iso box for the Dave Matthews Band
That would be slick! I've read that folks would put them in isolation chambers off or under the stage so they could get them mic'd without the other instruments bleeding thru.
Yes. My friend has a 147 and I plugged my 12-string Waterstone TP-2 straight into it. Huge sound! Hughes & Kettner Tube Rotosphere pedal works quite well too.
One of my plans is to have a small Leslie for the bridge pickup of the stereo 12-string bass. A breaker pedal is a must too, having a Leslie sound all the time would get a bit tiresome.
Cool - yeah I liked the sound of it with bass! I was using this to connect to it:
You can get those combo preamp pedals for different models (typical "reasonable" prices running around USD 75-125 on Ebay). That one pictured works with the 122, 145, 147, etc..., and lets you leverage the Leslie amp and switch between the motor speeds. You can indeed get a brake option for these things to stop the rotor dead, but I was thinking that another trick might be to just unplug the slow-speed motor from the amp assembly - that way when you switch to that slow "chorale" speed, the rotor will just spin down until it stops. Or you could unplug the the fast "tremolo" speed motor - depending on which setting you prefer. Cheaper/easier than a brake, if you don't mind the rotor spin-down instead of a dead stop...
My hammond M-101 came with a Leslie 120, which is a much smaller unit - I can carry and lift it easily by myself. It uses a full range 12" driver firing into the lower baffle, and has no horns or internal amp but rather uses the hammond's power amp. The Leslie kit on the hammond lets you toggle between internal speakers, the Leslie speaker, or both. I really wanted the Leslie with an amp, though, so I could get more of an overdriven sound. There's a trimmer on the back of the organ's swell pedal that you can crank to boost the pre-amp gain, and it sounds awesome through my 145 (which is fitted with the bigger 147 amp).
Anyway, I was thinking that the 120 might be a neat one to modify. You can get those for dirt cheap compared to the big Leslies, replace the driver with something that handles more power or has broader freq response (if needed - sounds decent to me as is), and fit it with a 1/4" jack for the speaker input. It has the same 2-speed motor assembly, and with some simple mains wiring/switching you could probably rig up a little floor box to swtich between the two motor speeds, or both motors off. You could drive the speaker from an external amp, or bi-amp it. The 125 is another good portable option - same cabinet.
Here are some shots of the 120:
