Making a reverb tank into an instrument

[Lumpy]

Reverb pan? I have an aluminum tray/springs/wiring (wires currently terminate in a clip). How complicated would it be to make a reverb pan into an instrument like this (minus the filter section/bells/whistles):



http://www.analoguehaven.com/knas/theekdahlmoisturizer/

Complete novice re: electronics, so please be gentle/type slowly  

(I should explain - it generates a sound if you rub/strike the springs - if that isn't clear). Just want a bare-bones version of this.

[mortlock]

looks easy enough to construct..

[Lumpy]

Not for me. Mongo not smart.

The Moisturizer is bad-ass by the way, I just hesitate to buy it for 400 dollars (somebody posted that their spring snapped off, on the noise forum. It's not all that sturdy. But the filters add a lot of excitement, too).

[spookstrickland]

You will need to build a driver and recovery circuit for it then you can run it into just about any effect you you want.  There are plenty of schematics on the web for the driver and recovery circuit and you can go either tube or solid state.

[Hemisaurus]

As an instrument, without the bells and whistles, you just need to hook it to an amplifier.  If your pan has RCA type jacks on it, all you need is an RCA TO 1/4" cable. Connect cable to pan, connect cable to amp, strike pan, if you don't get a doing, connect cable to other end of pan

Thats it.

[Metal and Beer]

I saw a noise band that did that to dubious effect. (The Monsters of Pot...two cats from Wisconsin I believe)...it sounded kinda cool? They had tanks mounted to plywood and were manipulating the springs with small mallets an' shit...

[Hemisaurus]

I saw a noise band that did that to dubious effect. (The Monsters of Pot...two cats from Wisconsin I believe)...it sounded kinda cool? They had tanks mounted to plywood and were manipulating the springs with small mallets an' shit...

It's a classic dub effect, I remember seeing a hardcore band, and their vocal PA had a spring in it, and they must have kept the reverb level up on full, every changeover someone would knock into it and there would be thunderclaps.

For anyone who is interested in the technical side, the little transducer that drives the springs, is made like a small speaker and is generally 8 ohms, the pickup (contact mic) at the other end is a high impedance, around 10Kohm say, so to drive it, as a reverb, you need a small amp, in tube cases, you'll have a small output transformer for the reverb, and then to hear it, you need another amplifier circuit. So if you are just doinging the springs, just hook the output up to an amp, presto.

[Chovie D]

I think Lumpster wants more than just the thunderclap bump into reverb tank sound. That one in the photo has oscillators and stuffz.
as a kid we used to smsh our fender reverb amps in the side on For Those About to rock to get teh cannon sound..its was so kewl.

Ive always wanted to combine my interet in scuplture with my interest in musical instruments by making new instruments like that..but somehow Ive never gotten beyond just the notion that it would be a fun thing to do. I recall seeing Nimrod and they had a chick who played a baking pan filled with large steel ball bearings. The pan had a 1/4 inch jack on it and some kind of pickup somehow, maybe like those small ones they make for acoustic guitars or banjos?...and she would roll the bal around in the tray and have it going thru a bunch of effects.  stuff like that but maybe even more elaborate and complicated interested me

[Hemisaurus]

Yeah all he needs is to hook it into an amp, either solder a jack onto it, twist an old cable with a 1/4" plug on it to it, or whatever.



DOING!!!

[Lumpy]

^ He's got pickups there, no pickups with my device. Also, no transducers as far as I know. It's got an in and out wiring, I see that. What is going to convert the 'ding' into an audio signal?

I do have a Radio Shack reverb unit with In/Out jacks, maybe I can run the springs through the reverb's loop?

According to this thread, the specs on the tray are
"the Input ohms are only 190 Ohms and the output is only 600 Ohms."
http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=1004739

belton bs3ba2e
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110727222881+#ht_716wt_1398

[Discö Rice]

Cool stuff, Lumpy. I look forward to seeing this thing in action.

[spookstrickland]

^ He's got pickups there, no pickups with my device. Also, no transducers as far as I know. It's got an in and out wiring, I see that. What is going to convert the 'ding' into an audio signal?

I do have a Radio Shack reverb unit with In/Out jacks, maybe I can run the springs through the reverb's loop?

According to this thread, the specs on the tray are
"the Input ohms are only 190 Ohms and the output is only 600 Ohms."
http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=1004739

belton bs3ba2e
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110727222881+#ht_716wt_1398

I'm pretty sure you are going to need a driver circuit to get  any sound out of it.  check out this article.

http://sound.westhost.com/project34.htm

[Chovie D]

^ He's got pickups there, no pickups with my device. Also, no transducers as far as I know. It's got an in and out wiring, I see that. What is going to convert the 'ding' into an audio signal?

http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=1004739

belton bs3ba2e
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110727222881+#ht_716wt_1398

i recently had to replace a reverb tank in a head and I think i remember that the transducers are super tiny and fragile, perhaps either the orange or red things in that photo?
That spring guitar is cool lookin Hemi.
i got a full blown metal shop here. I got a telecaster body and neck that was in a fire. I got two chinese P90's and a hotrail that arent doing anything. I have one or two tuning pegs and a bunch of toher crap. what should I make?

[Lumpy]

i got a full blown metal shop here. I got a telecaster body and neck that was in a fire. I got two chinese P90's and a hotrail that arent doing anything. I have one or two tuning pegs and a bunch of toher crap. what should I make?

A guitar?

[Discö Rice]

i got a full blown metal shop here. I got a telecaster body and neck that was in a fire. I got two chinese P90's and a hotrail that arent doing anything. I have one or two tuning pegs and a bunch of toher crap. what should I make?

