WHAT REVERB DID AFX USE ON STEPPING FILTER 101

AND I WANNA KNOW WHAT REVERB IS THAT CAUSE I'M GONNA GET IT AND MAKE LOVE TO IT UNTIL I'M TOO TIRED. AND THEN SOME MORE. PLEASE DONT MOVE THIS THREAD TO AFX SUBFORUM KTHXBYE.

Rumor has it, that he used the stairs at his local bank, for a lot of the reverb effects.

I no longer know which level of irony to read this board at now.

  mcbpete said:

I no longer know which level of irony to read this board at now.

He also, has a 1000 mile deep tunnel under his house.

i know he has some rooms in his bank configured as reverb chambers but i don't think it can sound that clean... it was probably a box effect.

Well, it's ANALORD, so probably ANALOGUE, no?

It sounds like spring reverb and BBD delay to me.

Check your local pawnshop for both.

sounds like a spring verb to me as well, but I have little experience with verbs.A small room could sound pretty clean if mixed in the right way though. Probably.

Actually, the little pitch bend on the echo could be the tell-tale sign of tape echo.

And tape echo plus spring verb usually means Space Echo

there is no way that is a BBD reverb. RE maybe. possibly.

Just had another listen and it's SOOOO a Space Echo! You can even hear the tape warbling by itself at the very start.

I was thinking something along those lines but im not very familiar with analog gear.

so it's a spring reverb i'm after! anyone knows how many springs are there in the RE units? are the reverb sections in all of them the same? which REs even have reverb? WHAT'S THE CHEAPEST RE THAT HAS REVERB?

  kokoon said:

so it's a spring reverb i'm after! anyone knows how many springs are there in the RE units? are the reverb sections in all of them the same? which REs even have reverb? WHAT'S THE CHEAPEST RE THAT HAS REVERB?

no, it's a space echo! I've played with standalone tape echoes and spring reverbs, and only the space echo gives that unique combo.

cheap space echo? lolz

cheap space echo = space echo plugin

caveat: you get what you pay for

ugh.

i bought a cheap 3 head tape deck yesterday and i'm modding it for variable speed.

i'll wait and see what the BBD reverb i'll make will sound like (MN3011s are on their way) but i guess i'll maek me a cheap spring reverb too.

you can get all the spring reverb tanks you can stand off ebay for pretty cheap. i have a couple lying around.

no i can't i'm from eurasia. eurasia sucks for diy.

  Dr. Elemeno von Hat X: PhD said:

you can get all the spring reverb tanks you can stand off ebay for pretty cheap. i have a couple lying around.

Nah, transistor spring reverb isn't that special. It's the tape echo that makes the Space Echo series cool.

There were lots of tape echoes made in the UK and Europe during the 60s and 70s. Do some googling for brands and see what you can find on eBay. Best to pay extra for one that is working, as they are a pain in the arse to maintain.

what exactly do they do?

i don't have any clue how these tape echo things work... being a lad weaned on plugins has its advantages and disadvantages... i have my spring reverbs, and have mucked about with reel to reel a bit, and i gather this is some sort of looped tape for echo (possibly with multiple heads for echo)... you adjust the head for the echo timing? why's it need such a long tape, from that ebay photo?

hmm... from that, i'm left with the question... how do you adjust the length of the tape loop using these "mechanisms"? makes sense, just curious how they pull it off!

  Dr. Elemeno von Hat X: PhD said:

hmm... from that, i'm left with the question... how do you adjust the length of the tape loop using these "mechanisms"? makes sense, just curious how they pull it off!

I think you just adjust the length of the delay by altering the speed of the motor. Faster moving tape = shorter delay. If you adjst the delay time while it's echoing, you get the same pitch detuning effects as with BBD and digital delays.

The warble at the start of Steppingfilter is the exact sound a tape echo makes when you change its speed.

Also with tape delay, you get a little "glitch" every time the bit where the ends are joined passes over the rollers, cause it's inevitably thicker than the rest of the loop. This happens pertty often because you only have about 2 seconds of tape.

The glitch is much more pronounced on DIY loops as you'd expect and I hear a bit of that on Steppingfilter too.

the easiest way to make a tape echo is without a loop.

for instance: take a reel-to-reel or even a cassette deck with 3 heads (erase head, recording head and playback head). that enables you to playback what you're recording - straight from the tape. because the recording head is ~1cm before the playback head there is delay (if the tape moves ~5cm/s and if the distance between the heads is ~1cm then the delay would be 1s/5 which would be 200ms). now you have just the delay.

now you can take that delayed signal and feed it back mixed mixed together with the original signal to the input. and you get multiple repetitions, less of them if you attenuate the signal more in the feedback loop and more of them if you attenuate less (which can also lead to nasty self-oscillation if you attenuate too little).

now you have an echo but with fixed timing. if you want to change the timing (speed, delay, whatever you call it) you have 2 options:

1. change the distance between the recording and playback heads. that's a difficult thing to do on most devices as the heads are usually fixed.

2. change the speed the tape moves. you can do that quite easily, changing the motor speed. if the motor runs on DC it's easy - technically you have to lower the voltage supply of the motor, a simple pot on the supply line could do but it's better to put a variable voltage regulator. this can be done in less than 1 hour even if you haven't done things like that before. you can take a look at this: link

if the motor is AC (which i doubt there are any in tape recorders) then it's more difficult.

insert a good quality tape and that's that. 3 head cassette decks can be bought really cheap, i got mine for ~$50 but it's a good one.

if you want to make a loop you can do it with cassette too :) the quality will be gradually worse but i guess you can get some interesting effects. see this

then you can disable the erase head of the recorder (cover it with something) and record over and over and over... :)

TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP TAPE LOOP MACCA