Black hole sun, won't you come, and wash away the plain.
The sound of Kim's guitar verse on "Black Hole Sun" is far from plain. Instead, he went for a watery kinda of sound (if that makes any sense) which sounds dope as fu*k. How'd he do it? I'll break it down.
That watery effect guitarist Kim Thayil used came from a Guild S-100 guitar (stock) played through a Leslie 147 set at a high rotor speed. WTF is a Leslie 147 you ask? I'll explain in a second.
Live, he simplifies things by using a Hughes & Kettner Roto-Sphere Chorus pedal. If you notice, the speed of the verse is faster than the chorus. All he did there was switch between the fast and slow settings. Simple enough.
For the solo Kim used an MXR Crybaby Wah Pedal to make his guitar scream. Although any Wah Pedal will do the trick.
It's pretty much an amp with one-two rotating speakers (treble and bass) to give it a swirling sound. Think of an amp on a small merry-go-round.
You can control the speed of the rotating speaker from a pedal. It was invented by a dude named Donald Leslie who wanted to create a "better" sound for his Organ.
All of this was blasted through an Electra Dyne Mesa Head with a 4x12 cab for the treble and bass tones. He used a Mesa/ Boogie Tremoverb combo to fill in the mids. Last but not least, a Leslie 147.
There are no hard rules when creating music as rules are meant to be broken. Be creative and experiment! However, typically when using a Chorus pedal in your effect signal chain you want to place it before your distortion, otherwise it can sound like sh*t.
So how do you come close to that sound without a Leslie? Here are a few pedals to look into:
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