Boss has dropped some fresh pedalboard candy for players looking to nail some of those retro psych electric guitar tones as popularized by, y’know, the cosmic genius of the likes of James Marshall Hendrix and David Gilmour, with the RT-2 Rotary Ensemble packing all of the swirly modulated mojo of a rotary speaker in a compact effects pedal.
And while it might be small – just like a regular Boss pedal – the RT-2 is packed with features, with three modes offering three different styles of rotary speaker.
The first is straight-up vintage, which gives us strong Leslie vibes. Unsurprising, given that Boss describes it as “a faithful reproduction of the most famous vintage rotary speaker design”. The second opens up the tonal range. The third is voiced to add “power and presence to arpeggio playing and solos”.
Players have a lot of options for how they want to set this up. There is a two-way Rise/Fall switch that alternates between two speeds for the rotary speaker transition time. You can run the RT-2 in mono or stereo, or set it up for a wet/dry stereo rig.
There is an expression pedal input that allows you to adjust level, drive, balance, and speed via the treadle, and you can hook up to two external footswitches for independent rotor speed control on the fly.
Nothing could quite compete with a real unit – in the sense that you have a cabinet, inside which there is a tweeter and a woofer, handing high and low frequencies respectively, rotating at your chosen tempo – but Boss is trying hard. It has put a circular display with red and blue LEDs inside that show you how fast the treble and bass rotary speakers are turning.
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There is more. The Drive knob replicates the original tube-driven preamp of the hardware rotary speaker units, and allows you to dial in some of that warmth and grit.
This knob can also be set to adjust the balance between the treble and bass speaker rotors, giving you more control over your tone. That control extends to a “Brake” mode, that effectively holds the rotors in place.
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It is a lot of pedal for its size, for the fact that it is a relatively simple two-knob format. Feed it 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply and it’s good to go.
The RT-2 Rotary Ensemble is available now, priced $239. See Boss for more details.
