who uses real spring reverbs and which ones?
i have a couple, but, i am only at liberty to chat about one at the moment.
the real tube reverb by TUBE WORKS, i like it: )

I've got that TubeWorks one as well..used on most things at some point...

Craig Anderton (or someone) published an article a million years ago in some magazine how to turn the ordinary Fender/Ampeg spring reverb pan into a line level device...I GOTTA find that.....

I'm thinking someone smart would take two of those, add a predelay circut, and make the mother of all stereo spring reverbs....add an ADDA onto it, call it the Wireline reverb, and send me the money.

send me the money
money, money, money

There's a bunch of stuff out there, and it all depends what you're looking for.

Dub bombs--built in to old PA boards, particularly Biamp. The occasional rackmount thing. All it needs to be is a spring reverb, and all it needs to do is drive the springs too damn hard on transients, and rattle around if you smack the unit. Really doesn't need to be anything special. The onboard reverb pans on Roland Space Echo's are good for this description, in addition to having the great dub tape delay.

Plate replacement--AKG Master Room (?) BX (?) stuff. Also the recent Demeter spring reverb tends towards hi-fi. The game here is well behaved spring systems that do not act like springs at their worst but at their best. Good techniques for this stuff include multiple pans with different decay-time characteristics, or sometimes the Anderton "Hot Springs" trick of pairs of pans wired out of phase to cancel bad behavior and noise, but preserve the random spring behavior that is the source of Reverb. I don't know the Orban unit to guess whether it falls here or above in "dub bombs."

Guitar reverb: the classic is the Fender 6G15 outboard reverb, which has been reissued, cloned, and modified/improved. Some "warm" character is part of the deal. Note that the classic 6G15 is a different topology than the Blackface/Silverface onboard reverb, and is much more apt at the classic surf guitar sound. Kendrick put out clones for years, WeberVST has clone kits and derivatives, and Matchless did a related but unique take. Also watch for the Peavey Valveverb--I'm not sure the topology it uses, but it hits a lot of the outboard-reverb vibe, throws in tremolo, and is a 1U rack-mount unit.

Worth thinking about: the Zero-Tronics passive reverb boxes. I haven't investigated thoroughly, but they are designed to take a line level and output to mic level to use your mic pres for make-up gain, which are likely otherwise unused at mix-down time. You can order with a mix of decay pans in the pans you order. Seems expensive for what it is, but good-looking packaging costs money, and they devised what transformers (good ones are also money) and such to do to make it work.

Bear

I use a reamping box and mic the reverb channel on my superchamp. Sometimes a little spring reverb is just what you need =)

The classic Fender outboard reverb that Ken points to is one of the best. The Kendrick copy is pretty good (as is just about anything by Kendrick).

Steve Beckett (aka the other Steve) made the funkiest reverb box I've ever seen. I bought the parts off of eBay for him. He put it together. It's the thing for Dub. I'll get some pictures of it and put it up. It should have it's own thread here. We'll put up some sound clips as well.

As Oz said I have the wickedest spring reverb ever.Ok he didn't say that but I did. I have half an article about building it, with pics and stuff. I have thought about putting something in Funky and Uncommon Recording Gear or DIY for a while. If youse guys want me to I would be happy to. There are no detailed articles as far as I can tell about using a Fisher "Spacexpander" and making a usable, patchable DIY spring verb.

In this thread at GS there is a pic of the finished product, the Ghede post.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gea...e-expander.html



And no I will not build it for you, it was a labor of love.....well ok gimmie $2,000 dollars I'll do it. But for free I can tell you how to do it....Steve B.

very cool! i think i may have one of those.
now, i will have to go thru some box's, i love going thru box's i have not looked at, in years sometimes i find some really cool stuff!

Ghede, absolutely post the project here!

For dub madness, complete kludged ridiculousness is fine as long as it sounds adequate, and usually the warts are even charming in that style. The key requirements for most reverb pans are input drive and output gain. Some of what will be ideal range depends on the impedances of the pan, in and out. Most guitar amp circuits have basically a small power amp for drive, and a preamp stage or two for makeup, so in a pinch a headphone amp and something like a DI-input will do you along with adapters to get to the RCA connections. Mess around with pre and post eq-ing to tailor the sound.

Bear

Ok,

I have a couple of Peavey PA heads with spring reverb. Reading this thread made me think that I can probably patch into them like an outboard reverb unit. They have aux in, main and monitor out, all at line level.

I'm not at my studio now so I can't try it. Next best thing. Type about it on mojo pie.

Thanks,

Hairy Larry

Here's the pics. I'm sure Steve B. won't mind. Steve B. has really good ears. And, this is a DIY project put together by a sound he was looking for moreso than great design. This unit sounds wicked.

I have one stand alone unit I use for out of studio work. AMS rmx 16. I love that unit. For studio I have your assorted plugin reverbs. All are good but I especially like the LexiVerb and the TC Works Reverb.

I've got an AKG BX-5 spring reverb which i use as my main vocal and non-percussive instrument reverb. Sounds really lush and sparkly in normal operation, more subtle than some units. I particularly like to use a decent amount of it on thin vocals with a tape-saturated high end for that 60s spooky vocal sound a la mamas'n'papas/dusty. The parametric EQ on board is great for sweeping through for trippy spatial effects, once used that on a drum machine to very weird(ie good) effect. I also like the spring reverb on my Roland RE-501 echo box - it's way more aggressive in terms of adding perceived size and dirt on a vocal, perfect for cartoon 'this is the voice of god' -voices and whatnot. The tape delay and chorus are pretty good too! A mic inside a piano with the sustain pedal down with a speaker pointing at the strings can be pretty cool too - as long as you can mic it up to avoid picking up the direct sound from the speaker. This goes for any weird-sounding box or room. I've also recently taken to the 'trashed room mic' approach to reverb - sounds spectacular on drums at any rate, surprisingly good on close-mic vocals too.