My DIY Plate Reverb

Hi all,

I just finished building my plate reverb. I'm very happy with the sound so far. At the moment I have a cheap 4" speaker mounted about an inch from the plate and a small piece of wood resting lightly on both the plate and the speaker cone to excite the plate. However, I've just purchased these and I can't wait to try them out! http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/320793343204?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649#ht_1024wt_1163

I'll take some pictures once I've mounted the surface transducer. Below is a link to a demo of the reverb on my voice with eq applied (cut 100 and 16K, boost 2K)

http://soundcloud.com/kris-osullivan/mxl-9000-plate-reverb-test

neat. Care to post some pics to go along with the audio?

pucho812 said:

neat. Care to post some pics to go along with the audio?

Click to expand...

I'll take some pics once I've hooked up the new transducer. I used a piece of 1000mm x 2000mm x 0.4mm (approx 39" x 788" x 3/8") galvanised steel and suspended it in an aluminium frame my old man welded together for me.

Here's a sample of the reverb with no eq on drums. This was recorded using the pres on my Tascam M-3700 before I re-chipped the first 16 channels. The reverb is far too loud through the right speaker but I didn't really pay attention when I was testing it. Reverb was applied to the snare and the overheads separately.

http://soundcloud.com/kris-osullivan/m3700-drum-test-plate-reverb

This is great - good to see some proper DIY! We need photos!

I have had a lot of fun a few years ago making redneck reverbs with those sound bug things. Usually just hanging a metal plate from a roof beam, and sticking on a sound-bug, plus a PZM mic or contact pickup.

Cool 
Take some pictures, please.

Here's some text, pics and soundsamples from my old DIY-plate build:

Made a new one from an old VOLVO  :green:  car speaker, an Austrian "Ein Shilling" - Coin (before the EURO) some washers and a metal-post, which is now screwed into the plate.
All put together wit some slow hardening 24hrs epoxyglue.

New driver before the post was mounted:


Edit:




Soundsample - Piano: Dry - MixedplateNOEQ-MixedplateEQ-PlateOnlyNOEQ-PlateONLYEQ----
http://www.bitterend.se/PlatePiano.mp3

Some Congas
http://www.bitterend.se/PlateCongas.mp3

The samples are with plate, let's say "Half-damped"

MrZpliff

I like the sound of your plate.
Looking at your pics I'm intrigued to see that you have tensioning hooks in the middle of the long edges of the plate, above & below the driver speaker.  I've never seen this before, only having seen them on the corners of all the ecoplates & EMT's I've owned/tuned.  Care to elaborate on why you decided to add them & if they enhance the sound in a positive way ?

Rob Flinn said:

MrZpliff

I like the sound of your plate.
Looking at your pics I'm intrigued to see that you have tensioning hooks in the middle of the long edges of the plate, above & below the driver speaker.  I've never seen this before, only having seen them on the corners of all the ecoplates & EMT's I've owned/tuned.  Care to elaborate on why you decided to add them & if they enhance the sound in a positive way ?

Click to expand...

Well, the simple answer is that that's probably how I thought it was done on the original  : .... I see now that it isn't.
It was done quite a some time ago, so I can't really remember. Been thinking of "upgrading" it for a while with Jim Cunninghams pickups and a tube line amp (the Poor-Man makeup gain amp, actually), but I haven't gotten around to do it yet. It also sounds pretty good, I think, so I don't really want to mess with it too much. But maybe I should try to get rid of the hooks in the middle and check out what it sounds like.
Also it was a while since I tuned it.

The old thread is here, by the way: http://www.groupdiy.com/index.php?topic=10718.0

MrZpliff

Interesting.  I suspect you might get it to tune even better than you already have it without the middle hooks, because they will affect the tension on the long edge of the plate, & also the ability of the plate to resonate as one piece of metal.

Here's a photo of mine, not quite as clean looking as yours Magnus.



I'll put up a sound test with the new transducer once I've put my console back together.

Enchilada said:

At the moment I have a cheap 4" speaker mounted about an inch from the plate and a small piece of wood resting lightly on both the plate and the speaker cone to excite the plate. However, I've just purchased these and I can't wait to try them out! http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/320793343204?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649#ht_1024wt_1163

Click to expand...

