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Reverb Units vs Pedals


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As I'm thinking about mod ideas for my VJ, it hit me that I haven't heard much about reverb usage.

Are most of you guys using pedals, or has anyone put together a plan for a reverb unit?

I do have the Valvetronix which has something like 5 reverb settings, but it's kind of empty with

no soul. I was looking at reverb tanks on ebay, and thought; someone has to have a cool mod

for the VJ...right? =D>

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But if you have a crappy old Crate VC508, the iron is perfect for building a '63 Fender Reverb surf box with a 6V6. They should be pretty easy to find for next to nothing. A lot of those little Crates are being retired or traded in for the superior factory-stock tone of the VJr.

 

Gil...

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I was wondering if it would be feasible to build your own and fit it inside the VJr half stacks' speaker cabinet?

Possibly, but there are serious considerations to such an attempt. First, you'd be significantly reducing the empty volume of the cabinet, which could have significant, detrimental affect on the frequency response of the cabinet. secondly, it may be difficult to allow for adequate air movement for a full-blown tube reverb. Finally, you could very likely experience unacceptable oscillation interaction between the speaker and the reverb unit.

 

Any one of those considerations would make the project not worth the effort, imo. For all the potential problems, what would you gain? You'd have an extremely heavy speaker cabinet that needs AC power. Even if it worked flawlessly, it's not worth it, imo.

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But if you have a crappy old Crate VC508' date=' the iron is perfect for building a '63 Fender Reverb surf box with a 6V6. They should be pretty easy to find for next to nothing. A lot of those little Crates are being retired or traded in for the superior factory-stock tone of the VJr.

 

Gil...[/quote']

Good to know. I'll have to look into this a little deeper.

 

Thanks

J

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The expense of the experiment alone is enough to keep me using a perfectly good reverb pedal.

Don't get me wrong...I'm not suggesting that it wouldn't be worth building a Fender reverb unit clone. That box is the schnizit for analog reverb. I just wouldn't fart around trying to stuff it into the Vlv Jr. speaker cabinet, that's all.

 

That said, the GGG unit would probably be a great sounding unit, and would definitely be much easier and cheaper to build.

 

Cool site! Thanks for the link

He's a great guy to deal with, too. Lots of great information, lots of great projects, a good selection of decent kits, great quality PCBs, and a super nice guy. Tough to beat.

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Yeah, but if you've already got a Crate gathering dust due to VJr's all over the room, why not. I've also had a spare reverb tank sitting in a closet for years, and a couple of 12aT7's in a box I never liked. So in my case it really is more of a why not kinda thing. The sooner I come up with a decent head cab for it, the sooner the surf box project will hit the bench with the '63 Fender Reverb schematic in hand.

 

Sometimes it's good to be a packrat. :D/

 

Gil...

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