- Hi, this is John with Fender, I'm here with Stan Cotey
from our Pedals team.
We're checking out the Pinwheel rotary speaker pedal.
So what you heard up top is the Pinwheel going through two
68 custom deluxe reverb amps.
So there's a lot to talk about with this pedal, let's jump
right in, Stan if you wanna take us through.
- Thanks John, so this is Fender's rotary
speaker emulator pedal.
And as you know, rotary speakers have typically been used
with organs for a very long time.
There are different types of rotary speakers from 122 type,
145 type which have a separate rotating high frequency horn
and a low frequency drum.
To Fender's own Vibratone speaker in the 60's made famous
by a lot of blue's guitar players and that just uses a
single rotor.
So this pedal can do all three types of those things.
The way we went after it in the pedal is it's divided into
two sections, in the case of the organ speakers, the 122 and
145, they have a two power amplifier in there that
provides a really rich character and when you get into it,
when you drive it hard it has a really lush,
beautiful harmonic distortion.
So, part of this pedal, these three knobs are set up to be
able to emulate that.
So there's a drive control, a tone control and a level
control just for the power amp.
It can go from completely clean to kind of a
soft grindy distortion.
And then on the other half of the pedal is dedicated towards
the mechanical speaker portions.
So there are controls for fast and slow speeds, there's a
ramp time control to get from one to the other.
There's the type switch that goes 122 at the top, 145 in the
middle and vibratone at the bottom.
And then there's our dynamic sensitivity control that allows
the pedal to switch speeds automatically from your playing.
Below that, there's a foot switch for manually changing it
from slow to fast.
And of course, a bypass foot switch and the
beautiful Fender amp tool.
- Absolutely, and then we have stereo inputs and outputs.
- Yeah, true stereo input and output, on the back there
are switches for turning the LED's on and off, there's a
voicing switch, which is cool because it sets it up to make
the pedal sound better in a guitar rig kind of context or in
a keyboard rig kind of context.
So, it changes the voicing.
There's a dynamics on, off switch and then lastly there's an
expression pedal jack on the side and you can plug in to it
either an expression pedal or a one button foot switch,
there's a little switch on the back that determines which of
those things it is.
In the case of an expression pedal, you can manually vary
the speed of the pedal by where you set
the expression pedal.
In the case of a foot-switch, you can just toggle it from
fast to slow.
- So I think all that's left to do now is to hear the pedal
so why don't we get everything set up we'll run
through some sounds.
- Sounds great.
- All right.
- So there's your look at the Fender Pinwheel rotary
speaker simulator pedal.
It's great for guitar players, great for keyboard players,
true stereo in and out, a lot of fun sounds in a small box.
- I agree, so you can check out the Pinwheel in the full
line of Fender pedals at Fender.com you can stay tuned here
for more videos but for now I'm going to play you out.
(groovy music)