Replacing amp's reverb tank with something else?

[Jopn]

Slow day at work and my mind is wandering.  I did some searching but didn't come up with anything to answer my simple-ish question.

My amp's reverb is fairly lousy (Traynor YCV-20), so I'm going to try making something akin to the Stage Center Reverb.  But that leaves me with an opportunity to use that RCA out and in to my amp's tank open to extra-curricular activities.

From what I think I know, the reverb control on the amp blends in signal from the what it receives from the RCA connections.  I should be able to toss something like a deep blue delay in there and have it blend in some echoes instead, right?  Is there some impedance black magic that's going to mess me up when I swap in an active effect in place where a passive tank used to reside?

[mth5044]

In a typical amp, on the send to the reverb tank there is a circuit that sets the impedance and drives the signal into the pan as you need a fairly hot signal to make it through all dem springs. On the return, there is a recovery stage will boosts the signal back up to a useable level and also has equalization going on to get rid of the bass as well as whatever else the designer wanted.

I haven't looked at the Traynor schematic, but this is the premise of most, if not all, spring reverb circuits. I guess you could try and put a delay in there, but it won't opperate as a typical effects loop.

[Jopn]

That description sounds about right based on what I remember seeing in the Traynor's schematic.  I'll give it a shot and see how it goes.

No real goals to this experiment other than experimentation itself.  If a blending in a little short rate, medium decay echo sounds better for filling out my sound than the current tank, then that's a bonus!

[mth5044]

What dont you like about your amps reverb? There are a bunch of different size pans, spring counts and orientations that you could mess around with.

[Quackzed]

+1/\ yeah, i'd say tailor the reverb send returns for a better spring reverb pan. look at fender pans loads and alter the pre existing driver/recovery for the pan... probably minimal tweaking to get a 'good' pan running in your amp...
reasons being the stage center 'before' the preamp/amp is less than ideal and the pre-existing extra stages for reverb are there already- less making an apple into an orange, more making a bad apple -- well, good!
also, whatever other effect you stick in there, your likely to get used to and sick of and want to change and that invites endless tweaking and possible damage...
dont mean to try to dissuade you, just my 2c$.

[bwanasonic]

I have a ycv20wr from about 10 years ago and the reverb is pretty nice. I think the WR may have had a different tank or possibly a few variant parts in the circuit. So basically I second the advice to look at tweaking the reverb circuit and upgrade the pan. Does your model not have an effects loop?

[Mark Hammer]

I briefly had a late 60's solid-state Gibson amp that I bought at an auction.  I forget which model, but it was around 25W with a single 12" and reverb.  The reverb was simply awful.  Didn't matter what you played, it sounded like someone kicking the pan.  I found the series cap feeding the send to the reverb pan, and reduced its value to trim off some bass.  The change was like night and day.  It became airy and the sort of thing you didn't mind leaving on.

I mention this because the "problem" may not be the pan or its quality, but rather what you're sending it.  Think about whether a wee bit of tone-shaping to the send signal is in order, not to mention the drive level (what Fender would call Dwell) of the send signal.

[Jopn]

I have a ycv20wr from about 10 years ago and the reverb is pretty nice. I think the WR may have had a different tank or possibly a few variant parts in the circuit. So basically I second the advice to look at tweaking the reverb circuit and upgrade the pan. Does your model not have an effects loop?

Mine's the wr as well, probably same vintage as yours roughly (not the newer one with DI out on the back).

I didn't get a chance to play with putting an effect in there last night (got home after kids were in bed), but it seems there's a good consensus for giving the reverb a second chance.  It's definitely too "boing"-y and the usable range is very small (between 1 to 3 maybe).  I guess I could try a different taper pot.  Although I do like the idea of taking my signal probe to the reverb send to see if the sound going through that point is too bassy, which may be causing the springs to over-react.

Thanks!


John

[Mark Hammer]

Looking at the schematic, consider reducing the value of C31 ( http://traynoramps.com/downloads/servman/smycv20.pdf ), which is 100nf/100v.  Drop it down to 47 or 33nf, and you may find it more usable and less boingy.