Question about spring reverb

T

The Great Cobb

New member
I guess this could be in the DIY section or the effects section, but i figure its analog and many people here are technical so id rather have it here.

I have a spring reverb that came from an organ. There are no rcas just a grey wire and a white wire hooked to either side which im guessing is the input and output.

My question is, if i wanted to turn it into its own standalone unit, what would i need to do? My guess is that it needs a way to control the level of input going in, like a preamp or something. Does it need attenuation at the output stage as well?

My former roommate and i dragged this thing home from a thrift store years ago and i cant find any other spring that sounds this way. Its not like those ones you see that try to minimize boing noises with all kinds of clever tricks. Its primitive. And it sounds awesome. I swear it even blows away what i hear on old dub records.

I googled DIY spring reverbs but i couldnt find anything that definitively addressed my concerns enough to start gutting this organ. Finding another one like this would be costly and i dont want to ruin it. Could it be as simple as connecting RCA leads to the end of the input and output wires and just plugging them into a standard mixer?

Thanks for anyones help. I just blew a bunch of money on a standalone spring reverb that is about 1/10 as cool sounding as the one id like to get out of this organ and im getting frustrated in my search.
 
Ah

Ah, screw it. I think im just going to rip the thing out of the organ and try to make it work. I need to just get it over with.
 
It should be a low risk thing to mess with - all line level so there shouldn't be any problems if you hook it up wrong. Radio Shack sells short cables with alligator clips on them that are great for mocking up something like that.

One wire will be in, the other out, and the case will be the ground. Get some signal going, like from a mixer or CD player and put it through the thing, and then into an amp.

Usually whatever you are sending a signal to it from will have some volume control on it, ditto for the return. Like on a mixer for instance. So I wouldn't think you'd need a pre on it.

Sounds like a neat project.
 
Is what you have just the springs by itself, or are there electronics connected to the white and gray wires coming in and out? (If I'm reading your post correctly.) If it is **just** the springs themselves, then you need an amp going in and out, usually called driver and recovery, and you should be able to find suitable circuits on the internet for that. (Farily simple opamp) (I had some good links, but computer problems....)

There doesn't need to be a volume on it, you can control this from the aux send/return on your main board.

If there are electronics on either end of the wires, then you should be good to go, and it is probably already "stand alone" enough...I'd assume a line level in out, but I'd be careful not to hit too hard a signal starting out.
 
springs

Well, right now the thing is in a console style organ. And the two wires run from the organ to either ends of the reverb device which includes the entire mechanism, not just the springs. What ill have to do is remove it from the organ and cut the two wires and just figure out which is which (input/output). Then i guess ill wire it to a mixer and start out with very low volumes and see how it goes. If it works i might buy a few more of these old organs and take the springs out like this.

Im not a spring reverb expert or anything, but i think the reason these sound so crazy is that they are much bigger than a normal spring youd find in a fender etc tank. They also are only a single spring, not even two springs connected to make 1 spring like other reverbs. What it sounds like is a tape echo on a slapback setting but instead of the echos dying off like an echoplex does, the vibrations are going back and forth up and down the spring interacting with each other so that no two notes ever sound exactly the same in a very noticable way.
 
Sounds like a cool rig!
Some of those old organs have tube amps that I've wanted to mess with too.
 
reverb

I bought a Fostex 3180 in really good condition. It even has the rack ears on it. I took a look inside, its clean as can be. The thing works fine, its just not "cheap" enough sounding. The Fostex is smooth and pretty professional, but thats just not what im looking for in a spring. Im undecided as to whether i want to sell it or not.

So anyways i took the reverb out of the organ just now and wired it with RCAs and plugged it into my mixer. It worked! But there are a few problems i have to figure out. I need to figure a way to get the right kind of gain into the thing. Also, now that i know it works, it would be awesome if i could find a way to put it into a legitimate chassis with usable ins and outs. At the moment im having a hard time getting the right amount of gain to it, its either too little, or distorting.

But im pretty happy that it worked so far. I ran a cheap casio into it and tapped the "closed hi-hat" key.... instant boingy glory. It turns a simple basic "click" into almost an actual note. Its tough to describe the sound, but if you could imagine a tape echo that once the echos hit the "back wall" of the decay they come back the other way and pass through the ones that are still coming forward, and they interact tonally.
 
Also

I dont know the exact make and model, but its an old Yamaha console organ made for children. I suspect it was made in the 70s because the guts are similar to a Farfisa Compact, but the sound is much cleaner. Its not a great organ in the traditional sense, but it makes a few sounds that nothing else could replicate with the same exact character that it achieves effortlessly. Its really reedy, brassy, buzzy, or honky depending on the setting.
 
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