New ROG Design Plea! SPRING REVERB!

[Jaicen_solo]

I was thinking in the shower this morning (Fountain of all crazy ideas), why not have a ROG simulation of a Fender Reverb unit to go with the Professor Tweed. Not digital, real spring reverb with a proper pre-amp for colouration.
Ideally, it would use fets to model the pre-amp etc, and then perhaps power mosfets to drive the spring unit.
I'm not sure how feasible this would be, but I'd sure love one in my new amp project i'm getting at christmas!
I guess the springs could even be driven with a 3886 or something like the ruby??

What do you guys think? Feasible? Easy?

[Squeal]

Actually my first ever diy attempt was to externalize the spring unit from my crappy crate amp. Not a good first project. I had found a schematic online somewhere.....it never worked. In retrospect, I should have just wired longer cables to the unit and used the amp's drivers. 

[petemoore]

What do you guys think? Feasible? Easy?
  I like the idea, would probably sound great too.
  I worked with a reverb, using speaker as spring drivers, any amp to drive the speaker, and an amp as recovery.
  As long as you remember the input transducer is like a speaker and should be monitored while setup and testing is done [I blew a transducer], getting something to go with this isn't a huge challenge.
  I opted for a Stage Center Reverb recently, very nice project.
  Your idea of having a different voicing on reverb IMO is a worthy, good one, having some pre-control on what the transducer 'sees' is pretty certain to pan out as having val-use.
  Can't be any harder than building an amp of the right gain to drive the input transducer without blowing it/. and recovery unit, I'm not so certain what's ''in a recovery unit other than clean gain, I tried some Fuzz after Reverb, but there's plenty of 'wierd' coming from the spring output that I found the hash 'generally not desirable, cool for an occasional bit of noisy wierdness for sure. 
  I consider the spring tank an excellent purchase.
 

[Jaicen_solo]

Cool, so i'm not bonkers then!
I was thinking of using actual spring tanks. They really are cheap enough to not have to bother homebrewing.
I had an old Traynor amp that used transformers to step up the signals to drive an accutronics reverb tank. Apparently it was the same as used in old twin reverbs. That said, mine never worked so I can't tell you if it was good! I do love a good Twin though!
I think you're right about the drivers anyway, I guess they can be any old clean gain stages if all the colour is coming from the pre-amps.
I imagine that the ruby could be used to drive the springs, as it works with a 4ohms load quite happily, and can provide plenty of gain. I do actually like the idea of having a clipped signal drive the springs  Maybe i'll floor mount it so I can kick it too!

[squidsquad]

I had success using a Ruby to push a tank....a mosfet booster on the tank output...ran it into a Pignose & got good *wet*.  But ya gotta mix it in w/the *dry*....& things get a tad more difficult.

[squidsquad]

Forgot to mention...distortion sounded yucky...but you could try yourself.  Tone shaping might be nice.

[stm]

This is a driving and recovery circuit from PAIA: http://www.paia.com/hotspuse.htm. If you like you can skip the clipping indication section and use those op-amps for mixing wet and dry signals. It can't get simpler than this.  Do a Google search with the keywords "spring reverb schematic" and you'll find plenty of options.

Regards.

[Jaicen_solo]

OK, this is definitely do-able then! Any idea what IC is used in that Paia design?? I've only scanned that page, maybe it's elsewhere.
Looks to me like there's a lot more gain on the recovery stage than in the driver, which is quite interesting.
Anyway, this circuit should fit the bill quite nicely, once ROG get their finger out and draw up the Pre-amp/mixer design

[stm]

The driver and preamplifier IC should be an NE5532, which has reasonable current driving capability--needed for current-mode driving of the input transducer, and also has very low noise--needed by the titanic gain required on the recovery amp.

If you don't have an NE5532 you may try a TL072 or LF353 as well.

Regards.

[slajeune]

This also looks like a doable standalone spring reverb project:

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

Cheers,
Stephane.

[stm]

This also looks like a doable standalone spring reverb project:

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

Cheers,
Stephane.

I took a look at that project and all I have to say is it is SOLID. A complete solution. It is intended for higher than 9V ideally, but it says it could be operated down to 9V. Maybe power drainage will be several times that of a stompbox, so a power adapter is a good decision anyways.

[NoFi]

I have an old analog reverb, rack format, Torque TR2500,  with Accutronics tank, high/low inputs, one output, three band eq, volume, reverb, and footswitch.
It sounds great (uhm... transparent !? lol) and not too many components if i recall correctly.
And it can get really handy at times :

Let me know if you want pics of the internals... 

[Mark Hammer]

Did it sound better before those bottles were emptied, or after?