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The First Reverb
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The First Reverb
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This topic was originally posted in this forum: Wanted To Buy |
| Author | Topic: The First Reverb |
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SJ Russell Member Posts: 59 |
posted 20 March 2000 06:47 PM
WHAT WAS THE FIRST RECORDING MADE WITH REVERB USED ON THE STEEL? THE FIDDLE MAN WE USE ALWAYS TALKS ABOUT THE DAYS WHEN THERE WAS NO REVERB ON THE AMPS. COULD SOMEONE EXPLAIN THE FIRST DAYS OF REVERB AND HOW IT CAME TO BE? [This message was edited by SJ Russell on 21 March 2000 at 07:35 AM.] |
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Steve Stallings Member Posts: 2065 |
posted 20 March 2000 07:18 PM
Well, Years ago when I was on the road with Bob crisscrossing the United States, we stopped to see the Grand Canyon. Bob being Bob, and me being myself, we whipped out a flattop and a fiddle. Now that purty echo coming back across the canyon really got our attention. IF we could only capture that sound on tape we'd be forever famous. Well, we jumped in our studabaker hawke and drove out to LA to visit a famous inventor friend of ours name of Alvin Gored. At the time he was working on something he kept calling "the net", or something about fishin ......I wasn't too sure. Anyways, we told him what we wanted and he whipped us up one real quick. And that my friends is how reverb came to be......  now about that bridge.....
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Earnest Bovine Member Posts: 4687 |
posted 20 March 2000 09:42 PM
I think the first spring revern units were made for Hammond organs. Then the guitar amp makers bought them from Hammond. |
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Sleepy John unregistered Posts: 4687 |
posted 20 March 2000 10:14 PM
I think Gibson may have been the 1st guitar manufacturer to have sold a reverb unit for guitars, It was a seperate amp with clip leads for an input which clipped onto the speaker leads of the regular amp. I owned one of these in the early 60's Fender came out with their reverb shortly after. Tommy Williams who worked the Hee Haw show once told me that the fender tube type reverb unit was the best reverb that he had ever found to use on his fiddle. ------------------ |
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SJ Russell Member Posts: 59 |
posted 21 March 2000 07:33 AM
Was heart break hotel the first attempt using reverb?someone told me that Elvis sang in a closet under some stairs to get this effect. iwas in a recording studio here in my area about 15 years ago and the guy running the studio put my amp in a shower stall so he could get a strange echo effect. strange effect weird engineer. thanks for the replys.wish someone could give me a liitle more history. |
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RickRichtmyer Member Posts: 2522 |
posted 21 March 2000 07:59 AM
The earliest "reverb units" consisted of an empty room with hard walls and floor with a speaker at one end and a mic at the other. Obviously you didn't carry one of these around in the back of your amp. ------------------ |
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Bob Hoffnar Member Posts: 4278 |
posted 21 March 2000 10:57 AM
I heard a story that Dick Dale had Leo Fender build him a portable reverb unit for a live gig. It caught on and became standard after that. Bob |
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Jim Bob Sedgwick Member Posts: 1234 |
posted 21 March 2000 11:51 AM
Does anyone remember the Danelectro unit. This pre dates the Fender unit. It sounded great but if a slight jar occurred. CRASH! |
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Joe Casey Member Posts: 3402 |
posted 21 March 2000 04:36 PM
I was under the impression Les Paul Invented and perfected the reverb. It was an accident when a tube glass split creating the sound. Same thing happened on a Marty Robbins recording "don't worry about me". A tube split and the lead distorted. They left it in the song ,thus distortion. That's what I heard years ago. ------------------ |
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Vern Kendrick Member Posts: 442 |
posted 21 March 2000 05:00 PM
The "elvis"effect was done by sending a signal to a recorder,like an Ampex 350 mono,using record and playback mode at the same time at 15 IPS which gives a split second delay,you send it to the board and mix it to the direct signal {season to taste} The Marty Robbins thing I understand was just a bad module in the recording console ,I heard they used it for effect until it completely quit. |
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SJ Russell Member Posts: 59 |
posted 21 March 2000 05:08 PM
I HEARD THE SAME BROKEN TUBE STORY ABOUT MARTYS SONG.THANKS FOR ALL THE INFO.THE BIG E IS USUALLY FIRST ON MOST THINGS,I WONDER IF HE HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT? |
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Adam Member Posts: 311 |
posted 21 March 2000 06:35 PM
That broken tube story is true,but not applicable to this thread.We're talking about reverb here,not distortion. |
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Kenny Dail Member Posts: 2583 |
posted 22 March 2000 07:47 AM
There was a good reverb unit available from "Premier" that was available before any of the amp manufacturers started building them into the amps. As a matter of fact, Premier built an amp also and made the reverb unit as an "add on accessory". ------------------ |
