Electro-Harmonix Lester-G Deluxe Rotary Speaker Pedal Reviews

I purchased this pedal used and after playing through it for a while, I started to notice a little high pitched line noise coming from the pedal. It became a problem and I thought about selling it, but I switched to an isolated power supply and the noise is completely gone.

Let me save you some time and money. I have been a fan of the Leslie sound for years and have owned or tried most of the pedals out there. I had the Neo Instruments Ventilator II for years and it sounded fantastic. My main issue with it was the power requirements (12Vdc/500ma) and I had a hard time powering it without the wall wart that comes with it, not to mention that it's quite large on a pedalboard. I received the EHX Lester-G today and was absolutely blown away at how authentic it sounds. It is voiced for guitar and is super easy to dial in and uses a standard 9vdc connection. There are a lot of nice features that I have yet to explore like the compressor, drive, etc. Straight out of the box, though, the core sound is amazing, Please save yourself some time and money and go with this pedal first when you want that Leslie sound.

Big thanks to my sales rep, Evan Mehre, for putting up with my pedal GAS this month!

I love my new pedal. I was looking for a particular sound and this was it.

...Deb

This is a great pedal. It's true to the Leslie sound and a little colored but in a good way for my intentions. I also have the Strymon which is less colored. I'm happy with what each of them do. There are more control options on the EH. I find that useful. It's really fun with an expression pedal controlling the speed!

Sweetwater has definitely become my go to music store. Three main things, the selection, the prices and mostly the customer service. In the last 15 months I have purchased and electric guitar for my grandson, a 61 key keyboard for myself and then later a rotary emulator foot pedal. David Wharam has been my sales engineer on all occasions and I give him a solid A+. David and Sweetwater have been phenomenal. He and Sweetwater have worked with me way more than I would have ever expected. I highly recommend Sweetwater if you are in need of anything related to music.
Frank D.

Awesome Leslie Simulator with several features that gives you that iconic sound of the Leslie. Makes my old cheap Casio Keyboard sound amazing. I have that Hammond B3 and Leslie package in a very affordable pedal. Costs less than half as much as the other more expensive brands. Great customer service from my friends at Sweetwater and as always, lightening fast speedy delivery!

As a boutique pedal snob, wasn"t particularly considering an EHX pedal. That being said, I realized it really takes the firepower of a company like EHX to create some of the more sophisticated pedals and the Lester G doesn"t disappoint. After watching a particular Pedal Show give the Lester G an "ok" endorsement, I figured it was just an average Leslie emulation.... WOW was I wrong!!! The Lester G is an amazing Leslie emulation. The thought they put into this pedal is obvious. Not only do you get all the Lester controls but they included a compressor/drive section which blew me away - the compressed drive tone was better than most of my separate drive pedals - just perfectly joined with the Lester G. Now, I plugged in to a dual amp stereo setup and could not put my guitar down. The Lester G is just a perfect pedal which is almost an always on effect - it"s that good

EXCEPTIONAL GEAR! Did exactly what I expected!

Awesome tone, sounds! Love it!

Have you ever watched a demo video been blown away only to be disappointed because you can't get the pedal to sound like it did in the demo with your rig? The Lester G is not that. When I hooked it up I honestly had more fun than when I got my first wah way back when. Though this effect is NOTHING like a wah. You can capture all the great sounds of a rotating speaker decide if you want more horn sound or more woofer adjust the speed. The drive control works very nice sort of a tube OD. When I use it on slow you get a bit of a chorus sound. it works great for many songs. What I like to do for slow stuff is to use that sound in the verse and when the chorus kicks in click on the speed knob to get the fast sound organ like sound. I set the acceleration mid way so it builds up to the fast speed the slow & fast are about 12 or 1. The pretty much keep the compressor on the entire time. Tweaking the knobs to the setting in the demo I was able to recreate everything that blew me away. it is fun to jam and switch between the slow & fast modes it is like having 2 different guitars doing dueling leads. I love this thing.

Let me start off by saying that this pedal is _absolutely awesome! I started playing professionally at 12 years old with a little panther organ, then farfisa, then at 17 a hammond B3 and 2 leslie 122s' and a yamaha electric grand piano. At 63 now, let's just say, I ain't no spring chicken anymore. ha ha ha ha. So needless tosay, I'm still playing a kurzweil PC3X a hammond XK1 and my Kawai es100. After selling my B3 and leslies, I was looking for a good leslie effect pedal and wasn't impressed with anything I found, even the leslie effect on my XK1 was good, but well? I still wasn't quite there yet.
Now after seeing this leslie pedal on Sweetwater.com, I decided to check it out. Now! lookie here! When I set this up, I heard it and said Hallelujah! I found what I've been looking for. With the variable speed, the excelleration, and the drive settings I'm a blind keyboardist, and when I played this, yes! yes! yes! my eyes opened and I saw the light! Lol! I couldn't believe my eaars, what an awesome pedal, as I said earlier in this review. If you're looking for a leslie effect pedal, by all means, I urge you Please! please! check this out, I promise you won't be discourraged.
Now as far as Sweetwater, this is absolutely the __best music store I've ever dealt with, they're helpful, and absolutely no what they are talking about, and the technical department? they! are second to none, I needed help with knowing what the jacks were on my pedal, and what the controls were on top and Eric took all the time I needed to not only to explain, but to get me all connected. And, you couldn't ask for a more courteous guy. Mr. Chuck Surack has a first class business, and as a blind man who does need sighted assistance sometimes, I can't say enough. And my sales engineer Mr. Joe Copenhaver has been awesome to work with, and all my orders ship so quick as well.
Sweetwater? keep up the good work and I'm looking forward to buying more equipment from you. "let the music keep on." Yeah baby!

