Reverb: DIY or buy?

[Steben]

I see many projects for delay, using different chips. Many tricks on how to expand the delay time...
Yet reverb (which uses very small delay) is a tougher nut to crack.
Are there simple reverbs using chips? Or should I buy a pedal?

The main use would be between a soaked tube amp and a small "PA" LM386 like amp

Spring tank? very nice, yet for the price of a tank only (no effect), you have a pedal (danelectro, behringer)

[kvb]

I just bought an EH Holy Grail PLUS, and I am very happy with it.  It is more versatile than the original.

For $140 US, There's just no way that I could build one myself that economically.

[DougH]

Depends on what kind of reverb you want. If you're looking for stereo studio type reverb I'd buy. Stuff like the holy grail, verbzilla and so forth are pretty inexpensive for what you get.

If you're looking for simple spring reverb, I'd get the danelectro spring king and then mod it like Uma Floresta did, so you can get better independent control of the reverb and delay. That is a really cool reverb that is cheap and Uma did a cool (and simple) mod job on it. Do a search for the thread- he has photos (and soundclips too IIRC).

So I guess I'd buy in either case.

[jacobyjd]

+1 on the Holy Grail.

[dschwartz]

i´ve been playing with the idea of a stompbox spring reverb, using a lm386 amp to drive a coneless speaker, which moves the springs..the springs at the other side are hooked to a piezo element wich converts the springs vibration in electrical pulses...

those pulses are then amplified, filtered, and mixed with the original signal..

PROS:would be
- pretty cheap and easy
- crispy reverb top end
- light and portable
- pretty controllable
- for "deep purple" reverb crashes fx, you just can kick the box 

CONS:
- find good springs for this
- needs a big enclosure (steel studs would work pretty nice for this)
- need mechanical skills (i´m not very good at that)
- is not a proven idea......

[DDD]

BUY!

[Mark Hammer]

Check over on the digital forum here for ideas about DIY digital reverbs.  That would be the only way to get acceptable reverb in SS form.

There is still much to commend about spring reverb, but it IS big, bulky and temperamental.

Many people still have reservations about digital pedals, but those reservations tend to come primarily from the quality of distortion sounds.  Reverb is one of those things that digital does, and has done, extremely well for quite a while now.  You can probably get pleasing reverb (though not necessarily the specific reverb/ambience flavour you want) from just about any budget reverb pedal, including the Behringer units and the Holy Grail or Holy Stain.  I was able to pick up a used rackmount Behringer Multi-FX with some nice reverbs for $50 and even picked up a Lexicon MPX-100 for the same price, also with plenty of nice reverbs.

To quote DDD: buy.

[Marcvv]

Hi Steben,

I have build the femtoverb a while back.
It works with the wavefront chipset (got a set thru puretube)
It requires some smd soldering (for the wavefront chips). It is doable. A lot of fun!! Not the greatest reverb however. (sort of picoverb/nanoverb)
It also needed some tweaking of the mix wet/dry to get the most of it. There is a thread about this http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=42305.0

There use to be a complete board based on the same chipset. ra-fx1 as far as I recall.

Hope this is of some help.

Best, Marc

[axg20202]

I have built the Stage Center reverb project at GGG. It's a solid state spring reverb. Works extremely well and runs off 9v with the charge pump included in the build instructions. I have it integrated into my 2x12 cab. I bought the tank from Small Bear, but you can often find used tanks on e-bay. The key to success is matching the impedence of the driver circuit to the impedence of the tank.

[markusw]

Has anyone tried the Belton digital delay?

See: http://www.belton.co.kr/index.php?mm_code=75
It is available via Banzai...

[rnfr]

i have the holy grail and it gets compliments all the time.  definitely worth every penny.
but, i have wanted to tackle the stage center and install it in my big traynor head though.

