Another Plate Reverb

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mrmiller
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Post by mrmiller » Sun May 20, 2007 9:21 pm

I'm basically dealing with an identical setup to yours. I'm using the Ghost as well, and originally had a home-made pickup that I put together from a piezo I ripped out of a Radioshack buzzer. I found it didn't really do the plate justice--that is, the plate in the open air sounded significantly better than what the pickup was giving me. I've since switched to a film-tab contact mic. But it's sensitive to the point that I'm picking up a lot of low hum. I now need to find some way to isolate it from said noise. First step I'm going to try is to just put some foam under it to hopefully dampen the vibrations. I'm considering hanging it from the ceiling as well. I'm not quite sure what exactly is causing it to have the hum, but it would be nice to get rid of it, really.

So as far as the noise, I'd look into buying a contact mic. The cheap ones we build are great for triggers, but their sound quality is hardly clean.

Anyone have any suggestions about isolating the plate from whatever is causing the hum?

tony_tomlinson
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Post by tony_tomlinson » Sun May 20, 2007 9:38 pm

Cool. Where did you get the film based pickup?

mrmiller
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Post by mrmiller » Sun May 20, 2007 10:07 pm

http://stores.ebay.com/Cold-Gold-Contact-Microphones

The woman who runs it was very helpful and discussed the benefits of the various varities with me. She's very nice.

j_howell
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Post by j_howell » Mon May 28, 2007 10:23 pm

I built a smaller and intentionally somewhat trashy "ghetto plate" (thanks to inverseroom for the name, which is perfect and has stuck) a couple of years back, with some pretty good results, and am working similarly on building something bigger and actually nice. I tried using several different things for pickups, driver and amp; the actual plate for the "ghetto" (which was initially just a dinky prototype that took on a life of its own) was a piece of mystery metal I literally found on the side of the road, abandoned at the gates of a junk-metal recycling place.

Anyhow, the vidsonix ghost is great, works quite well, though I suspect using a "slug" bolt of some kind to attach it to the plate rather than the plastic disc that came with mine might sound much less trashy. For pickups, I've used everything from piezos made from radio shack buzzers (which work, but yeah- noisy, though great for experimental instruments, but that's another topic) to clip-on tuner pickups ($5 from musician's friend, and actually work pretty well, and are easily moveable and replaceable but suck in that you can only clip them in so far)...I'm still working on a good solution for this, and I suspect that the piezo pickups made for banjos may work well.

As for the amp, any number of things could work well. I actually got great results from using one side of a Sony Tapecorder 500A's built-in amp; I use one of those little Epiphone 5W Valve Junior heads as well, and it's not bad either. I've found, even with my ghetto plate, that a lot of the key to getting "good" plate sounds, whatever you use, is the right combination of driving the plate just hard enough, and getting whatever you use as a pickup to do its job well without picking up too much extraneous rumble and noise (definitely an issue- isolate the plate from any vibration other than the driver as well as possible!). I've gotten some pretty great (though a little funky- my plate's not too big; at about 3 x 5 the decay time's pretty short) sounds out of it, in actual "plate reverb" use.

That said, driving the living shit out of it and basically using it as a speaker has yielded some great results, but again, I don't think that's what you're going for, but if awesome, trashy sounds and ridiculous feedback and noise are your thing, playing anything (I especially like electric guitar, Rhodes, and a nylon-string guitar with a clip-on pickup attached to the headstock, cello, etc) through it this way is pretty great, in a Tom Waits-y kinda way. Again- another thing entirely...the beauty of this, too, is that anything can be used this way, as long as you can attach a driver and pickup. When my then-band, eio, played in London last fall, we had to do this with whatever random stuff we could find in skips, etc, and it worked out nicely. Check out myspace.com/experimentalinstrumentorchestra; I think there's still some footage up there...anyway, let us know how this develops!
I like pie.

j_howell
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oh yeah...

Post by j_howell » Mon May 28, 2007 10:27 pm

An old friend and veteran engineer recommended trying a bunch of high-quality turntable catridges as pickups; apparently one of the "pro" studios here in Kansas City has/had a homebrew plate that used these to good effect...
I like pie.

mrmiller
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Post by mrmiller » Tue May 29, 2007 8:09 am

haha, the ghetto plate sounds pretty awesome. And I may look into those turntable pickups... sound really interesting.

