Line 6 ToneCore Rotomachine

It's pretty simple to use. The ramp works very well and is probably the best feature of the pedal. I like to use the slowest ramp setting. The manual doesn't really help much. In other words, it's not really needed.

Forgive me if this gets long. I really like this pedal, but it has it shortcomings. I did end up choosing this pedal over the Boss RT-20 for two reasons: 1) Smaller footprint and 2) More authentic sounding simulation when using the "drive" knob. The Boss is good, but it was just lacking some richness, even with the mimicked horn and drum moving at different speeds. Also, I didn't like the overdrive tone of the Boss. The Roto Machine has a better overdriven tone. What it all comes down to is this: the best Boss model/patch didn't sound as good as the Roto Machine's best model. I use the model on the left (L16?) and use the slowest ramp switch.

What I DON'T like is that the tone coloration is so huge when you kick the pedal on and off. I know the Leslie cabinets DO color your tone, and that's not what I mean. I like the pedal when it's on; the tone coloration sounds authentic. What I mean is that when you kick it on, it turns heads like, "that guy really just kicked something on" instead of it blending into your guitar. Makes it very anti-climactic when you kick it back off.

Also, the fastest "slow" speed is still too slow, and it ends up sounding like a thick chorus pedal if you let it linger too long on the slow setting. That's why I always ramp it back up again as soon as it's done slowing down. Keeping the "drive" knob up helps with this so it doesn't sound too clean like a syrupy chorus pedal. (yuck)

Haven't tried it in the true bypass loop, but it seems to have a really good buffer.

I really doubt this module will last long. These knobs are cheaper than most Korean Atari knock offs! Seriously cheap knobs and switches. The pedal itself is a great design, even overkill. But the battery door/switch is awful. It's very loose (as all ToneCore pedals are) and just gives a cheap impression. NOTHING on a pedal should wiggle, but you can shake the pedal around and the stomp switch just flops around loosely. Poor, poor engineering. How do these guys expect to be contenders with junk like this? (Don't get me started on the Pod! I know 3 guys that had those break inside of two years. Junk)

The website is okay, but I chuckle at every demo video they have. Dorky. No other interaction with them.

If this thing dies, that's probably that, and I'll end up buying a Boss RT-20 or hopefully another good Leslie emulator will come along...

I wish it could blend the coloration in slowly somehow when you kick it in, kind of like a Leslie first starting up from a completely stopped position. There is no "stop" setting. This would have been nice for the Line6 engineers to use as a baseline when the pedal is kicked on, then blend in the effect from there. You know, like how an ORGAN PLAYER would have it? Duh!

Still, the effect itself is pretty good. It does the best job of all the pedals I've heard so far of actually making your amp speakers have a "vibe" in them so that it's more than two-dimensional.

But for the crappy knobs and huge tone shift, I have to knock Line 6!

Pretty easy to use - footswitch takes some getting used to.

I love it!! My new favorite pedal and I've got a lot...Running in mono it sounds decent - but run it in stereo and it sounds 10x better. I use the 'slow' setting now instead of my chorus (and I actually LIKED my chorus...). We don't have a keyboard player in our band, so I sometimes use the fast setting to emulate one - I think it does a great job. I'm really happy with this thing - it takes some experimenting. The only thing it's missing is some type of wet/dry setting.

We'll see - it's built like a tank. You could crush a Boss pedal with the line 6 pedals.

Playing rock, blues, metal for about 25 years. I've got lots of ways of simulating a leslie (univibe, flanger, phaser, chorus, danelectro rocky-road, Jimi Hendrix Experience pedal) but this one is by far the best. I love it - best when used in stereo though.

Well, there certainly is a cross-section of opinion on this one! I'd say that this is NOT easy to use, but not because the design of the pedal is wrong, but because the pedal is versatile.
You essentially get three types of Leslie speaker effects, with options of drive, balance between horn and speaker and speed controls. Why is this? Because not every rotating speaker sound you hear on record is a Fender Vibratone[ Leslie 16 ] ala Cold Shot. I'm convinced that George Harrison and Eric Clapton, for example, more-than-likely used a larger Leslie Organ Cabinet with a horn in the studio. Warren Haynes' Hughes and Kettner Rotosphere is also used by him with a horn setting. So, in reality, you need to adjust the controls according to which type of Leslie Cab you want to emulate. If you are a gigging musician, you need to tweak the controls to suit your stage volume and clean/Leslie mix. I'm giving it a 7 because the fact is that Leslie cabs are not always easy to use anyway - this replicates that, to a certain degree.

