There were other effects (chorus and phase shifting tricks a la the Uni-Vibe) that could be used to emulate the same/similar sound that pretty rapidly became popular simply because of how fragile the Leslie speakers were and how annoying they were to deal with particularly on stage.

Yeah 'lo-fi' to me is just what everything sounded like back when the best thing we could afford to record with was a 4 track and a cassette tape that had been recorded over & erased about 200 times.