Spring Reverb Tank

Circa 2015. This one is cool...

Not complicated: speaker and piezo with a spring glued in the middle. This is the first time I discovered the obnoxious need, when it comes to mixing a clean channel with an amplified one, to have some kind of buffer on the clean (the option is instant and horrible feedback.) In this case I used one channel of a crummy ready-made stereo amp from ebay to drive the reverb speaker and the other to buffer the clean signal. Disadvantages of this setup:

• Gain shared between buffer and driver
• Unusual 5 volt power supply
• Very dirty clean signal

The last problem being basically a symptom of the first. To get the gain high enough to drive the reverb well, the clean channel had to also be pushed well up into distortion then cut back with an inner volume pot. I justified the resulting monstrosity by calling it a "reverb/robot fuzz effect-" the distorted sound is actually very unique and not quite 100% bitcrusher or fuzz. This is one project I actually fully intend to refurbish some day, with a made-to-order spring reverb circuit that will sound good and take 9vdc.