I actually figured out my problem which was really stupid on my account, and now have only one major source of noise to abolish. I was running phantom power through the mic because that's what the vocal mic usually plugged into the preamp needs. Silly me, I never even thought to turn it off. Because as soon as I did, all that hum went away, and I was no longer picking up the radio. There's a high frequency tone that gets picked up now, and I know for sure it's the computer, sitting a foot away with its blaring fans, that's causing it. I just need to relocate the computer and get some extension cables for the monitors and such.

The other annoyance I've run into is a result of the pickup I'm using. The film tab is nice in that it's very clean, but it peaks in a nasty, electronic crunchy sort of way when the plate is driven too hard. Anyways, I'll be in the studio later this week to edit some tracks, so I'll grab some plate stuff. I promise this time! It sounds a million times better.

tony_tomlinson
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Post by tony_tomlinson » Tue May 29, 2007 11:12 am

Phantom power.... I never thought of that. I know what I'll be doing this after noon.

j_howell
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Post by j_howell » Tue May 29, 2007 2:54 pm

Yeah, that's definitely a major consideration, that ANYTHING that can make any kind of noise, the plate will pick up. Clean signal and isolation are paramount. Actually, if you read up on and check out the ones they build, http://www.platesonics.com is pretty helpful. hell, if I could afford one, I'd buy one of theirs!

Also, thinking about tensioning: there seem to be some differences of opinion about this. Some companies tension(ed) their plates, like EMT, but some (such as Stocktronics) did not...my ghetto plate is tensioned (or was- I think it could stand to be retensioned as it seems floppier and trashier now compared to when I first built it), but I'm not sure how much actual difference that makes. Also, I believe Wavelab uses/used a Stocktronics plate on some of the recordings there that I consider to have ideal plate reverb sounds...

In any case, I would advise reinforcing the corners of any plate that is to be tensioned, as thin metal can will and does tear!
I like pie.

mrmiller
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Post by mrmiller » Tue May 29, 2007 6:32 pm

Mine is heavily tensioned, though it's hard to say exactly how much. It's got triangles of steel welded onto all 4 corners, on both sides, then the holes are drilled through that. It's tensioned using threaded-bolt things, so you have a screw that goes through the hole in the plate and the hole in the threaded-bolt thing, and then the threaded-bolt thing goes through the frame, and washers are used to keep it all nice and tight.

mrmiller
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Post by mrmiller » Tue May 29, 2007 9:14 pm

http://web.mit.edu/mrmiller/Public/Plate-reverb.aif

Dry, mix, then wet.

I figured out some more weird stuff going on. It turns out the preamp is picking up a lot of the radio signals--not quite sure why, and only when it's on the vacuum tube setting. Equally odd, with the standard mic plugged in, it only picks up radio on the solid state setting preamp. I think I might shoot Millenia Audio a tech support email to see what's up with that.

Oh, and my amp is godawful. I knew that going into it, but I didn't realize how bad. I think I'm gonna pick up a new one, the SonicImpact cheap $30 one.

Well, I feel like a noob trying to get good sound out of it. Any tips?

That's all for now.

earl parameter
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Post by earl parameter » Tue May 29, 2007 11:52 pm

nice work people.


photo's ????



steven

mrdibs
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Post by mrdibs » Wed May 30, 2007 8:27 am

Ever thought of taking impulse responses of your creations? It might also help you with the project so you can directly compare your latest revision with previous versions to test your progress. Of course from a purely selfish standpoint, I'd love to try the Ghetto Plate on a snare in my own studio!

If you want some diracs and a quick tutorial on making simple impulses, pm me.

earl parameter
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Post by earl parameter » Wed May 30, 2007 12:34 pm

i will be making some but all my gear is in storage for the next couple months.



steven

mrmiller
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Post by mrmiller » Wed May 30, 2007 6:48 pm

I'm unfortunately going to be gone for most of the summer, so I won't have much time to experiment. I'd love to learn how, but in the current noisy state I'm not sure how good an impulse response I'd be able to get. It's really frustrating, because it sounds so good coming off of the plate in the open air.

mrmiller
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Post by mrmiller » Sun Aug 05, 2007 1:43 pm

Now that I'm back for a week, someone wanna tell me how to make an IR and I'll post that up here for examination? I know it has something to do with sending a Dirac delta signal and...

Burst of pink noise, right? How long, volume, etc?

I'll try to take a picture of it as well, but the space is kinda cramped as is...

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