The idea of using a headphone amp is simply amazing! Even the most basic and crappy sounding one should work absolutely fine for this, making a stereo spring reverb very affordable.
I use an old harmon kardon hi fi amp's headphone out to split a stereo signal to two units, also using its speaker outs to power a plate. It's nice because I can use the amp's bandaxall eq on the way in as well as drive it into saturation. rad as hell sound!
I bet you’re going to use a plastic drain pipe and stick a slinky in it, if not you should. When I were a lad, it was called a GBS (the Great British Spring). I used one for years and it was wonderful. I very stupidly gave it away to a mate, when I got my first digital reverb, the original Alesis Midiverb, the one in the weird little plastic box. I’ve always regretted it, they go for about a grand on eBay, these days and nobody with any sense wants an old Midiverb. Keep up the good work, chaps, I’m loving this.
Thanks for this. Little bit of a tip for the recovery circuit I came across whilst experimenting. A cheap phono preamp (I'm using a behringer pp400 for £20, plenty of others out there), designed to boost/convert phono signals from a turntable to line level seems to work really well, and is a really cheap way to get a decent gain boost with correctish impedance without noise. The connections are all RCA, it's all stereo, the impedance of the input of phono preamps is relatively high compared to the spring tank output, the gain boost with them is decent/gets it up to line level - with an output impedance designed for connecting to line level equipment. Only *slight* drawback is these preamps have RIAA eq baked into them, but that's not neccesarily a bad thing as it seems to help with high end noise - and besides you're just going to eq the verb in the DAW anyway. Currently doing this and it sounds fab. Hope this helps someone.
That all makes sense if your plugging it into your studio rack gear. What if I want to use it outside of another amp like a traditional pedal? How do turn the reverb up and down?
At the studio I learned in, the spring reverb was a 6' length of PVC drain pipe leaning in the corner of the control room! Hitting it with the chair was a memorable experience!!! 😁
Hey! Since I am trying to build an acoustic reverberating object that does not require any electricity, I wonder how this pvc pipe reverb that you mention was built. I am curious. Can you please give me some detail?
@@lcuxi I didn't build it of course, I just had it explained to me, and used it in recording. There was very little to it, it was basically a piece of PVC pipe with a spring in it! The wiring was in the end caps, you can buy them from the hardware store that sells the piping, and they'd hooked it up to the patch bay so you had 1/4" TRS input and output sockets. What they did for a spring, I don't know, I assume that they bought wire, and made a spring to fit. It's just an oversized version of what you find in the bottom of an amp, or what's described in this video. 🙂
Can the headphones out from an analog synth drive the spring reverb enough? And if so can it then be rerouted back into the synth's input or should it go through a DI first before going back into the synth's input? Like the old minimoog trick of feeding its headphones output back into itself but then instead also inserting the reverb tank into that feedback loop?
I had an enormous Spring Reverb pedal. Well, actually, it was an ancient Eminar six channel 200w powered mixer with a spring reverb tank inside. The mixer was nice but a little noisy and VERY heavy. I hadn't used it for a couple of decades and then decided to try to use the reverb signal for guitar. It worked using the available ins n outs of the old thing and sounded pretty cool BUT was a lot of effort to set up and being large as well as heavy was quite cumbersome. I As we moved states recently I gave it to a gigging musician who planned to use the mixer for foldback. Had I seen this video 12 months ago I'd have stripped out the reverb tank and followed your instructions. Timing is everything.
Another thing you can do as well is put some cotton balls on the springs to tame the tail of it and you can really exaggerate the reverb on the mix without drowning in reverb.
the part that makes it difficult is the sway of the reverb, you will hear it when the signal goes through is. If you were to side chain the spring reverb so that it ducks the reverb when the vocals are not singing, then the sway of the reverb could be audible on the release or gate rather said... I think that does not sound very appealing. But for many applications I do like the thickness and texture of the hardware spring reverb tough! As any reverb type, it is coherent to the style and era of many genres of music imho..
