Resurrection of a Tel-Ray oilcan "organ tone"

[Mark Hammer]

This is a really interesting and informative video, detailing the resurrection and inner workings of an oilcan modulated delay.  Absolutely fascinating.  Gives new meaning to the phrase "vintage tone".  They sure as heck don't make them like this anymore.  Thank you Uncle Doug!

[diffeq]

Thanks for sharing this. I only read about oilcan machines some time ago, now I know how it sounds like. Probably one of the most charming sounds I've heard in a while.

[Digital Larry]

I've made a first order simulation of an oil-can delay in DSP, where the delay time is synchronized with a vibrato wobble frequency.  Can sound really interesting.  You start thinking about the angular displacement of the read and write heads, multiple heads, frequency response, distortion, etc. but as a real one of these (or Morley/Fender equivalent) was fetching upwards of $750 on flea-bay last time I looked, I may never have a real one in hand to measure.  Not to mention the unobtanium based oil!

There's a demo of a Fender model on YouTube where the sound really gets pretty weird when the speed is set at its lowest setting.  I think what happens is that the oil film which retains the signal pattern physically on its trip from the write head to the read head starts to drip, causing a random phase distortion "or something".

Note that I like to summarize super technical conjecture with the catch-all phrase "or something" as it allows me to sound erudite and at the same time I can be completely wrong!