Passive Spring Reverb and impedence

[quote author="idylldon"][quote author="CJ"]I found this, how do you hook up the gate?

"Noise gating (which is just what it sounds like. A noise gate placed after a reverb device gets you that Hollies' "Long Cool Woman" vocal sound, or the ubiquitous Phil Collins "In The Air Tonight" drum sound). "

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I believe you just put the gate after the reverb and adjust it to cut off as much of the reverb tail as you find aesthetically pleasing. On snares, it seems to give the sound a bit more bite as the gate chops off the decay abruptly, which seems to add to the definition by temporarily adding some "space" in the mix.

Cheers,
--
Don[/quote]

Another way that a noise gate could be applied to improve a spring reverb's sound is perhaps use a very slow attack to cut off some of the leading reverb swell. One common problem with springs is that the first repeat occurs after only 25-35 mSec from the transient attack. Repeats after that are spaced 2x that or 50-70 mSec apart (time to transit back to the driver end, reflect, then transit to the receiver end again). In studios a common trick was to use a little pre-delay (maybe 50 mSec) on the reverb send to improve the sound.

JR

I recently modded a pair of Orban 111B spring reverbs. They have 6 springs per channel. I hooked them all up in mono and it is pretty smooth! the electronics on the other hand could be alot better. the limiter is best removed, there are also some ceramic disk COUPLING caps in there. and the output transformers really stink, the sound is much nicer without them. less blurry and noticably better headroom. I tried it briefly on some reggae horns with an outboard limiter and PCM-42 pre-delay, woah. these go pretty cheap sometimes.

Mike P,

Could you post a photo or 2 of how the spings are installed/hooked up? I want to compare it to the schematic I have of an Orban unit.

Thanks,

Craig

"the limiter is best removed"

Click to expand...

In your opinion, that is. I consider the "floating threshold" limiter to be one thing that makes the 111B so usable.

Speaking of spring reverbs:

Someone told me there was a spring reverb that enhanced the high frequency range like this:

Run input signal thru a crossover.

Low frequencies go thru an ordinary spring reverb.

High frequencies are shifted down by 5kHz (not sure about the exact value), using a frequency shifter / single sideband modulator technique.

The so processed high frequencies go thru another spring reverb.

Then, they are shifted up into their natural range with another SSB modulator.

Does anybody know which brand / model spring reverb used this method?
Schematics, even ?

JH.

Just some tips, on the stand alone unit, run a 12AX7 instead of AT7.
Add a 220 K resistor from each RCA jack to ground. This saves tubes due to runaway if jacks disconected. (shorts grid to ground)

Check the transducers where they attach to the pan, a lot of times, they come loose, which is mechanical negative feedback, and you lose signal.
Shim up the transducers with a toothpick or similar.

You could build a stand alone unit, and mod it for line also, so you would have a cool guitar reverb to use in the studio as well as a processing device.

Also, the original used a 6K6, get an RCA if you can.
6V6 works also, more watts. You will need some power to drive those springs.

cj