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I stumbled upon an accidental discovery at the shop the other day, and it's kind of amazing. Due to the heat we've had recently I had a fan going on the bench directly across the shop from me. After a repair, I propped the amp up and turned it on for a play test (Amps usually sit about 3 milk crates high for our purposes.. well, exactly 3 milk crates high). I noticed something immediately, there was this strange modulating distortion I was hearing, and thought something was wrong. It didn't sound bad, necessarily, but wasn't right either. After a moment, I realized that I was hearing the effect of the fan blades modulating the phase of the speaker sound. Kind of laughed it off and turned off the fan.
My boss made the comment "I bet you hook it up to a variac as a speed control, and it probably sounds pretty cool". We looked at each other for a second, and grabbed what we needed for a quick experiment - positioning the fan in front of the speaker about 2 (maybe 2 1/2) ft away facing the speaker, and used the variac to slow the speed to emulate the rough speed of an LFO you typically hear in a guitar effect.
dude, the phase shifting effect sounded so eff-ing good it's difficult to describe. As good as any I've ever heard. however, I'm sure that so much of the perceived effect was the combination of at least three factors: the position of the speaker with respect to the fan (I'll include distance and directional angle under this), the type of fan used (aluminum blades?), and my listening position with respect to the other 2. Unfortunately, it was a quick experiment as we had actual work to do. But it was enough to get exited about and do some more experimenting with.
Here is the basic set up – as just a first time guess as to what might sound good:
If I have some time after hours at the shop, I'll try and get some sound samples.
Low-tech and killer sounding; you heard it here first --->Soulfetish
My boss made the comment "I bet you hook it up to a variac as a speed control, and it probably sounds pretty cool". We looked at each other for a second, and grabbed what we needed for a quick experiment - positioning the fan in front of the speaker about 2 (maybe 2 1/2) ft away facing the speaker, and used the variac to slow the speed to emulate the rough speed of an LFO you typically hear in a guitar effect.
dude, the phase shifting effect sounded so eff-ing good it's difficult to describe. As good as any I've ever heard. however, I'm sure that so much of the perceived effect was the combination of at least three factors: the position of the speaker with respect to the fan (I'll include distance and directional angle under this), the type of fan used (aluminum blades?), and my listening position with respect to the other 2. Unfortunately, it was a quick experiment as we had actual work to do. But it was enough to get exited about and do some more experimenting with.
Here is the basic set up – as just a first time guess as to what might sound good:
If I have some time after hours at the shop, I'll try and get some sound samples.
Low-tech and killer sounding; you heard it here first --->Soulfetish
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