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Bill Llewellyn Member Posts: 1882 |
posted 22 March 2000 08:10 AM
I believe Laurens Hammond invented spring reverberation. He was a prodigious inventer (tone wheel organ, synchronous motor clocks, tons of other stuff). Have a look here for the history of his most famous item, the Hammond Organ (yes, I own one, and love it). ------------------ |
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Ric Epperle Member Posts: 1490 |
posted 22 March 2000 09:08 AM
Howdy, I had heard years ago that Les Paul had been playing with some sort of ducted chambers to create echo on the Les Paul, Mary Ford recordings. I could be wrong but I'll blame my dad for giving me that info. Keep Pickin, Ric |
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SJ Russell Member Posts: 59 |
posted 22 March 2000 09:37 AM
IS THERE ANYONE ELSE THAT CAN CONTRIBUTE TO THE HISTORY OF REVERB? THANKS FOR THE INFO. |
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C Dixon Member Posts: 5912 |
posted 22 March 2000 09:50 AM
I don't think there is any question that the reverb unit as we know it was invented by the Hammond Organ people. Other ideas and impractical items may have been made, but the first "practical" one was surely made by Hammond. It sounds logical also. Their sound engineers led by the mentioned Hammond were second to none. And many many inovations and inventions sufaced in the early days of amplified sound by the company. If they didn't come up with it, they quickly associated themselves with people and/or companines who did do it. Example: The "Leslie" revolving speaker unit. Which became quickly an integral part of Hammond. God bless you, carl God bless you all, carl |
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Buddy Emmons Member Posts: 1403 |
posted 22 March 2000 10:53 AM
Before reverbs were in amplifiers, I saw an article in Popular Electronics on how to make a reverb out of a door spring and two phonograph cartridges. I brought it to a recording studio with the spring stretched the length of the cardboard box it was mounted in. After a couple times through the first song, Owen Bradley smiled and said, "If you don't mind, Buddy, we like our reverb better." |
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Jerry Gleason Member Posts: 539 |
posted 22 March 2000 11:04 AM
I think Bob Hoffnar has it right. The spring reverb, as we have known it for many years, is a result of Dick Dale's collaboration with Leo Fender to adapt the Hammond reverb to a guitar amplifier, thus producing that signature sound that guitar players and steel players haven't been able to live without since (or at least until the advent of digital effects). Here's what Dick Dale's website has to say about the history of the Fender reverb. There may have been other reverbs around before that, but the Fender reverb is the one the caught on and became the sound we all know and love (or hate, depending on your point of view). [This message was edited by Jerry Gleason on 22 March 2000 at 11:07 AM.] |
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SJ Russell Member Posts: 59 |
posted 22 March 2000 06:27 PM
What year was the reverb project in popular science?Thanks |
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Danny Spinks Member Posts: 30 |
posted 22 March 2000 07:57 PM
I think Ray Butts was the first to build an amplifier with reverb back in the mid 50's. |
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SJ Russell Member Posts: 59 |
posted 23 March 2000 08:37 AM
Sonny Juares does repair work on amps as well as organs.he usually has three or more organs opened for repair.Looking at the guts of these things are a delight. Its hard to imagine how many diferent ways there is to reproduce effects on these dinasours.If a person ever wanted a strange effect for an instrument this would be the route to go. |
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John Macy Member Posts: 2290 |
posted 23 March 2000 08:47 AM
Great story Buddy. I would like to build a box like that, but have a digital unit running in conjunction, just to mess up some engineers minds (and being one, I know how easy that is to do). Seems like the first reverb was the caves that the cavemen lived in, moving on to the natural and manmade ampitheatres, then on to the concert halls for classical music, which digital reverb designers for years have been failing to duplicate (although Sony has a new modeling unit for about 10 grand that is the closest I have heard). A good live chamber is still stunning--people still use equalized phone lines to patch into and use the live chambers at Capital Records studios in LA. I am not sure when the plate reverb came into use, but probably after the spring. Been a long process. |
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emmett d unregistered Posts: 2290 |
posted 23 March 2000 08:52 AM
Duane Eddy had a cool reverb system that he & Lee Hazlewood used on his early recordings; it wasn't very portable, though... |
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Donny Hinson Member Posts: 9192 |
posted 23 March 2000 01:06 PM
I do remember that someone in the '40s (maybe Les Paul) made a reverb unit out of a small speaker, and a microphone, at opposite ends of a 90' length of hose. The hose was coiled up in a big wooden crate, and the dry sound was mixed with the delayed (through the hose) sound to give the proper "reverb effect". Problem was that the hose had to be a large diameter for good fidelity, but large hose made the unit too big and bulky. |