At 13 years old I had a H&H PA Amp. If you bumped into it.the spring reverb inside made a fantastic noise, so we used to do that on purpose. There were only 3 TV channels in the UK at the time and the internet hadn't been invented.
I've been toying the idea of building myself a spring reverb exactly as you described for a long time. I guess it's time to finally do it. Thanks for the push !
This is great! I never knew the history of spring reverb. I just always knew that I really hated it 🤣. Seriously thank you very much for this video. I learned something today 👏👏👏👏👏👏
There is definitely something magical about making something yourself and the more Heath Robinson the better! Does anyone else remember making those DIY fx kits that companies like Maplin used to sell? You'd get a small pcb board, a load of components and a photocopied sheet of instructions. A few hours and a couple of solder burns later and you'd have a phaser! 😃
At the start of the pandemic I went full-on guerrilla and built one of these from an old 4" speaker and a shower heating resistance attached to it... on the other end of the spring, earbuds as pickups. All housed into a DIY wooden box, built to the 70s dbx decilinear series style - even the paint was DIY, powdered graphite mixed with glue. The sound was pretty boxy, sig/noise ratio was narrow but it was fun nonetheless. Your video inspired me to do it again, properly this time.
Thank you guys for the very informative, straight-to-the-point video. 'twas a pleasure to watch! Looking forward to the next one on the bigger spring :)) Thanks for making these, highly appreciated!
The model number has long gone! But as long as the impedance roughly matches with what you’re driving it with you’ll be ok. Check our free PDF in the link for the necessary specs.
Got an acutronics 9EB2C1B tank providing spring reverb on my modular synth and always wondered why it was so quiet. Output ohms! Not what I was expecting to learn from this video, but so glad i didi! Thank you.
My first reverb was a Great British Spring, a small extra function was if you needed a thunder sound just give it a slap, hours of fun with that hitting it with different objects, being a piece of drainage pipe it was nearly indestructible, oh the memories, we eventually covered it with material, well it looked like a bit of drainage pipe screwed to the all after all, and our studio cat used it as a scratching pole, that sounded quite interesting sometimes and it did land on some records and even a couple of radio jingles
I have three 17" Gibbs reverb tanks laying about doing nothing. I was going to build a Dr.Z style reverb unit bu the input imedance with a valve circuit was impossible to find a transformer for so i was going to use the amp board from an old mushroom white, 90's Sound Blaster set of speakers!
This is such an informative video, thank-you. I picked up a 1970s Yamaha mixer upon using I discovered it had a spring reverb tank within it! I loved the sound so much, but the mixer is too big and heavy to lug around easily. Thanks again for this video!
As they say on the internet: “Today I learned…” And my first thought when you said “but what if you want a bigger reverb, a much bigger one” was “slinky, LOL”. I really did not expect to be right. Very much looking forward to *that* video!
Love it. I had an old Korg rackmount stereo spring years ago. leant it out and never got it back. The reverb/amp and little 10"speaker in my old Hammond M100 sounds great, and it is fun sometimes to run a line level through that via the little phone on the swell pedal housing and mic up the speaker - use a ton of electric tho...
Came across this vid and I was wondering: Wouldn't the headphone out of the Focusrite Clarett be powerful enough to drive the reverb tank? I got only one of the two in use.
I made a dual mono spring reverb using a small and large tank (I like the shorter 'verb on the left) I used an off the shelf £5 2x5W stereo amp circuit to accept my line signal and drive the spring tanks - I played with the amp's input voltage until I got the best sound.
My Park G10R combo amp had 2 springs in the reverb tank. Back in the 90's I did mess about with the springs a bit and damaged one of both, so a couple of years back I put a new reverb tank in the amp which has 3 springs. To be honest I don't think there was anything wrong with the old reverb tank as it sounded alright, but I think the new reverb tank is probably better with the 3 springs.
