Anyone know anythingabout the Cooper timecube delay/reverb

A friend was talking to me about what I think was called a Cooper time cube delay/reverb. Which I`m told had a long coiled tube whic was fed with a signal at one end & had pick ups down its length.

Does anybody own or have any information about this ? I`m intrigued by it !!

> what I think was called a Cooper time cube delay/reverb.

You're giving me flashbacks.

Very funky, very useful for a very short period. Many studios have one in storage/junk-room.

Nothing to it. True DIY stuff.

Find a discarded garden hose. Cut off about 20 feet without big leaks.

Cut a 2x6 board about 6" long. Drill the center so the hose just fits.

Nail a 4" speaker over the hole. Stuff a wool sock in a heavy cereal bowl, butter the edge with goop, and drop it over the speaker. (Actually, you should run wires out of the speaker before you glue the back-chamber permanently...)

Get several 6mm Panasonic mike capsules. Drill 1/4" holes in the hose at odd intervals: 6', 10', 17'. Goop the capsules into the holes.

The signal off the mikes will be high, you may not need a preamp. You can probably just passive-mix the mikes. You do want to get a stereo mix, that's maybe the best use of the Time Cube.

Try leaving the far end open, sealed, or loosely stuffed with cotton.

Drive the speaker with any handy small amp. Probably does not need 1 Watt to get a heck of a level at the mikes.

Mix the mike signals with the original: they amount to "echoes", delayed and un-flat. You may need a heavy bass-cut to correct the speaker's rise when not not trying to drive the whole world, just a pipe. You may want some treble boost: the front-chamber is a ~800Hz low-pass. These EQs should probably be in the speaker-amp.

Wow, this is such an interesting thread. I want to try this at some point.

@PRR: did you actually build up one of these? Seems pretty easy, wondering how the results would be.

This might be interesting to read, it also shows the internal construction:
http://www.uaudio.com/blog/cooper-time-cube-power/

Thanks, this is also a good read:

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=106994.0

AFAIK the "cooper time cube" was not very good sounding (Imagine holding you ear up to a garden hose?).

Several decades ago, delay was prohibitively expensive so even a little delay was better than nothing. A distinctively different effect than early spring reverbs. 

A lot of equalization is involved to try to manage the obvious resonances.

Perhaps a distinctive sounding vocal effect?  I don't see much utility as a neutral sounding (short) delay.

JR

Here is the original patent dealing with the transmission line termination.  http://www.google.com/patents/US3789328

There's an AES paper from around 1960 by Olsen describing a more involved version of the time cube used as a variable decay "synthetic reverb." Its similar to the time cube but has 6 taps I think, and an electronic section for controlling feedback for each of the taps or maybe it was overall. Although its electromechanical, I think its the first "algorithmic" reverb with nested feedback loops. Its been on my to build list for a while! Imagine, something that could do the cooper time cube thing, and more.
I personally enjoy holding my ear up to a garden hose, but not while the tap is open- in that case I hold it up to my mouth.

While I don't know about the 60s, by the '70s there were some attempts to synthesize reverb using tapped analog delay lines. Not very successfully IMO. One studio trick that was possible back then that helped was to add a simple delay in front of a spring reverb increasing the time delay before the first slap or return.

Spring reverbs were about 35 mSec per pass, so adding 20-30mSec of analog pre-delay made an audible improvement to the reverbs apparent "size". 

Nowadays reverb and delay are cheap.

JR

Any link to the paper by Olsen?

Sorry, turns out its Olson with an o.
Here you go:
http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=535

Thank you