the things that happen when you get bored..(reverb question)

[lightningfingers]

i was playing w/ my little gem today, and to my amazement, i put the speaker inside a coffee jar (well i said i was bored) and if i press my ear against the jar i gets a really cool authentic reverb sound. so my question is this: if i put the speaker on on end of the jar and a piezo pickup on the other end will it pick up the reverb? or not?

i have too much time on my hands...................

[Nasse]

I think you re-invented plate reverb.

This kind of gadget was popular in 50´s and 60´s, dont know when it was introduced but similar principle was used in recording studios

Most digital reverbs have "plate" few programs, sounds good with guitar sometimes :roll:

[lightningfingers]

ah....but did they use coffee jars? :wink:

seriously its sounds really good, the only thing is i cant find a speaker small enough that will fit in a coffee jar w/out the guitar overloading it and distorting :?

i need to find a bigger jar

[Hal]

BJ's/costco ("wholesale clubs") have big coffe cans.  They're about 6" radius?  I dunno...check it out.

[petemoore]

What material was used to make the jar?
 One of these days, when I find a large enough hammer, I'm gonna run something like that down a tube a wayz, then mic that !!!
 How good the mic and speaker are of course being the only things you really mess with other than the accoustic surfaces reflective/dampening and resonant qualities..
 One could feasably make a notch filter this way?...
 A Disneyland exhibit showed that sound waves can effectively be nearly eliminated...there's a walk through hallway, about six feet long, when two people stand and look at each other, they literally have to scream at the top of their lungs to be heard enough to be understood by the person
at the other end. The walls are french curve bent in such a way as to cancel out sound waves...all you can hear is a little high end.
 So the theory question:...if you bottleneck a sound channel tube, a couple of times, say four feet apart, would the sound waves of that length moving through it be attenuated?
 [in the air ...if you could stop the wave of a given frequency and measure the pressure levels, you'd get a graph that looks like a symmetrical ocean wave].
 Huge metal lined tube...
 I've seen bass cabs that produce fantastic low end, they were just a long square tube [about 6-8ft long] with a massive low end driver at the business end enclosure. Pretty cool sound!!!
 If you want to make your speaker louder, a more focused projection can be had by using a large megaphone, with the speaker enclosed in the small end. RUSH used fiberglass cabs, I've seen these at bars and aiming the bass can increase power markedly...this is the 'horn' of a 'folded horn' or..the first obvious thing, then for compactness [increeased weight] the folded horn becomes widely used, though suffering from some losses due to wave deformation from having two openings or more, but can be tuned to accentuate a pretty wide and possibly more usable frequency band.

[lightningfingers]

the jar i originally used was made of glass.....

i found a better one though, its about 4" wide by 3" long (i think it had some chocolate stuff in originally)

that gives a cool sound

theres still the mic problem though, i dont have a mic, do i have to get one or can i use a piezo pickup?

[Ansil]

try the piezo and see what you think..  perhaps if you dont' feel that works all that well then try a microphone as well with it.  what about one of those contact microphones..

[lightningfingers]

yeah i thought about a contact mic.........are they expensive?
and dont they have feedback problems?

[Nasse]

Piezo discs are cheap, so you maybe can afford more than one and mix the ouput of these

I believe plate reverbs are unique and one-of-a-kind individuals, two similar coffee cans might not sound equal, hard to replicate exactly

I have a feeling that original ones used in recording industry were big and bulky and fragile

[lightningfingers]

yeah they cheap up at maplin, ill stick 4/5 in variouse places on the jar and see how it goes. might even try series/parallel combos.
thisll be so cool if it works. me like reverb
ill let ya'll know how it goes :mrgreen:

[Nasse]

I read your post about glass jar and if you use such then it might not be like plate reverb, but instead the resonance and reflections in the air space inside the jar

Maybe dynamic mic or electret capsule would work