Very easy too use and most effective. Good value and Sweetwater is the best to deal with.

I play keys and guitar and this is the REAL DEAL. It even has the "not-being-played-but-amp-noise-coming through-the-rotating-baffles" sound ! (An example of this is the opening track to the classic "Metamorphosis" LP by Iron Butterfly.)
I have owned a "real" Leslie 145 since the 1970's and the Lester-G is extremely faithful. When you play guitar through the Lester-G, it is inspiring as all get-out, just makes you riff away! GREAT price, too, worth twice the going rate (shhhh, don't tell Electro-Harmonix !).

I am using this pedal in one of the loops on my Line6 Helix, with the mix set at 50% and I just can't begin to say how much I am loving this pedal!! I have an expression pedal connected to the EXP jack on the pedal itself and it has given my playing a whole new level of expression. As a church music director, it's been years since I found myself playing guitar simple for the joy of playing, but adding this pedal has changed that. I find myself squeezing in a little time here and there to just enjoy playing my guitar. That is a gift! the Helix gives me lots of ways to control this. With the 50/50 mix I have some distortion dialed in on the Lester-G, but my tone on the Helix is running through a Fender style amp into two IR cabinets and set to break up when I really play harder. This combo give me a nice clean tone with a little "hair" from the Lester-g, but it gets nice and crunchy when I want it to.

My Lester G arrived on Thursday Jan 14.Plugged it right in and liked how it did do a convincing recreation of playing into a real Leslie cabinet.The surprise came when I plugged it into my two favorite amps in stereo.I had them about 15 feet apart in opposite corners of my music room.I was suddenly engulfed in a psycadedelic liquid swirling of a true stereo image.I got lost in that swirl for the better part of an hour.I was hearing the best parts from my Phasers ,Flangers and Chorus pedals I have ever used. None of these pedals ever produced such a fantastic soundscape.This was the sound I was looking for and hadn't found yet.Those other pedals will be collecting dust. All I can say is that if you review this pedal only in mono you will have missed the boat. I haven't been this blown away by a pedal in years.Time to play with it some more.

I love it. have used it with guitar and keyboard. it does what I wanted it to do. I bought the g deluxe because it has the compression feature the g does not have. It works great for keyboards and guitar. I would recommend it to anyone wanting that leslie effect.

Love it! The additional Compressor & Squash functions really brings it closer to a saturating Leslie. This will prove to be a fun toy. The Lex and the Ventilator pedals are overpriced. This gets up there, but is worth it.
Stereo is great! Mono will do in a pinch.

I had been looking for a Leslie speaker simulator to replace the (physically large) H&K Rotosphere I've been using for the last 10 years. When I heard the demo of the Lester-G I called my Sweetwater sales engineer and he offered me a great price so I said "lets go for it". When it arrived I quickly put it through its paces using my Bose concert PA system and Mesa Dual Rectifier guitar amp, wow, I was very impressed. It nails the classic Leslie rotating speaker effects and it has some additional features that make it extra nice on guitar. The included AC power supply is an old style transformer wall wart and you must locate it far away from your guitar cords or it induces noise (took off half a star for this). I'm powering this pedal with a Voodoo Lab Mondo power supply and it works fantastic, no added hum or noise. Overall I like this pedal a lot and recommend it.

Good music to all!

The sound and facility of this pedal is what I had hoped for when I purchased it. I too had a problem with some excessive noise. My answer to this problem is to run an adapter directly into another outlet on your extension cord used for power. I use one for my 5 other pedals and one for the Lester G. If you run the Lester in the same electrical chain it will make noise. Since my extension cord has two sides on the plug I run the adapter for my 5 pedals in one side and the adapter for the Lester G. That solved the problem for me at least.

does all that I expected and more, very smooth rotation and rate adjustment is unmatched, but like the other reviewers, I am going to have to complain about the line noise, which can get severe if adding any gain.

Pedal effects are great. Everything advertised works great. A little line noise that can be bothersome. That's why not five stars.