I bought this because I couldn't fit my own Leslie 16 speaker,two Fender Amps and an extension cabinet into all the venues I play. Yes, I also own the real thing, and a Sharma Organ speaker cabinet with a horn, so I hope I know a bit about rotating speaker cabs. I have also used the Danelectro Rock Road, Arion Chorus and Univibe which some say also replicate the Leslie sound. If I'm honest, the underlying problem with this pedal [and all other pedals] is that
a] The pedal is before the amp so the signal is effected before it hits the speaker rather than at the same time, and is subject to amp distortion, reverb etc.
b] The crossover [ a box re-routing high and low frequencies to the non-rotating extension speaker] has to be artificially created within the eq in the pedal
c]There is no clean speaker sound to mix with the pedal. Using a real Leslie 16, your amp feeds both the Leslie and your own external speaker cab so you still get a straight signal. There is a pleasant mix so that when you switch in the Leslie, your sound isn't masked by a jumble of rotating mush.
d] The ambience and fullness of sound coming from all directions when you are playing live with a genuine Leslie is not there [obviously]

To overcome some of the above I split my signal - feeding half of it through my rotomachine into a Fender Combo on a very clean setting, the other half into another amp with a touch of overdrive. This overcomes the lack of crossover and clean mix.

As you have gathered it's the Leslie 16 setting I use - although the others are excellent too. The sound is very very close to a Leslie 16 in my opinion, and I do like it a lot.


In the slow setting you get a very nice chorus, which doesn't have the annoying overtones of the Rocky Road or Boss CE 2 [Yuck!!].

I would place a critisism on what I think is an overly bassy/middly sound however. The lack of treble is an in-built part of owning a Leslie speaker, but I think the rotomachine would benefit from an EQ setting to allow for more flexibility between guitar pick up types and amps. I note that some other reviewers found it too trebly, so there are definitely differences according to your set up

I read other Line 6 Tonecore reviews that critised the unit when powered by a non-line6 mains adapter. I encounter hum problems occasionally when I swap pedals around on my pedal board and have to daisy chain this one. The knobs are a mite flimsy and difficult to read on stage too[ although I don't alter the setting at all]. Mine has lasted nearly a year without mechanical or electrical probs. It's certainly very heavy/sturdy.

Nothing new here: Strats into Fender amps and rock and blues music. It's an SRV and Jesse Davey thing - the Vibratone vibe. Being honest again, the Arion Chorus is a pretty good transparent Leslie impersonator [with a tone knob]and very close to this pedal in the fast Cold Shot type of sound. The Line 6 is definately slightly better at that discipline and has more flexibility with its speed changing ability. If I was a studio dude I would probably find the other Leslie settings useful too. It's easy to carry and doesn't need miking up, but I really do recommend that it is used with it's own amp and cab or that you have an uneffected signal to mix it with [you could put it in a loop using a Boss Line selector or similar.

Very easy to use. Three knobs dial in slow speed, fast speed and "horn/rotor" balance (sounds like a Tone knob to my ears!). Two switches select ramp speed and Leslie model (three positions for each).

I like the footswitch a lot. It selects fast/slow with a soft touch and effect on/off with a stomp.

Here's the rub. While the basic sound is definitely Leslie-inspired, the coloration is over-the-top. But I am no idiot; I understand that real Leslies have a colored sound -- This is part of what makes them cool! But I compared the sounds of the Tone Machine to some favorite classic Leslie'd guitar tones on CD, and it just didn't do it. On top of that, the pedal made the guitar very shrill and nearly impossible to use with any amp overdrive. Running the effect in the loop didn't improve things, either -- The dynamics literally disppeared. Yuck.

I also tried it with the organ sounds on my keyboard: an Alesis QS-7 running a Kurzweil M1 module. Same type of result: much too much coloration & tinniness. Some "cool factor", here, though.

Bought second hand, worked fine. Very heavy pedal. Don't know about long-term use (or abuse).

N/A

I sold the pedal after a week and made my money back. I really wanted to like the thing, but just couldn't.

I would NOT buy this again, but might consider another L6 pedal.

