Judging from my experience with guitar pickups a strong magnet in close proximity to the strings will damp the vibrations , of course the tension on a spring is nowhere near what it is on a guitar string , the problem is if the spring becomes locked to the magnet and is no longer free to move and needs to be unstuck , other than that the principle should be effective .
The problem with the oils or liquids is the potential for mess and spillages,
I guess you could design a spring tank with a small reservoir mounted under the springs
and a priming bulb to pump the oil up so a meniscus forms in contact with the springs ,still going to be a bit messy though and oil would remain on the spring after ,
Remember theres plenty you can do electronically to change the sound ,
Combining multiple springs does a lot to fill out the reverb lushness , each spring has slightly different properties so when you combine two or more together the resulting sound has less of that flutter echo associated with tanks .
As far as spring recovery goes Ive tried many different ideas , traditional tube with a high Z transducer at the tank output, lo-z tank with step up to grid transformer , lower z transducers wired to a modern mic amp input in a balanced fashion . I found the cleaness of HF output of the spring increases with load , the higher the better , Typically I use an Active D.I. box for spring recovery ,
My new audio interface incorporates a balanced hi-z input to a very low noise mic amp stage , it could well make an improvement in noise over the standard D.I unbalanced connection ,
The problem with the oils or liquids is the potential for mess and spillages,
I guess you could design a spring tank with a small reservoir mounted under the springs
and a priming bulb to pump the oil up so a meniscus forms in contact with the springs ,still going to be a bit messy though and oil would remain on the spring after ,
Remember theres plenty you can do electronically to change the sound ,
Combining multiple springs does a lot to fill out the reverb lushness , each spring has slightly different properties so when you combine two or more together the resulting sound has less of that flutter echo associated with tanks .
As far as spring recovery goes Ive tried many different ideas , traditional tube with a high Z transducer at the tank output, lo-z tank with step up to grid transformer , lower z transducers wired to a modern mic amp input in a balanced fashion . I found the cleaness of HF output of the spring increases with load , the higher the better , Typically I use an Active D.I. box for spring recovery ,
My new audio interface incorporates a balanced hi-z input to a very low noise mic amp stage , it could well make an improvement in noise over the standard D.I unbalanced connection ,
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