Have a look at some convolution reverbs eg by Sir (free) - sorry no link. The Waves new convolution reverb also looks great, because it gives you more control over the effect, but comes at a price (around $800 US I think). But a lot of people are raving about these types of reverbs (although they can act as preamps, compressors etc as well as reverbs) because they are very realistic.

;)

Can't beat a finely tuned plate (mainly used emt's).................. if you have the time and space to keep a 4'x8'x1.5' piece of metal, wood and electronics well maintained and isolated. The wave stuff is good, you can tweek them to emulate just about anything if you know what the real deal sounds like......

I posted this in another area,,

let me know if you think this would work johny

thanks

(dead link removed)

looks like a fun project,,,

SI

Great article.................if you ever open up a vintage emt plate, thats what you will find! I betcha if its done right it'll sound fabulous.......

too bad I don't have the welding chops to do it all myself from scratch!!!

hey johnwy

thnx for making time to check out the page, s eems i've started something with ppl wundering if they should build one including me lol

already have a call in to a buddy with a buddy on a metal shop...

my question would be, if i can't get the " driver " part of that kit , whats the next alternative to it??? if you know...

also not sure, but feeding signal is mono on this, and two returns make it a stereo effect? not sure on this part,,, again if you could enlighten, i'd appreciate it...

also , not sure what bracing the square rack on outside, and having the metal sheet strpped directly to frame would do to results, but hust wundering if any mods to it would hurt idea..

aother then that, it would be a cool conversation piece if you said it was outboard gear and not ART with the nice case for it lol

again thnx

Sanity inn

:D I had a plate, at first it was great, opened everything up just right in a mix. But, back then I was using a very good spring verb, so the change to a cheap plate was an improvement. I liked the manual damping, and the rich sound.

I got fussy was when I started to notice the danged noise. The noise didn't come from the driver as much as from the high gain pickups and preamps. They are in the gain range of a phono cartridge. So hum isolation was a must.

I tweaked as much as I could, but the noise floor was always a problem. Another was trying to keep the ambient temperature even so as not to change the sound too much.

Today, with good electronics and more sensitive pickups I bet it would sound fine.

You get stereo by placing the pickups in different locations. I would expect these points to be somewhat in phase in the critical bands.

The EQ curve on a plate is like a 3db per octave roll off, mostly, at least on this one, below 10k in range. There are points where a frequency range spikes somewhat but this is part of the sound of a plate. It is diffuse, and with a pre-delay sounds really good. I don't think you would be disappointed if you made one. I have an old cassette demo tape from echo plate (Not the best plate around by far) but the demo is their biggest model, and when you hear the dry vs. plate mix, it is great. Funny, In one chorus passage, I can hear the headphone mix on isolated background vocal tracks. I should put that on MP3, is that company still around?

I have rack gear verbs, pcm70 and the like, they sound OK, can't say anthing about a plug yet, but the plate was more real sounding to me. I'm sure this sound can be replicated in the digital world. The plate is an instrument in itself IMO, so like midi, an artificial re-creation may or may not do the job. BTW, the things that hold the plate (clips) springs, etc. are very important.

Good luck if you go on to build one!
--Rick

I've given serious thought to trying to build a stereo plate reverb. I'd need to figure out how to take Bob's basic design and make it work in stereo first, though. I would imagine it's just two drivers and two pickups placed strategically on the same plate.

I might take this to the Tech Talk folks and see what they say.

Consul wrote: ... I'd need to figure out how to take Bob's basic design and make it work in stereo first, though. I would imagine it's just two drivers and two pickups placed strategically on the same plate.

The single point source (one driver) is all mine needed, the stereo was real enough by the placement of the 2 pickups. One was close in for a shorter decay, the other was further away from the driver yet. It was very effective. The damper bar would allow about half a second decay to a full 5 seconds.

--Rick