I just found an Accutronics spring reverb on the side of the road! Judging by the pile of junk which it was sitting on top of, it came from an old Hammond organ. However, the code is nowhere to be found on the unit... I'm just going to experiment with synthesizers that have a headphone output for now. Any cues from you guys? Thanks!
Hi, could I use Tone beast 12 pre amp to go through this then back in to my interface? Also could you recommend a code that would work with that set up please? Great video as always 👍
Brilliant, really keen to have a go at this! Very confused though?? In this video you suggest that a 4B/CC… is the preferred tank but the pdf states that a 4EB… is the one to get?? Struggling to get my head around impedance numbers so could you please clarify which tank is best for a headphone output driven tank returning to an interface mic pre as in this video?? Thanks!!
I'm a little confused, in the video you note a type B or C (150-240 ohms) input is ideal for feeding from a headphone amp, but the in PDF it's noted that a type E (600 ohms) is highly suitable for feeding from a headphone amp. Would both of these input scenarios work sufficiently? Thanks.
crappy speaker, metal plate, electret mic -> plate reverb. these old days were full of advaantures people with great electronics knowledge. nice to see someone living it up again. on the next episode: build your own 12v single stage tube saturator for less then 50 bucks :>
The like button doesn't do this video justice! You covered everything!! Like EVERYTHING. I thought i got the gist about halfway thru...but glad i didn't click away... the breakdown of the meaning of each digit of the tanks has saved me weeks and £££££ Subbed and coming back for more real soon...thanks a million!
I have a couple of 4-way headphone amps I'm not using, so the madness is well within reach. Now I just just need to find four slinkys, some blutak, a cooker exhaust that mum's finished using, some butterfly nuts n bolts, and bob's me ankle. I used to love the spring in my careworn JC120 that would sproingle any time the cat sat on it.
As 4-sprung dork techniques go, a ‘spring’ reverb is all very well... but a ‘summer’ one sounds warmer. For those who cannot afford those full-on large neckless affairs, try asking your paramour for a quick back alley fumble, in return for a bag of chips and the bus fare home.
"No unit leaves the factory without each one being expressly cat tested and cat approved. Accept no imitations. If it isn't stamped paw certified on the box, bury it in the sand box with the rest of the refuse."😀
Nice! I’ve considered doing something similar with a file cabinet for plate reverb using piezo sensors but I don’t really know the specifics of how to put it together.
Good video 👍. My first reverb was a Great British Spring Mk2 - a 3-foot drainpipe with a pair of spring units inside. Made a great thunder effect if I gave it a gentle kick. Smooth sound for a spring but I could get it to boing if I wanted.
Thanks so much for this, I've had a pair of Accutronics type 4s in a drawer for ages. Number on one of them is not entirely legible but thanks to your PDF I now know they are completely different. One horizontal & one vertical + plus massively miss matched input impedance. Both long decay though. So mono it is then!
Hmm, thought I commented already, maybe I didn't hit 'comment' or I said something wrong? I was thinking that an external soundcard like the Behringer UFO202 would work as an inexpensive headphone amp to run the reverb. I have an old non-working amp that I put a spring reverb into years ago that I will cannibalize for a test. I'll use an old USB 5.1 external Creative Sound blaster to provide the headphone amp and a usb power brick to power it. Should be fun
We never delete any comments, but sometimes they do disappear! And yes, that would work a treat - pretty much any headphone amp we’ve tried, even that in a cheap interface, has worked a treat 👍
I've got a spring tank in my eurrack but its mono, whats the best way to get in stereo ? also its intellegent kit and instead of moving it right to left it's moving it back and forth ... any difference? kind regards
A reason why many, and most of the ones I've encountered, have low impedance "send" transducers is owing to valve tech. They used a small valve output transformer for anode matching and the send part is seen by the driver stage as a 3 ohm speaker. I've RU-vids a reverb spring driver circuit of my own design, although I should submit an improved update. Whenever I've got around to using a reverb, I resorted to Zoom rack effects unit that does the same job to my ears but I still have a fondness for the old style tech. Nice upload. 🙂