[petemoore]

  Digital: By far the easiest to get goin', Simple, effective, inexpensive, small, usable, featured, mass production/ownership =s plenty of reviews to help find it for you.
Analog: [er I think it is]..an 'Art Pro-Verb'
   Great deal I got on big 19''RM unit, 10bux, stereo, Proverb, does a 'cheesy-chip-clean', does great job on theremin, which is also rack mounted, 99 presets are all in the 'neither-region' between echo and reverb. 
  Spring The most DIY friendly of the DIY types.
  Chips or tube?, which tank?, various designs / design your own?.
  If you like thinking about stuff a lot, this is the one for you, too much to think about it to recommend any 1 circuit. I had my 5w recto-tube reverb w/accutronics medium tank, surf city was there, [took too much room and setup for gig/stage, not really controllable enough to warrant hauling it around], superb sound though.
  A Stage Center Reverb unit which was pretty good, a LM386 driver seemed better, tried a Power Mosfet Driver too and...all that jazz, not too bad to get some reverb happnin', fun to play around with.
  I think the size of the spring I like the sound of makes it most usable when installed in an amplifier.
  Dano:...gotta handit to the Danelectro combo-design for cool idea: offbeat but makes sense in a number of ways..
  Getting that long spring to act right...not too bad, tubes did it for me there, tends to be a bit sproingey sounding when set to medium amount of reverb, makes me think the Dano 'tight spring' design has advantage here.
  Analog, not for me.
  Digital..doing it again, I'd like to try the digital options.
  What I do now is...mostly:
  Augmented by VOXAC15's reverb, an echo-park for a more drenched tone. If only the feature I like best could be Reverb / Heavy, Longer Reverb/echo instead of: all wet // or nothing wet being the switch function. 
  Yupp, hafta say if that thing that can be housed and powered like a distortion makes cool pools of reliable wetness on the pedalboard [available through any amp chosen]...iow digital would be nice.
   

[MikeH]

Depending on how deep you want to go:

https://taweber.powweb.com/store/kits_50a.htm#5G15

[returntable]

Has anyone tried the Belton digital delay?

See: http://www.belton.co.kr/index.php?mm_code=75
It is available via Banzai...

I've seen those too, but unfortunately you can't find much info on the web and nobody seems to have made a layout yet.
It would be so interesting to hear sound samples of these.

[MetalGuy]

Are there simple reverbs using chips?

Yes, there are and there's more than a reverb in them. Check out the Femtoverb /AL3201B based/ thread in forum's digital section.
Check out  the FV-1 chip threads as well.
Some companies offer fully assembled digital multiFX units at reasonable prices.

[sean k]

I built a reverb, spring, unit years ago with a coupla 12SN7 tubes and a high impedance input tank from accutronics and found out that lush spring reverb sound is long tanks with lots of springs. Recnly though I picked up a 70's Hammond organ and that thing has a reverb box and a leslie so maybe soon I'll have another go but this time I'll use a Transistor amp driving a line transformer. To my mind digital reverb is more like what real reverberation really is whereas spring and plate reverb are an approximation that actually is a sound all in itself. I suppose, mechanically, the plate and the spring are essentially doing the same thing that sound waves do in a space except that space would be more like a big huge wall or a narrow long space so then the mechanical variations are specialised sound sources and they can't really be grouped with DSP algorhythms that calculate out the dispertion and return of sound waves in a specific space.

So they are both different and you can't have both... unless one is mechanical and the other is digital.

[markusw]

Has anyone tried the Belton digital delay?

Should have been digital "reverb" obviously... 

[cheeb]

Are there simple reverbs using chips?

Check out  the FV-1 chip threads as well.

This looks fun: http://tonepad.com/project.asp?id=68
Is this someone here?

[doug deeper]

i built a clone of the fender reverb for about $150.
and i looooove it.

[Steben]

WOW! look at this!

Chorus, flanger, reverb, ...
all in one assembled module...
Nice to put in in a nice custom stompbox!

http://www.profusionplc.com/products/RA-FX1V.html