Another Plate Reverb

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BenjaminWells
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Bump for Plate Reverb

Post by BenjaminWells » Tue Nov 11, 2008 11:04 am

Did you ever get the driver and pickups mounted? Which pickups? Which amp did you settle on? Preamp? Eq? Damper? I'm so curious because I'm embarking on the same project. Thanks.

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fazeka
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Post by fazeka » Tue Nov 11, 2008 9:44 pm

Sorry, work's been crazy. I'm getting bogged down. If I can get a welder this week, I may have the damping plate frame fabbed up.

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BenjaminWells
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plate reverb

Post by BenjaminWells » Mon Nov 17, 2008 9:23 am

No worries. I've started putting together my own but I haven't settled on electronics yet. Cheers.

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Post by honkyjonk » Tue Nov 18, 2008 3:10 pm

Here's Jim Cunningham's site:
http://www.platereverb.com/#

I think I'm gonna order a tuning gauge. I have an echoplate II.

Anybody try the pickups he has? Noticible improvement or no?
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BenjaminWells
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Red Bolt Plate Reverb

Post by BenjaminWells » Wed Dec 03, 2008 10:10 pm

I've got the plate mounted and stretched in a frame. This one has elements from earlier posts and other sources... I'm going to start with the $19 ghost purchased from ebay as the driver and the nice $50 EMT upgrade pickups from JCC & Associates. I can replace the ghost if need be.

I'm thinking of going with the gucci turnbuckles from JCC as an alternative to the klugey system I rigged. Tightening this system will be like wrestling Borat... and I'm not really interested in getting that intimate with the plate :-)

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j_howell
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Post by j_howell » Fri Jan 23, 2009 10:26 pm

Here's a link to some photos on myspace of ghetto plates #s one and two...

http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.c ... Id=1242704

Also a bunch of pics of cigar-box mbiras and crap...

Not the best photos of the ghetto plate, but...[/img]
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BenjaminWells
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Plates

Post by BenjaminWells » Sat Jan 24, 2009 9:28 am

I'd love to hear a sound sample if you have one!

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Post by j_howell » Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:47 am

Working on it! Can't seem to find any of the shitty recordings it was on from before, and unpacking gear into my way-too-small temp space now...

Actually, I think it's on a couple of half-finished things at www.myspace.com/wellsareme. The nylon-string guitar/junkmetal cello piece has ghetto plate all over it, with some goofy reverse delays and whatnots. The instrumental demo of "Kodachrome Cowgirl" has ghetto plate and a short delay on the lapsteel parts, and the very drinken trombone sound is actually a theremin played through the plate...didn't have a trombone around or anyone to play one, so it struck me I could maybe fake it that way. Thnk it worked out okay. I need to finish that damned song already...

Mostly, though, that plate sounds like...I dunno. As an EMT kinda thing, it fails miserably, but then again, if I used a proper piece of decent steel, it would probably be okay. As, well, what it is, it's pretty awesome, in a very semi-junky fuzzy reverby kinda way. Right now, i think it needs to be retensioned...years of use/abuse have taken their toll, I'm afraid!
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Post by fazeka » Sun Jan 25, 2009 9:53 pm

fazeka wrote:Next up, I need to afix a damping plate and then get the driver and pickups mounted.

Will update this thread accordingly.
OK, as promised, damping plate frame completed. Materials gathered, measured, welded, mounted. Also mounted the pickup and driver junction boxes.

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I think next weekend I will mount the driver. After that, it's time to paint the frame! :mrgreen:

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awesome

Post by BenjaminWells » Mon Jan 26, 2009 3:21 am

Awesome. That is going to sound amazing. It looks huge! Can't wait to see what color you choose.

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Post by fazeka » Sat Feb 28, 2009 2:38 pm

djimbe wrote:
Stainless. Not for me. You need a plasma torch to cut it clean, and my suspicion is that it would be much harder to tension up than carbon steel. Welding it isn't too hard if you have a gas shielded welder. I have no experience with sound difference between 300 and 400 series stainless, or how they might compare with carbon.
Hi guys,

After a long while of slowly working on my plate reverb, last week I finally got to the point of tensioning up the 28 gauge (0.015625 inch or 1/64")stainless plate. I used a tension gauge supplied by Jim Cunningham and followed his instructions to a "T".

Basically, I found that whenever I got one dimension (e.g., long) tensioned and moved to the other dimension (e.g., short), the other (long) dimension would "lose" tension (and vice versa). In other words, I was going back and forth in tightening between the dimensions because the last dimension tightened would "lose" tension. It took significant tensioning of the j-bolts that secure the plate to my frame to get the plate anywhere near what the specifications were calling for in Jim's instructions. So much so, that the j-bolts began to shear the plate through the plate holes! See pics:

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And the plate, now sheared, was still not at the tension according to the instructions.