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John Macy Member Posts: 2290 |
posted 23 March 2000 05:09 PM
Donny, The product you mentioned was actually made commercially. It was the UREI Cooper Time Cube. It had a box about 3'x3'x12" with 2 lengths of garden hose in it--1 was 14' and the other 16' long. It interfaced with a rack mount unit that had the amplifiers to drive the horn drivers at one end of the hose and the mics at the other end. It was not reverb, but delay. Sound travels at about 1' per millisecond, so you could get a stereo delay of 14 and 16 milliseconds, or chain them together for 30ms. It took some radical EQ after the sound came back from the hose (built into the rack unit), but still sounded a bit funky, often called by us the Cooper Time Tub. It was really great for putting a predelay in front of an EMT plate. UREI made about 1000 of them I hear (I still own one!), but the first digital delays came shortly thereafter and that was the end of that. So it really doesn't qualify as reverb. |
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SJ Russell Member Posts: 59 |
posted 23 March 2000 06:27 PM
JOHN,DO YOUHAVE A PICTURE OF THAT TUBE YOU COULD SHAR WITH US? |
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John Macy Member Posts: 2290 |
posted 23 March 2000 06:30 PM
Actually, I just bought one of those little monitor top digital cameras yesterday, so that will be a good excuse to figure out how to use it. I'll get a picture up hopefully tomorrow. |
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SJ Russell Member Posts: 59 |
posted 23 March 2000 07:52 PM
THANKS JOHN.WE CAN ALWAYS COUNT ON YOU FOR THAT LITTLE EXTRA. |
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Dan Tyack Member Posts: 3552 |
posted 23 March 2000 10:28 PM
I read an article in Guitar Player which credited that awesome reverb/slapback sound on Dwayne Eddie's records to a system where they had a speaker at the bottom of an unused underground gasoline tank (like a 5000 gallon cistern) and they would route the guitar signal through it. ------------------ |
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Bill Llewellyn Member Posts: 1882 |
posted 24 March 2000 07:17 AM
As reverb goes, the booming cannon sound you hear in Simon and Garfunkel's "Bride Over Troubled Water" and "The Boxer" was done by placing a loudspeaker in an elevator shaft and playing a snare drum through it. ------------------ |
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Chuck Smith Member Posts: 85 |
posted 24 March 2000 07:24 AM
I kinda like Steve Stallings story best..about a long time age. I knew he was older than what he alledges to be. Hi Steve... ------------------ |
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John Macy Member Posts: 2290 |
posted 27 March 2000 09:50 PM
SJ, I had to go out of town Friday, but I get back tomorrow and will try and get that picture up. |
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SJ Russell Member Posts: 59 |
posted 27 March 2000 10:02 PM
I have been trying to picture that gizmo .It ought to be intersting.Thanks john. |
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Dan Tyack Member Posts: 3552 |
posted 27 March 2000 10:27 PM
Randy Reinhart had this huge reverb tank around '77. It was like 3 feet long and came in a tube he hauled around. He said he got it from Buddy. Buddy, do you remember anything like that? He sure sounded great! ------------------ |
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CHUCK BRATTAIN Member Posts: 24 |
posted 28 March 2000 12:58 PM
I BELIEVE THAT HAMMOND HAS A PATENT ON THE SPRING REVERB. IN 1959 I HAD A MUSIC STORE IN COSTA MESA, CALIF (THE COSTA MESA GUITAR CENTER) AND WE SOLD FENDER PRODUCTS. ONE DAY A KID ( I THOUGHT) CAME IN THE STORE AND TRADED IN A STANDEL AMP FOR A FENDER AMP, I BELIEVE IT WAS A TWIN, OF COURSE NO REVERB. THIS GUY SAID THAT HE WAS PLAYING AT THE BALL ROOM IN NEW PORT BEACH. THEN IT STARTED, THE NEXT DAY HE CAME BACK WITH THE AMP AND SAID HE BLEW IT I GOT HIM ANOTHER ONE AND HE BLEW IT IN 15 MINETS SO WE WENT TO SEE LEO FENDER AND LEO STARTED MAKEING DICK DALE AMPS AND DICK KEEP BLOWING THEM UP UNTILL LEO MADE THE DUEL SHOWMAN. LEO AND DICK BECAME GOOD FRIENDS AND DICK WANTED SOMETHING TO HELP HIS VOICE. LEO CAME OUT WITH A REVERB UNIT THAT LOOKED LIKE A SMALL BOX, HE TOLD ME THAT HE HAD TO PAY HAMMOND FOR THE PATENT. HAVE A NICE DAY--CHUCK |
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Buddy Emmons Member Posts: 1403 |
posted 28 March 2000 01:42 PM
Dan, Now that you mention it, I do remember the tube, but I can't recall where in La-La Land I found it. Boy, were those the good old days or what? [This message was edited by Buddy Emmons on 29 March 2000 at 05:25 AM.] |
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Bill Ford Member Posts: 1724 |
posted 28 March 2000 04:55 PM
Les Paul, so the story I heard go's used a ceramic tiled room [bathroom] to get the echo sound,from that point???? He also made the first solid body guitar,I think thats when he went to Gibson because of a disagreement with mfg. he was with at the time [read that heard that somewhere]did see the guitar,funky lookin ax. Bill in SC ------------------ |
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