I am using the pedal with a Hammond XB2 (version2)and a Yamaha PSR3000. I had a lot of distortion and sent it back to my supplier as I thought there was a fault. I eventually received it back without any comment from Line6. On checking I spoke to one of Line6 engineers and explained the distortion. I was told that the pedal was for a guitar and not for a keyboard and I would have to put in a buffer between my instrument and the pedal to change the frequency output from high to low. This I have done and it now seems OK. Why not incorporate a switch on the pedal to change this. Line 6 are losing out by not doing this. It sounds OK in the house at low volumne but no good in a live gig without the buffer. Sorry Line6 but disappointed with attitude.

Ease of use was pretty straight forward, everything was explained in the manual, and if thats not good enough, just look at the pedal itself. The modulation, or ramp speed was a nice touch, and you have a selection of three cabs, totaly a no brainer to use. I would expect from line 6 that they would let you at the very least give you a little more controll over your sound. Thats O.K., because the leslie is not a user friendly type of cab.

This is the area that I was most dissapointed with the Line 6 folk. Yes, it sounds like a leslie, and, yes the sounds are O.K, but not what I would expect from this company. I could not use any type of distortion pedal with this unit, and I could not use this along with the Liqua-Flange, or I would get a huge hum! Even with batterys, this critter did not like my pedal board, other pedals or itself! Lots of noise. I don't know if mine was broken or what the hell was going on. It's to bad because I really wanted this thing to work, everything that I did seemed to make more noise, not a good thing so I took it back!!!!!!!!

All the tone core products seem like there going in the right direction as far as construction, and adding the option of swapping out the tone cores, they could be beefier. The "dock" is a huge chunk of steel (I like). The "core" is a plastic insert, that seems a little flimsy. (don't like). It would be nice if they could make a digital type read-out with button pre-set type controls that are more like the POD type. In all fairness, the reliability probably is just the same as any other effect, and a heck of a lot better than vintage gear. I haven't had any problems with the liqua-flange, and I am hard on floor stuff.

I had to deal with Line6 support when my flextone fell about nine feet off the stage, and they were pretty cool about things.

I play all types of music from new world crap to deathmetal, and you don't know how bad I wanted this pedal tho work! My overall rating will be low because I can use just about any type of effect and be happy with it, but this thing is the first pedal in a very long time that I had to mess with and not have it work with a pedalboard system. Sorry :(

very easy to use,the pedal has 2 modes.bypass e velocity of the leslie rotor

using with a mesa boogie.it is kind of trebly,but with the filters you can get what you want.very silent.i,m using in end of the chain after the drives before the volume pedal.
wah dunlop 535q-marshal bb2-sansamp classic-c martim rock drive-boss ocatve-boss ps-5 pitch shift-rotomchine-ernie ball volume-boss se 70 for rever b e eq e delay.-amp mesa boogie dc 3

some bad reports about line 6 reliability,but mine is one week only.no problem ...

never tried

i play from jazz to fusion to pop rock brazilian.using now in a santana tribute in the song (europa) thb esoft part of the song.very impressive!

I was looking for the SRV Cold Shot tone. I did not like this pedal for guitar as it radically alters the basic tone of the instrument. May be cool for recording. It does sound like a leslie, But I needed something that left my basic tone intact. Get the Analogman Chorus, does a great leslie, nails SRV and is a killer chorus. I got the bi chorus which has two foot switches set one for fast one for slow speeds, works great, doesn't change the tone of the guitar, true bypass, all analog.

This effect is essentially a 'Leslie Speaker' simulator, and a pretty good one at that.

If you don't know what a Leslie is, I'll explain. It is essentially the speaker cabinet that makes a Hammond style organ sound as it does. Various types have been built through the years, but generally they consist of two rotating horn speakers inside a cabinet with a whoofer speaker facing downward into a rotating plate mounted at an angle. As the speakers and plate rotate it achives a doppola effect, which is pretty cool. Several guitarists in the late 60's notably Clapton decided to use them as a guitar effect [Listen out on the track Badge].

David Gilmour of Pink Floyd has used them extensively in his recording and live set-up. For 1994's Pulse tour his guitar tech Phil Taylor built three special units called 'Doppolas' in conjunction with Paul Leader. The best picture I have seen of these is to be found on the website 'Gilmourish.com' If you want to sound like Gilmour you are going to need a combination of 'Leslie' simulators. He uses a modified Uni-Vibe and Dynachord CL5222, which I believe is out of production and I couldn't find used.

