaneously generating a rotary and non-rotary version of your organ sound, where the non-rotary signal is sent to your reverb device (which in turn should emulate a spring reverb).
5. Or you might want to duplicate the effect of a Hammond that actually had a built-in spring reverb unit. AFAIK, these only appeared in Hammond models that also had their own built-in speakers. Still, in this case, my understanding is that one could take the signal out of the Hammond (spring reverb'd and all) and send it out to a Leslie. The Leslie people probably would have said this was undesirable (since they felt it best to send their own reverb to their own separate non-rotating speakers), but heck, Hammond felt that key click and distortion in their organs was undesirable, so it really just comes down to what sound you're after. To duplicate the sound of a spring reverb'd Hammond going out to a Leslie, the reverb effect would have to be placed before the rotary effect.
Now, to get back to the topic of where to place an overdrive pedal in such a chain of effects, that adds another complication. The Hammond generated some of its distortion internally (some models more than others), and that would argue for placing an overdrive before any reverb, which would also be the case in any situation where you're using reverb to create a room space (i.e. scenario 2) or to duplicate the effect of adding reverb to a mic'd up Leslie (scenario 3), since those are obviously situations where the distortion of the organ occurs before any natural or artificial room space reverb enhancement. BUT a lot of the Hammond's distortion was generated by the amp in the Leslie, which would argue for placing overdrive after the reverb WHEN you're emulating the spring reverb inside a Hammond organ, scenario 5.
Scenario 4 is up for grabs. How much distortion was created by the organ, vs. how much in the amp driving the reverb speaker, vs. how much in the amp driving the rotating speakers? Beats me. I suppose ideally you could have multiple distortion pedals sets differently! But since most people have never heard a reveb'd Leslie to begin with, figuring out how to best emulate it is probably kind of pointless. Just go with what sounds best to your ears. (Heck, the number of people who actually want to bother creating a parallel non-rotating signal for reverb is probably miniscule anyway.)
In the real thing, I suspect that most of the overdrive comes from the Leslie amp rather than the Hammond itself, but that could also vary with how hard your driving the organ (via swell pedal) and your volume settings on the amp in the Leslie. Unfortunately, I haven't played the real thing since the 70s.
