spring reverb tanks

[Guest A/D]

After looking into it for 2 more seconds, these are meant to be installed into a guitar amp. They would need power from another source and are not meant to be standalone.

[LimpyLoo]

I think you can't go wrong with any spring reverb, as long as you have the ability to EQ it at some point.

[sergeantk]

After looking into it for 2 more seconds, these are meant to be installed into a guitar amp. They would need power from another source and are not meant to be standalone.

Oh man. Then what should I be looking into?

 

nevermind i looked at page 1. but i could have sworn there were cheap reverb tanks somewhere

[joshuatxuk]

The tanks are easily found cheap (20-30 tops) but as more expert WATMMers cleared up, they need to be modded to use.

 

From what I can tell, the only way to find one less than $100 is to either search for a vintage 70s era mixer with built-in spring reverb or a 60s/70s era reverberation amplifier with a spring reverb.

 

The former include the Tapco reverb Scones posted earlier.

 

 

 

I saw one locally (did not snag it before it disappeared though) for about 40 (Ross PC-4100) as well as a huge Peavey mixing board with the same feature. They can get kinda pricey on ebay though because of rarity, like this Telefunken unit:

 

 

The latter is a component meant for home stereo systems that allowed you to add reverb to your music as it played out in you speakers. Sansui RA-500 seems to be the most common, Pioneer also made a couple models. They are RCA cable in/out. There are also 80s era reverberation amplifiers appear to sound cool, made by Kenwood and JVC, but they are not spring operated:

 

 

I have seen both of these types of units for less than 50 on ebay and occasionally on craiglist. People say they find them in thrift stores too but in my town (Austin) I think such stuff is hard to come by. This city has too many like-minded buyers who snag up such gear quickly, or are willing to pay more for it.

 

Above $100, unless you find a good deal, and you can find new and old spring reverb rack units and effects units to use. The Fisher spacexpander, the spring reverb in the Roland Space Echo delay units (another dream buy of mine), Furman, Boss, Univox, Yamaha, Fostex, etc. and other vintage racks, etc. Basically the stuff made before digital reverbs became standard in the 80s. One single ebay seller has a lot of these at inflated prices. And others earlier posted great new spring reverb units (Vermona, Doepfer, etc) with a lot of control options. This thread at gearslutz shows many options I don't have space to list here.

 

Another potential option, one I almost went with, are lo-fi digital reverb units made by Realistic (Radio Shack brand). These look great for circuit-bending too. They are digital, kinda of spring-y and actually delay based. I saw this one on ebay but passed on it:

 

 

Different model, same era:

 

 

Lastly, as I mentioned earlier, I found a pretty good substitute in Ableton after searching their forums by playing around with their "resonator" effect. Good spring-y sound I was going for, and coupled with the reverb effects also available able I'm able to tweak it easier than hardware anyway. Kokeboka mentioned softube's vst - which I've seen praised elsewhere.

[sergeantk]

Thanks for the great post, joshua. However I am wondering is the modding of a tank unit fairly easy? I have experience with electronics, not much modding per se but I could see it being a good option if it isn't super complicated.

[ryancolecreate]

that radioshack one actually has a vst modelled on it called ratshack reverb.

[joshuatxuk]

that radioshack one actually has a vst modelled on it called ratshack reverb.

 

I saw that while trying to find out more about the unit! Had no idea it was infamous enough to spawn an emulator.

[Guest]

ok, two silly question to persons experienced with spring reverbs:

 

1, i reckon you can agitate the spring by hitting/tapping/throwing the box. correct? is that a potentially useful or a crappy idea?

 

2, do you think it's possible to make the spring oscillate, mechanically for instance, and would that be a potentially useful or a crappy idea?

 

by useful i mean, do you get funnnn sounds out of that.

[LimpyLoo]

ok, two silly question to persons experienced with spring reverbs: 1, i reckon you can agitate the spring by hitting/tapping/throwing the box. correct? is that a potentially useful or a crappy idea? 2, do you think it's possible to make the spring oscillate, mechanically for instance, and would that be a potentially useful or a crappy idea? by useful i mean, do you get funnnn sounds out of that.

 

Spring reverb is kind-of a one-trick pony. Maybe two.

 

Essentially, it's only ever shaking a little or shaking alot.

