i want reverb distortion !

[billybillybilly]

has anyone replaced a spring reverb tank with a resistor to get the high gain from the reverb circuit ?

i recently did this with an old musicman hd130 preamp (tube PI model) . i used a 6M 1/2W 1% resistor while running the preamp on 9v .
i know the preamp was set to run on 16v , but i like the lower voltage sound from it .

ive also done the reveb distortion thing with a peavey backstage plus (thank god those ICs' are socketed) and couple of little soild state fenders . the peavey sounded great but the fenders didnt like it .

could i do this with a tube reverb circuit ?

[Steve A.]

has anyone replaced a spring reverb tank with a resistor to get the high gain from the reverb circuit ?

i recently did this with an old musicman hd130 preamp (tube PI model) . i used a 6M 1/2W 1% resistor while running the preamp on 9v .
i know the preamp was set to run on 16v , but i like the lower voltage sound from it .

ive also done the reveb distortion thing with a peavey backstage plus (thank god those ICs' are socketed) and couple of little soild state fenders . the peavey sounded great but the fenders didnt like it .

could i do this with a tube reverb circuit ?

They used to make a device called the Ice Cube which would plug into the RCA jacks on the Fender BF/SF reverb amps.

"Just happened to run across my old ice cube and made some ohm tests on it:

From tip to tip 220K
From "Reverb Input" * tip to ground 12 ohms

* "Reverb Input" is from point of view of TANK not the amp (and is connected to the reverb xfmr)."

http://archive.ampage.org/threads/0/...-1.html#001540

They called it an Ice Cube because they poured a blue epoxy into an ice cube tray and let it cure around the resistors and jacks. Put a fancy metallic sticker on it and sold it for $15-20. I think that they had a deluxe model which allowed you to select reverb or distortion- and maybe even blend the two. I dunno, I never did get that one...

Steve Ahola

[billybillybilly]

thanks for the response Steve !

ill do some research on that 'ice cube' thing . i have a feeling it will answer quite a few of my questions .

but , i figured as long as the tank is replaced by something providing similar resistance , it would be fine (meaning i wont burn out anymore components ) .

hmmm , maybe a push-pull knob to switch between the tank and the resistor with the pot acting as more of a gain control for the dry and the standard reverb level knob as the overall volume (as it normally would) .

might be a decent(?) relatively simple way to get more gain/drive out of an otherwise clean/dry amp .

once again , thanks for your time .

[Steve A.]

thanks for the response Steve !

ill do some research on that 'ice cube' thing . i have a feeling it will answer quite a few of my questions .

but , i figured as long as the tank is replaced by something providing similar resistance , it would be fine (meaning i wont burn out anymore components ) .

hmmm , maybe a push-pull knob to switch between the tank and the resistor with the pot acting as more of a gain control for the dry and the standard reverb level knob as the overall volume (as it normally would) .

might be a decent(?) relatively simple way to get more gain/drive out of an otherwise clean/dry amp .

once again , thanks for your time .

Those resistor values are for the transformer-driven reverb tank in a Fender BF/SF amp, and are safe (proven by at least 758 guitarists who used the Ice Cube in the 70's ). If you have a different tank or reverb circuit I'm sure that you'd have to change the values.

One problem with the Ice Cube is that the fizzy distortion is in parallel with the clean signal, and you can mix the two with the Reverb control.

In the 80's I ran across a design in a magazine that used the reverb circuit for a better sounding distortion- I wired it up to a push-pull Omni pot so I could switch back and forth between reverb and distortion. I doubt if I could find the magazine article but I think I still have that Omni pot around somewhere, to be reverse engineered... Still with the distortion in parallel it wasn't that good.

As I recall someone like Soldano came out with a similar device in the 80's or early 90's- or did that plug into the initial preamp tube socket? I forget...

Steve

[billybillybilly]

cool ! atleast i know it 'can' work with tube reverbs .

i tried a few resistors (470K/1M/4M/6M/9M) in the musicman before going with the 6M which gives it a real nice 'hot' sound . that could also be that im running it on lower than intended voltage .

im not surprised that a few companies have tried this . it seems like one could tap the tank signal (pretank , of course) , and use it for a few things ... active Eq , overdrive , boost , what have ya .

from my tinkering , its to be more of an overdrive than a distortion . probably cause of the clean boost and tone reverb circuits provide . now , if a clipping diode array replaced the spring tank , i think one could get a decent square wave out of it . not that one cant get component incinerating distortion from it anyway , but that carries so much noise thats its usually unusable (to most people ) .

[Enzo]

And Fender thought of it when they incorporated the circuit into some amps a while back. Pull boost on the volume control?