Turtlerock Forum

I saw an AKG bx15 going for about $750 ...

and a TCEM6000 for $7.5K (no wonder I like them - $s = good right???)

Actually I also really enjoy the UAD EMT140 though I haven't tried any of the other UAD verbs. Haven't tried that dual mono-stereo trick but I'll be giving that a try.

This is a great forum - after looking at all the gear that you gents use I went and ordered ...... something completely different and not mentioned in any of the posts above ...... o, yes, it will be mine .... and there will be photos with glowing blue tubes

Although it's not a rack.. I seriously dig the Strymon BlueSky reverb pedal.
Stereo in & out 24/96k and it sounds better than most hardware reverbs I've ever used.
It sounds so epic & grand.

These:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9910326/AA%20V ... everbs.jpg

you like? me like

Springs of ebay UK?

Have seen them in the past and wondered

Text_Edifice wrote:Springs of ebay UK?

Have seen them in the past and wondered

Similar Dave - got a few customisations done on this pair (now multi-tube line amps with or without reverb / or just reverb / TS and XLR I/O)

wonder no longer - they are delicious (if you like that big Pinewood Studios sound of the 60s - oh, I'm a shameless name dropper)

I'm not totally clear whats happening in that photo and who are springs of ebay? Those preamps look like old ferrograph units too.

Drumstruck wrote:

Text_Edifice wrote:Springs of ebay UK?

Have seen them in the past and wondered

Similar Dave - got a few customisations done on this pair (now multi-tube line amps with or without reverb / or just reverb / TS and XLR I/O)

wonder no longer - they are delicious (if you like that big Pinewood Studios sound of the 60s - oh, I'm a shameless name dropper)

I had you pegged as an ebay trawler Myles - I recall seeing things like this a few times over the years (often advertised as tube pres in these odd cases). Always thought 'that's interesting'...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Valve ... 3ccc0328cf

Drumstruck wrote:I saw an AKG bx15 going for about $750 ...

Thats a good price for the bx15 if its working well, they are pretty hard to find and harder to find in good condition. I had to replace all the rubber shock mounting in mine as that had perished long ago. Lots of industrial rubber securing suspending the spring unit now...

And yes Dave, I'm a bit of an ebay trawler...

Looks like the gent took a photo of my units before he shipped them over (mine weren't ebay units btw) - see the little wet/mix switch that was one of my custom requests - you guys have good eyes.

With the potential hassle involved in fixing up a 'vintage' spring I wonder what the cost would be to get something bespoke made.

Spring reverbs are a relatively easy build. All you need is a spring reverb and a DI box to start with but you could also make something more useable with a spring or a pair of springs (stereo) interfacing with JLM dingo kits. This will give you balanced i/o to the spring, makeup gain after the spring and you could put it all into a 2ru case with power supply. There are accutronic spring reverbs available with different lengths and density for different sounds. Sitting on a shelf for when I get back is a rack case with 4 springs and a pair of dingos. I'll set up the springs so that each channel can have 1 spring (either med or long), or 2 springs chained (v.long), or 2 springs in parallel (density). The reverbs will be interfaced by the dingos with DOAs feeding a pair of trimax output transformers. That will be a little more complex than a single spring but the idea is the same.

You would need an impedance matched power amp to drive the spring optimally though.

Are you talking about using the spring reverb into a DI? because whilst that's certainly not hifi, it works and gives a decent though coloured sound. You can drive the spring directly from a mixers aux out or from a sound card output. You can even use a transformer to stepup/down the necessary impedances on the i/o similar to the cool springs here: http://zerotronics.com/coolsprings/index.html

This looks like an interesting doover too:

http://www.knasmusic.com/products/moist ... urizer.php

The TC 6000 has 5.1 as well as stereo reverbs, so its flexible for both music an post-production. Very nice sounding and extremely flexible. Having 4 engines is a plus too

I have a Master Room 3 foot spring and an Ensoniq DP4 at my studio, along with stairwells and a nice big room, used with Effectrons, Revox B77's and a Boss DM 100 for delay and a TC one, SPX 90 and Boss DM 100 at work. Now I know the DM100 is a crusty delay, not a reverb, but I use it to pre delay the TC. It rounds off and warms up the reverbs.
I find this is the key for me. A great sounding reverb of around 2 to 3 seconds fed by pre delays through filtering of some sort and plenty of pre delay from a .....delay unit, along with limiting and de essing, sometimes even gating! I like the delay to have some repeats into the verb, so built in pre delay doesn't work usually. Sometimes the delay also goes to the mix buss, but often just feeds the reverb via a fader which feeds the delay back to itself post fader.
I find this approach can get good results from plug ins too. I rarely use any reverb raw, it is almost always manipulated with the above methods.
Also, short delays can sound like reverbs. I use that a lot on percussion and guitars. Often the client will tell me how they like the reverb on the handclaps/ congo, tambo etc. Confusion follows when I tell them there is no reverb on there. So we just talk about echo instead. That covers everything!

The short delay thing is good, I have an old Watkins Copicat I use as a short delay on vocals sometimes, and it sounds more like the vocal was recorded with a bit of tight room rather than a delay. You can also record 2 passes back into the daw and because of the randomness of the tape and motors it sounds quite wide.

One of the things I'm enjoying with the r880 is that it has separate blocks that can be configured in a variety of ways.

So, for example, you can have a delay and early reflections mixed at discrete levels into / on top of the 'body' of the verb (or verbs - 2xengines that can be run in series or parallel) and modulation can be applied to a couple of points in the chain as well. You can't setup shimmery feedback loops ala eno / lanois for some reason (at least not internally) but otherwise the freedom to route these components into / around each other is pretty cool and has given me some interesting ideas for using (even) stock logic plugs where the early / late reflections can be isolated and recombined using separate plugin instances.

PCM70 version 2.0... Tiled Room and Long Hall algorithms are my go to. Long Hall is not very 'realistic' but it's that classic warm and lush lexicon tail that suits my electronic music. It's also incredible for ambient music. Increase the decay time to say 20s, drown synths/samples in it with barely any dry signal, and viola sounds like Steve Roach / Robert Rich ! (kinda)

maybe not super high end... but what im used to, and gets my jobs done.
in my rack is:

YAMAHA REV 500 - i love yamaha reverbs for snares. and this is all this one every does
TC M1 - general purpose verb. toms etc. i love that you can have two different programs and blend between them (or in series) ends up sounding much more real to my ears
LEXICON PCM 60 - vocals, or whatever else. love it
TC fireworx - often on vocals, as you can really get "deep" in the programming and get exactly what you want

also have "spare" an ibanez analogue delay, another M1 and a D2 for whatever comes up that is required.

PS: id love to get a system 5000 or the like
you know - if anyone wants to give me one?
;-)

gigpiglet wrote:maybe not super high end... but what im used to, and gets my jobs done.
in my rack is:

YAMAHA REV 500 - i love yamaha reverbs for snares.

In my FOH days (so long ago!) the SPX90 was the king of snare reverb... I would borrow it from the rack to take home for recording/mixing, and hated it, it was horrible... then use it again in the FOH rack the next night and it was perfect. It bewilders me to this day.

Interestingly, I had the exact opposite experience with Lexicon and Alesis reverbs. It's as if there needed to be some sort of harshness in the algorithm for it to cut through in a live mix.

actually now that I think of it... don't the newer TC reverbs have a setting that effectively does make them more 'harsh', to sit in a live mix better?

and this one:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9910326/Dyncor ... 0Super.jpg