Build a plate reverb

[überfuzz]

I'd like to build a plate reverb, just for fun, as always. Anyone here with any experience regarding plate reverbs?

[Enzo]

Wow, now there is a project.

Sorry, no insights to add though.


Next step, build an actual echo chamber.

I recall decades ago in my college dorm, the stairwell (6 floor building, stairs around an open space the full height, block walls) had just a perfect reverberant sound. My blues harps never sounded so good. We gathered up there all the time to play. I wish I could package it.

[überfuzz]

Next step, build an actual echo chamber.

Do you have a spare room in your mansion?

[Regis]

I googled and found numerous links:

YouTube - ‪DIY Plate Reverb - Build your own $10 plate reverb‬‏

how to make a plate reverb

Recording: How To Build Your Own Plate Reverb: A Concise Step By Step Process - Pro Sound Web

[überfuzz]

Thanks a lot, I google quite a lot my self. I was interested to hear if anyone here knew about plate reverb. You know frequency, dampening and shit.

[überfuzz]

News, yesterday I was asked if I wanted a desk, a table with iron frame and wooden board. They're throwing away heaps at my university, different sizes, styles etc. I guess the iron frame kind will make a good starting point. I just have to drill some and get a plate that's some what in reasonable size to be mounted in the frame.

[MWJB]

Motown (Hitsville, Detroit) had 3 reverb (echo) chambers, so not "everything you heard from Mowtown" was a plate reverb. In fact the use of plate reverbs in American music prior to the mid 60's regularly gets wildly exagerrated.

As Enzo says, build an echo chamber...most buildings have rooms, corridors with hard, smooth surfaces.

[jrfrond]

I'm still crazy enough to work on EMT140 plates, and I can tell you that, though they look a bit like a home science project at first, it's scientifically designed and constructed.

We all know that metal plates will sympathetically resonate. The keys are to have the correct metal alloy, under the correct tension, with the transducer and pickups in the correct place, and the electronics to make it all work. Plates also have motorized damper plates to adjust the decay time. You also need PLENTY of isolation, including a case to enclose it, or you WILL have leakage of extraneous sounds. Plates are extremely sensitive to this. At Electric Lady Studios, where I worked in the 70's, we had the EMT140's hung in a third-story room well above the studios, not only to isolate them from the music, but also the vibration of the subway trains that were at the same level as the studios, whose rumble was transmitted through the building's steel girders (the studios and control rooms were/are floated however, to eliminate this). If anyone walked into that room and talked, it came back through the echo returns! Of course, there was always the "live" chamber (tiled toilet with tie-lines).

[Bill Moore]

Back in the 70-80's a fellow started a small 8 track studio here. I used to come in and play when needed, but also helped with the tech stuff. Above the studio, in this 100 yo house was a huge tile bathroom. We stuck an EV monitor in there with a mike, and had a great "echo chamber". Just had to have a sign on the door so his mom didn't go in.

[J M Fahey]

At "Estudios Ión" in Buenos Aires where a lot of my friends and customers have recorded, they had a tiled basement (tiled on all 6 surfaces) with an old Tannoy or similar monitor driven by a 15 W tube amp, picked by an even older ¿ribbon? studio mike, the ones housed in an octogonal chrome plated perforated steel box, suspended by tiny springs (some joked *those* were the actual reverb).
Best reverb I ever heard.
*Very* claustrophobic.
Later they bought a German or Swiss plate echo, and put it in that same basement, not for effect but for acoustical isolation.

[Zipslack]

Toy plates?

I always wondered if a toy xylophone would be useful in anyway for a plate reverb...tuned metal plates with standoffs and a frame...

Just an idea that I've never actually experimented with...imagine a parallel arrangement with transducers on each plate...select or blend different plates for variety.

[teemuk]

Ambitious project. I'm more than interested to hear more details and see how it develops.

[MWJB]

"Plate reverbs on the other hand create the rich, dense type of reverb we hear on records by The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Phil Spector, anything from Motown etc etc." ...from the "how to build a plate reverb" link...

From Wikipedia, "In the 1960s, Spector usually worked at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles because of its exceptional echo chambers, essential to the Wall of Sound technique. Microphones in the recording studio captured the sound, which was then transmitted to an echo chamber — a basement room outfitted with speakers and microphones. The signal from the studio was played through the speakers and would reverberate throughout the room before being picked up by the microphones. The echo laden sound was then channeled back to the control room, where it was transferred to tape."

...as I said, anecdotes about plate reverbs in American music prior to the mid 60's are often greatly exagerrated. I also recall an interview where Spector referred to "delay", which I had assumed was a tape delay using 2 tape machines. Sam Phillips used this method, as did Bill Putnam @ Universal, Chicago ("Juke" Little Walter, "Mannish Boy" Muddy Waters), though Putnam was primarily famed for adding the first creative reverb to a recording ("Peg o'My Heart" Jerry Murad & the Harmonicats), by utilising the echo in the tiled men's washroom of the Chicago Opera house...before building his own dedicated chambers & designing the chamber at Chess's 2120 S Michigan Ave studio (where a lot of Chess recordings were made after they stopped using Universal full time, '57-'67)

OK I'm being a bit anal, no surprise to those who know me, but I hear guys raving about "plate" reverbs all the time, but they nearly always reference a recording with something other than a plate, or fail to name a recording featuring a plate. Nothing against plates, not trying to suggest Uberfuzz drop the project, but if there is a reverb/delay you like the sound of, then research that, because a lot of guys wrongly assume that ALL old reverbs were plates.

To my mind, after capturing the music, a good sounding wet effect is the next most important factor in a recording.

[überfuzz]

To all of you raising one eyebrow in scepticism. This is not to chase the sixties, or fifties for that mater, as some of us do in other projects. I happened to hear a home made plate reverb and it blew my mind. I'll post more info then I have all parts, or something to start with.

[jrfrond]

Hey, in the end, it's usually ALL good. You just need the correct sound for the application. Sometimes you need a plate, sometimes you need live chambers, or a spring unit, and still times when you need digital. Of course, most of what we hear now is digital, but like anything else, if you hear the real thing in an A/B test, digital will often pale by comparison, even if it's Lexicon or Sony.