 

When it's shaking a little it's kind-of a drone or a hum. When it's shaking alot, it sounds like a sort-of crashing/whipping/bitcrush explosion sound with echo on it. Then I suppose there's all of the gradations in between, but essentially it's either/or.

 

I spent alot of time with a Roland Jazz Chorus amp and Fenders tube amps with spring reverb, and I actually broke my toe kicking amp across a stage at a show, trying to get a cool sound from the spring reverb. It sounded cool.

 

But yeah, I love spring reverb and the role it has played in the history of music like Motown and psych rock and all that, but it is really a one (or two) trick pony.

 

 

(I'm gonna use spring reverb alot when I start recording on the Tascam 388, probably give it it's own track and sidechain it. good stuff)

[Guest]

okay lol, sounds like a fun gig with that toe.

hmm i'm gonna read on diy spring/plate verbs a bit, might be a fun project to build one. it would be kind of nice to have one that can be automated, for instance a plate which is bent in different ways by servos, driven by an arduino, controlled by midi.

 

i have modded a bunch of old film projectors so they can be controlled via midi, as sort of an analog/digital reactive audio visualisation system... it would be fun to build analog/electroacoustic, programmable audio generators/fx too...

 

related but offtopic: consider this modern church organ, it's a huge thing, has lots of mechanical sound generators and can be played either manually or completely automated

[LimpyLoo]

There are some great spring reverb vst's.

 

 

What is your setup? DAW or external/hardware?

[Guest]

ima bit weird maybe, i only use hardware (currently solo machinedrum) and if it's software on any computer platform it must be written by myself.....

 

it's fun sequencing the projectors with the MD, a sort of unlikely juxtaposition of technology....

 

so my interest is directed towards the potential fun in building a stupid reverb robot with potentially interesting results, rather than a pragmatic spring reverb sound solution :]

[LimpyLoo]

Ooh sexiness. Machinedrum looks fun.

 

So yeah, forget vst's. Get yourself the REAL.

[ZoeB]

1, i reckon you can agitate the spring by hitting/tapping/throwing the box. correct? is that a potentially useful or a crappy idea? 2, do you think it's possible to make the spring oscillate, mechanically for instance, and would that be a potentially useful or a crappy idea? by useful i mean, do you get funnnn sounds out of that.

 

1. Yes, that's right. I only did this once or twice, but as far as I remember, it sounds clangy and metal and twangy, but nowhere near as loud as you'd expect considering it's usually not moving enough to be visibly vibrating while in use. I couldn't see much musical application for it, though, so I mounted my spring reverb in my synth's case, hence I can't currently do this anymore, but it's much neater and tidier, so I'm happy. If you want interesting noises using the reverb as an effect, just send it a brief burst of white noise or whatever. Even the click at the start of a note being played on a patch with too short an attack on it sounds nice (in my opinion) through a spring reverb. I believe my forthcoming track Kiruna features an example of this.

 

2. Well you'd need to vibrate the spring consistently, which is kind of what you're doing anyway when you feed an oscillator's output into its input. It constantly translates that voltage into a physical position and back. So basically, with a very minimal patch, of just an oscillator going through an attenuator (fed by an ADSR envelope generator) into the spring reverb is itself enough to sound interesting, yes, but then you still might as well go the whole hog most of the time and play a more complex patch through it. I can't remember exactly offhand, but I believe that in my also forthcoming track At Peace, there's a short bass solo with interesting, organic harmonics being introduced by the spring reverb, with it otherwise being a pretty sparse patch.

 

I guess an interesting, related point is that the spring, being a vibrating physical object, must have a resonant frequency, and once you find that, it might be a fun idea to use it as the root pitch of the key you're playing in...

[Guest EleminoP]

 

1, i reckon you can agitate the spring by hitting/tapping/throwing the box. correct? is that a potentially useful or a crappy idea? 2, do you think it's possible to make the spring oscillate, mechanically for instance, and would that be a potentially useful or a crappy idea? by useful i mean, do you get funnnn sounds out of that.

2. Well you'd need to vibrate the spring consistently, which is kind of what you're doing anyway when you feed an oscillator's output into its input. It constantly translates that voltage into a physical position and back. So basically, with a very minimal patch, of just an oscillator going through an attenuator (fed by an ADSR envelope generator) into the spring reverb is itself enough to sound interesting, yes, but then you still might as well go the whole hog most of the time and play a more complex patch through it. I can't remember exactly offhand, but I believe that in my also forthcoming track At Peace, there's a short bass solo with interesting, organic harmonics being introduced by the spring reverb, with it otherwise being a pretty sparse patch.

