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Can Boss & Keeley challenge the crowns of Strymon, Neo & HK?

Welcome to the show! Rotary Speaker is one of our favourite sounds ever, and as we’ve explored in shows before, there is no pedal that can really do the //true// rotary cabinet sound, when compared with the real thing.

That said, digital recreations of the sound are more than enough for most of us to get a flavour of that classic sound for occasional use on a guitar pedalboard… hence the popularity of pedals from Boss, Strymon, Neo Instruments and, well, pretty much everyone these days!
As both Keeley and Boss have introduced new rotary pedals in 2025, it’s high time we tested them against our own faves.

And just to say, in this video we test each pedal in mono, stereo & wet-dry modes, depending on however you might want to use them… some perform better in one of those three modes.

Please enjoy the show!

A little note on sound: In your YouTube ‘cog’ settings options, there is a ‘stable volume’ option. If you want the audio to be the closest to what we recorded, turn ‘stable volume’ OFF.

Interesting bits and go to sections…
0:00 Intro playing
1:40 Why are we doing this?
2:10 Today’s pedals
4:18 Stereo & MIDI?
4:50 What’s important in a rotary pedal?
7:15 Today’s amps - Noel’s knobs
7:41 Slow, fast and brake sound examples
10:00 Boss RT-2 intro & sounds, Mono
14:25 Keeley Rotary intro & sounds, Mono
18:18 Balancing rotor and woofer in the Boss, Mono
19:35 Mid Boost in the Keeley, Mono
20:25 Neo Mini Vent II intro & sounds, Mono
23:44 Fave so far?
24:20 Strymon Lex V2 intro, Mono
25:50 Strymon Lex V2 sounds, Mono
26:50 Lex & Vent quick comparison, Mono
28:40 Brake modes?
31:28 Faves so far?
31:55 Lex V2 & HK quick comparison, Mono
34:28 Dan’s bugbear: not enough noise!
36:00 Let’s try wet-dry… but why?
37:21 Wet-dry sounds all pedals
39:25 The problem of latency and wet-dry
40:10 Dry control on the Lex
41:45 Delay one side, rotary the other, all pedals
44:50 Conclusions now?
45:40 Now for stereo!
46:35 Why stereo anyway?
48:23 Stereo sounds, all pedals
50:50 Strymon Bi-Amp & Stereo mode
53:57 Which one would we buy, and why?

Pedals & stuff in today’s show
• TheGigRig Three2One
• Vahlbruch Kaluna Tube Overdrive
• Line 6 DL4 MkII
• Boss RT-2 Rotary Ensemble
• Keeley Rotary
• Strymon Lex V2
• Neo Instruments Mini Vent II
• Hughes & Kettner Rotosphere MkII
• TheGigRig G3

Amps & cabs
• Fender ’65 Deluxe Reverb Reissue with Jensen C12-K speaker
• Tone King Imperial MkII with Tone King 1x12 cab and TK speaker

Guitars in today’s video
• Fender Custom Shop ’63 Telecaster - Dan’s video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnQ4OIJFTgY
• 1961 Fender Stratocaster - Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOMHUQeHGRQ

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