[VOLVO)))]

Chovis, send me the fire tele... want want want want...

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

[Chovie D]

i got a full blown metal shop here. I got a telecaster body and neck that was in a fire. I got two chinese P90's and a hotrail that arent doing anything. I have one or two tuning pegs and a bunch of toher crap. what should I make?

strap a couple fleshlights to that thing and were gettin somewhere.

Im definetly gonna do something with the fire tele, its too cool looking not to, neck might not be perfectly straight anymore tho ..haha.

[Hemisaurus]

The spring bass is not mine, I don't have any instruments so far gone I can contemplate doing that to them, I'd probably do it with a pickup on a plank of wood instead.

The H&K reverb, if it's the same as the last H&K I worked on (a Vortex I think?) is supended by two springs that clip into two holes on the chassis of the amp, and Like Chovie said the transducers, on all reverbs, are kind of fragile, but if you've got wires, you've got transducers. You will get an electrical signal out either transducer, but the louder one will be the output. If you don't intend to put it back in the amp, just cut those clip connectors off and splice an old guitar cord onto it, plug into amp, doing springs.

Spook, if you want to drive a signal through the reverb, then indeed you need a driver circuit, it drives the springs and makes them reverbrate. If however you want to use the springs as the instrument (think of the springs like strings on a guitar) then you do not need a driver circuit, you just need an amplifier on the output of the tank / springs.

I am not going to pull a reverb tank out of a working amp, just to show you this, and unfortunately yesterday's amp was a digital reverb, and today's has no reverb atall, if one with a reverb tank crosses the bench, and no-one else has actually done this by then, then I will make a video.

[Chovie D]

well back to lumpys pic up top.

Could Lumpy take his reverb pan and take the two rca outs, run them into an adapter or even small mixer to combine and transistion to 1/4 jacks, then plug that into his homemade oscialltor and other effects and bascially have something close to whats in that pic above?

[Hemisaurus]

That isn't Lumpy's reverb pan, that's a $400 plaything.

If he had RCA's he wouldn't even need to cut up anything, one RCA -> 1/4" cable would do the job. He has a couple of springs in a little tray, with maybe another couple of dangly springs to attach it to the amp chassis. Some yellow plastic too, if memory serves. I had one in pieces for about 18 months, while H&K failed to send me parts.

[spookstrickland]

The spring bass is not mine, I don't have any instruments so far gone I can contemplate doing that to them, I'd probably do it with a pickup on a plank of wood instead.

The H&K reverb, if it's the same as the last H&K I worked on (a Vortex I think?) is supended by two springs that clip into two holes on the chassis of the amp, and Like Chovie said the transducers, on all reverbs, are kind of fragile, but if you've got wires, you've got transducers. You will get an electrical signal out either transducer, but the louder one will be the output. If you don't intend to put it back in the amp, just cut those clip connectors off and splice an old guitar cord onto it, plug into amp, doing springs.

Spook, if you want to drive a signal through the reverb, then indeed you need a driver circuit, it drives the springs and makes them reverbrate. If however you want to use the springs as the instrument (think of the springs like strings on a guitar) then you do not need a driver circuit, you just need an amplifier on the output of the tank / springs.

I am not going to pull a reverb tank out of a working amp, just to show you this, and unfortunately yesterday's amp was a digital reverb, and today's has no reverb atall, if one with a reverb tank crosses the bench, and no-one else has actually done this by then, then I will make a video.

Cool that makes sense.

[Chovie D]

That isn't Lumpy's reverb pan, that's a $400 plaything.

If he had RCA's he wouldn't even need to cut up anything, one RCA -> 1/4" cable would do the job. He has a couple of springs in a little tray, with maybe another couple of dangly springs to attach it to the amp chassis. Some yellow plastic too, if memory serves. I had one in pieces for about 18 months, while H&K failed to send me parts.

I understabnd that the first pic isnt lumpys. Its a pic of what he would like tho (or smiliar) and he has teh reverb pan and wiring. Can he put a 1/4 inch jack on the end of his wiring (or an rca) and plug it into his oscialltor? He has an oscillator that I think he built himself and a string of effects.

[Hemisaurus]

If he wants to rub the springs and hear that sound, he can plug it into an amp, if he wants to plug it into an oscillator, and use it as some sort of controller, you'll need to setup the output into some kind of control voltage, and build the oscillator so it responds to a control voltage.

I don't see any mention of plugging it into an oscillator, I read it as he wanted just the springs available so he could just plug it into an amp, or plug it into other effects or whatever and use it to generate sound. To plug it into an oscillator would be a whole other ball of wax, it would become a controller. To run an oscillator through it, you'd need a driver circuit, so see the link Spook posted, you could run an oscillator through it AND play the springs at the same time, if that's the case it's probably easier to get an amp with a spring reverb on it, and just extend the cables so you can mount the spring 'verb on the outside of the amp. Or see how hot the output of the oscillator is, if it can drive a small speaker, like a pair of earphones, it might be enough to drive the springs, maybe you could user a mini-amp chip like the LM386 to drive the springs.

[Chovie D]

I don't see any mention of plugging it into an oscillator, I read it as he wanted just the springs available so he could just plug it into an amp, or plug it into other effects or whatever and use it to generate sound.

I took the picture he posted as an indication of what he was hoping to acheive. PLus I know a little bit about what kind of music lumpy does so thats how I arrived at the conclusion he wanted to build a device similar to the pic he posted. maybe he'll  come back and clarify exactly what he wanted tho.

[Hemisaurus]

Well I think either eventuality is covered?