So, I talked with Jim and it's hard for him to give concrete advice as he's not available to look directly at my plate. But he's saying that my setup is overkill for the plate. Now, I know I built it more on the rugged side, but I didn't think I would need much tension on a 28 gauge plate, so I didn't think I would need to crank down on the j-bolts so much, so it's hard for me to necessarily agree with that. In other words, just because it's over-engineered doesn't mean I'll be needing or using that strength to tension the plate. He also said that maybe the plate I have was too thin (his Eco-plate design used 0.024 inch or approximately 24 gauge stainless). Again, I am hesitant to think this as in my mind, a thinner plate requires less tightening that a thicker plate to get it at a similar tension. Am I wrong on this?

So the only thing that makes the most sense to me is based on my understanding that stainless can be "harder" than plain steel (like djimbe said way back when) and thus my difficulty in getting the plate to tension and "hold" said tension.

Other than that, maybe the only other thing that is suspect is where I ended up installing the j-bolt holes on the plate. Maybe they're too close to the corner or edge?

Anyway, at this point I need a new plate and there is no 28 gauge left in this locale (thinnest is 26 gauge). But like I said, I'm hesitant on stainless.

The only other option I have in a non-stainless steel sheet in the locale I live in is 26 gauge (0.0217 inch) galvanized sheet. The thing I am not certain about is the galvanization and what effect it will have on the sound compared to the cold rolled steel sheet that EMT and others have used.

The other question is will galvanized steel sheet tension up better than the stainless?

So, maybe anyone who's built a plate succesfully so far, or who has knowledge of various sheet steel, or anyone knows what I did wrong will want to chime in with some advise (I'm hoping)?

Sorry for the long post.

Thanks,
Chris

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Post by The Scum » Sat Feb 28, 2009 3:15 pm

I can't comment on your materials questions...you're going to have to experiment to see what works best, and report back so your findings can be passed to future plate builders.

I've been going a few experiments with a friend who's a metal fabricator. We used a piece of 24" x 48" steel out of the welding suplies area of the hardware store (you know, that one fixture at HD with the angle iron, diamond tread, etc). The frame is made out of welded unistrut.

He was very reluctant to have anything to do with stainless. It's very hard to work without some serious tools. It's also a hassle because if you get it warm while working with it (cutting, drilling, etc), it will temper itself, and become even harder.

We've been having trouble getting up to tension, as well. We used eye bolts, with the eye welded closed, then S-hooks to attach them to the plate. The tension is great enough that the S is relaxing. It sounds great right after it's been tensioned, but over the next 24 hours, they loosen a bit, and it goes back to sounding like a spring reverb in a heating duct.

I do have a couple of clever things to offer for DIY pickups...I need to get the S-hook thing solved and then I can share results, and maybe samples.

One thing I can offer: you're getting the shearing because you left an avenue for the plate material to "escape." Since you've only got the brackets on one side, it sees the unbracketed side as somewhere it can go when the tension is racked up. You need brackets on both sides to prevent that.

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Post by lacquer_monkey » Sat Feb 28, 2009 9:10 pm

In order for this to work the material's tensile strength in the section supporting the tension needs to exceed the tension applied. The brackets in your picture look like the things they sell at home depot to help hold wooden gates square. That material is usually not really strong or hard. Since it looks like you have access to someone who can weld, and the plate is already sort of trashed, maybe you could try getting some 1/8 or 3/16 milde steel plate ( I'm assuming the plate is cold rolled mild steel) triangles to support the corners. If you made them about the same size as your brackets on the edges of the plate and bolted and brazed them to the plate (both sides like a sandwich) you may have a better chance of success. You would need to either slot or drill holes into the body of the triangles to allow the braze to wick between the materials. The braze would distribute the tension over the full area of the triangles. Talk to your welder guy and see if he's up for trying that. It would be a nontrivial job but it could be done.

Edit: try using clevises instead of J-bolts or s-hooks that way the hardware is in double shear and has the highest mechanical strength.
uh... what??

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fazeka
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Post by fazeka » Mon Mar 02, 2009 12:25 am

OK, thanks for the tips.

Both of you are stating things that I think are contributing to my difficulties. One is that I am using stainless. And two, j-bolts and a bracket on one side of the plate.

I am going to go with 26 gauge galvanized sheet because like I said, no one here has cold rolled (plain) steel. I am also going to go with the clevis I mentioned earlier in this thread:

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I think I found a source for this (bottom of the page):

http://www.spaenaur.com/pdf/sectionE/E89.pdf

And then I will have someone tack some triangular pieces in the corner for reinforcement.

Back to the drawing board! :(

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Pickup Hookup?

Post by sethl » Fri Jan 14, 2011 1:26 pm

I purchased a pair of pickups from JCC, and a thought occurred to me: Pickups are typically high-impedance devices, no? So will these pickups prefer to e put through a DI before a preamp?

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