Here are some more transducers along those lines: http://www.parts-express.com/wizards/searchResults.cfm?srchExt=CAT&srchCat=634

Cool project 

Nice build, Enchilada !

Rob Flinn said:

MrZpliff

Interesting.  I suspect you might get it to tune even better than you already have it without the middle hooks, because they will affect the tension on the long edge of the plate, & also the ability of the plate to resonate as one piece of metal.

Click to expand...

Made some adjustments to my plate this weekend.
Here's some soundsamples. Just some drums through the plate. Bass cut on the send. No Eq on the returns.

1st soundsample with the hooks in the middle left as they were.
2nd with hooks removed,.
3rd same as 2nd, but I tightened the plate a little. Something I haven't done in a couple of years.
Otherwise same setting in all the samples.
Not a big difference, but it's there.

http://www.bitterend.se/01Rev-Mid-Hook.mp3
http://www.bitterend.se/02Rev-NO-Mid-Hook.mp3
http://www.bitterend.se/03Rev-NO-Mid-Hook-Tightened.mp3

sweet, also happy to see this thread here.

ive been thinking about making one of these fopr quite a while now...

GREAT SOUND MrZpliff!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank's 
Yes it's quite a rewarding build.

I think the removing of the hooks in the middle made it slightly smoother sounding. A little less obvious...
I won't put them back there again, so thank's Rob.

Enchilada: I recommend a damping device. It makes it much more versatile (imho)

Im planning on building a smaller version of this (for now... if my initial trials return positive results, i may go bigger) I have a plate, 2'X2', and about 1mil (kind more like 3/4 mil... im sure its not metric) thickness.  I was thinking since its so much smaller, the thickness may help darken the sound a bit, but it also may be too thick to actually vibrate appropriately.

My question is regarding the transducer(s).  I have a driver to vibrate the plate and I have a couple of acoustic guitar transducers that i was thinking of using.  Would that be appropriate?  I tried a quick test last night, and the guitar transducers pick up the vibrations of the plate quite well, but there's a serious ground issue with them.  If i crack the element out of the casing should it be soldered directly to the plate?  Suggestions?

I thought plates had to be big due to physics - speed of sound in steel / the thickness limit / amount of tension that needed to be applied?
Are you putting the transducers into a DI near the plate?
The plate reverbs I've seen have the transducers mounted directly on the plate.

plate do not have to be big.
i believe a few companies made small plates over the years. i know at least a couple did.

sr1200 said:

Im planning on building a smaller version of this (for now... if my initial trials return positive results, i may go bigger) I have a plate, 2'X2', and about 1mil (kind more like 3/4 mil... im sure its not metric) thickness.  I was thinking since its so much smaller, the thickness may help darken the sound a bit, but it also may be too thick to actually vibrate appropriately.

My question is regarding the transducer(s).  I have a driver to vibrate the plate and I have a couple of acoustic guitar transducers that i was thinking of using.  Would that be appropriate?  I tried a quick test last night, and the guitar transducers pick up the vibrations of the plate quite well, but there's a serious ground issue with them.  If i crack the element out of the casing should it be soldered directly to the plate?  Suggestions?

Click to expand...

I just glued the piezopickups (transducers) directly to the plate. You can see it as a white spot on the pic a few posts above. Then I just put the signal to a preamp and into my mixer. unbalanced. no hum.

MrZpliff,
What was the end cost / weight?

Sorry for all the questions here:

last night i just had one of those cheap radio shack 1/4" unbal to XLR bal adaptors (the one with the micro transformer in it)
and was buzzy as hell when i cranked the gain up a bit.  If i touched the plate you would hear a zap on the input.  My final plan is to have an active DI and driver built into the case. for the thing.

As far as the transducer goes, would soldering it destroy the element? or should i just glue it?  And should I remove the "guts" from the thing or just glue the little round "knot" to the metal intact?  (i have 2 so i guess i could experiment)  I originally wanted to see if i could get a somewhat stereo verb by placing 2 transducers on opposite sides and having the exciter off center.

Last question, is should i center the exciter or should I have it as far away from the transducer as possible? Being that the unit is small, I was thinking if the exciter is further away from the transducer, would allow more room for the ripple (vibrations) to travel before hitting the trans.