 

I guess an interesting, related point is that the spring, being a vibrating physical object, must have a resonant frequency, and once you find that, it might be a fun idea to use it as the root pitch of the key you're playing in...

 

It's also some fun to run a feedback loop through the spring and using an equalizer in the feedback path to get different pitches. A cool project would be a digitally controlled equalizer and some software to digitally tune the spring.

[Guest]

hmmm how about modifying the spring's fixture while it's in use..? i.e. changing its length, motor controlled...

but from what you guys say, it seems to make a bigger difference in sound by modifying the audio input/output directly, eq, feedback etc...

 

basically though, it's kind of like an electric guitar string, agitated by the audio input, and its vibration is then picked up electromagnetically...?

[ZoeB]

It's also some fun to run a feedback loop through the spring and using an equalizer in the feedback path to get different pitches. A cool project would be a digitally controlled equalizer and some software to digitally tune the spring.

 

Now there's an idea! Yes, a spring reverb feedback loop with a bandpass filter in it sounds like a fun thing to try, both with the cutoff point swirling around, and with it being set to a tonal pitch. (Although with a static cutoff point, you need to ride the feedback knob very carefully to avoid distortion.) You could multitrack these for chords, for a very odd kind of pad sound... Interesting.

 

Here's an example of something similar I did a while back, with a BBD delay and three bandpass filters swirling around:

 

https://soundcloud.com/doggiedogster/alien-feedback

 

It works very well as an interesting background noise behind a slow track, IMO.

 

Hmm, does anyone know where I can get a Eurorack filter module that responds to exactly 1V/oct? (I have a feeling I've asked this before and ended up using Thor for pitched noise, but there's no way I can mix software and hardware in a feedback loop like that, and I don't know enough to make a bandpass filter either.)

[ZoeB]

hmmm how about modifying the spring's fixture while it's in use..? i.e. changing its length, motor controlled... but from what you guys say, it seems to make a bigger difference in sound by modifying the audio input/output directly, eq, feedback etc... basically though, it's kind of like an electric guitar string, agitated by the audio input, and its vibration is then picked up electromagnetically...?

 

I have no idea how pulling the spring more taut would affect it. You'll have to try it and get back to us!

 

Well personally, I'm content to use rather than abuse the spring reverb. It's an interesting, distinctive, metallic kind of reverb sound and I'm content with that. But if you want to experiment with mangling it in interesting and creative ways, I definitely wouldn't want to get in the way of that. You might even stumble across some interesting effect that no one else has tried before. Plus, really, new inventions are generally abuses of old ones originally. It's not like oscillators were "supposed" to be used to make something as frivolous as music. :D If you can think of an interesting, quirky use of something, by all means try it out, especially if no one knows what it will do.

 

Yes, it's just like an electric guitar string, as far as I understand. Instead of changing a physical vibration into electricity, you're changing electricity into a physical vibration and back again. So for a brief part of its journey, the signal in the synth gets to be larger scale physical movement instead of electrons moving along, adding a wonderful layer of organic depth to it, with unpredictable overtones and subtleties.

 

I very much recommend having a spring reverb (and BBD, for that matter), if you're getting into quirky, oldfashioned, analogue effects. I'm using mine all the time now, and I like to think it gives my latest music (coming out next year) a wonderful, almost BBC Radiophonic Workshop kind of sound to it.

[marf]

maybe ; http://www.ear-group.net/model_11.html

 

you just need the VC of the bandpass to be exponential. (i think) Maybe a kenton pro-solo would take care of the exponential CV.

[DerWaschbar]

Bad link?

[Salvatorin]

check out this sweet diy spring reverb teknique

 

[Guest]

^excellent

[xox]

Yes, quitey noise!

 

P.s. Id so gladly abuse vermona spring verbs... Evvv err yy daaaa y

 

*needs some money*

[joshuatxuk]

nice bump Salvatorin

 

I totally got off track and never bought a spring reverb, but that post and some other posts/research have made me realize I can find a cheap DIY option whenever I decide to mess around with one

[marf]

I use a barcus berry contact mic and a sound transducer. You can make anything a speaker. A copper pot, a mewtal pipe and the barcus picks it up. Nice for feedback too.