It is straight forward to understand and you will instantly achieve a Leslie sound the minute you plug in! The manual is simple, and explains what each setting does, and even suggests a few, though the labelling is self explanatory if you know what a Leslie speaker is in the first place. You can switch during playing from a fast to slow 'leslie' sound, and by pressing harder turn it off all together. You can choose the speed variation of the fast and slow settings without a cross-over on speed [In other words you won't end up creating two identical settings]. The ramp up speed of the effect can be chosen between fast/medium/slow.

There is a Drive adjustment knob and a blend knob that varies between Drum and Horn.

You will easily achieve those leslie sounds used by say Clapton or Gilmour, just to name a couple. This style effect was very popular in the 60/70's.

My setup is a Peavey 112 Bandit, and I have a Boss GT-6 effects board, Boss CS-2, Dunlop Crybaby. My guitars are Strats with EMG-SA pickups and EXG SPC modules, a Wahsburn 6 string EA20 Festival Series Acoustic and a Gibson J-200 12 String. I'm a lefty too! Just bought an SG style double neck too.

No noise in this pedal. The effect can be as strong or weak as you like.

It is mounted in a Die cast housing which you could run over I'm sure, and would make a dent in any assailant's head. The Main Pot knobs have a nice feel to them, thought the two switches could use beefing up. there's a nice flashing light that reacts to the speed you have set and the switching condition of the unit. It has stereo/mono input/outputs.

Bought it from a reputable dealer in Central London and don't expect any service issues in the event of an unlikely problem.

I play either classic rock by a mix of artists [Queen, Clapton, Supertramp, Tom Petty to name a few influences] or Pink Floyd and Solo Gilmour stuff. It depends who I am playing with. I've been playing guitar 14 years and keyboards about 14 years before that.

I would consider it now an essential part of my kit.

I love the 3 filter positions that simulate three different rotary speaker sounds. I'd like it even more if it had a peddle that could be switched in to change the speed gradually whilst playing.

I compared it to the Dunlop, which has that facility, but not all the features of this pedal, and the Uni-vibe. I will also buy either the Dunlop or Uni-Vibe [Which requires a seperate pedal for speed control], but like this too much not to have bought it. Though, the other options are quite costly, So I bought this first.

I'm extremely impressed with how easy it is to get a realistic Leslie tone out of this pedal. It's not the usual two speed chorus/phase shifter. The manual doesn't have a lot of information but anyone familiar with single and dual rotor Leslies won't have any trouble.

The BEST thing about this pedal is that it DOES color the tone. The rotating baffles and horn and the signal bouncing around inside the big wooden cabinet before coming out the cabinet vents in a real Leslie also colors the sound. Line 6 nailed this coloration.

I'll be using this with my old, pre-midi Roland VK-09 drawbar organ or with B3 patches using the guitar synth I just bought. The Roland never got close enough to a real B3 even when run through real Leslies. But through this pedal with a little overdrive added turned my old organ into a screaming monster.

I will agree with the criticisms of the rotors turning the same and ramping the same. The random differences in a real Leslie are missed here.

One thing...the criticisms of the Leslie 16/Fender Vibratone model...I have a Vibratone and it does muffle the sound. When used as designed, the lows and highs come out your amp's stock speakers and only the midrange comes out the single rotor of the Vibratone. Most people run theirs full range. I added two coaxial tweeters to mine to lessen the muffling. The Roto Machine comes close with the blend turned all the way up.

It's a solid pedal and I don't expect any problems with it. I repair my own equipment so I have no fears of it going down.

Line 6 is pretty picky when it comes to authorizing service stations. There are only two places authorized in Wisconsin. In order to become authorized one has to have formal training in using lead free solder and formal training in working with surface mount technology as well as having the proper equipment to repair SMD designs. I know how to work with both but because I have no formal training, I was unable to become "authorized."

I've been looking for realistic B3 tones, especially with guitar, and with this pedal (and the guitar synth) I'll be able to get close enough. I've been playing since 1967 and have a large collection of guitars, basses, amps, mixers, effects, speakers, etc.

I love most of what this pedal does. More random motion between the two rotors would have been nice as well as the way the two rotors "brake" but other than that, they got this pedal righ.