I know this is from a couple years ago, but man Steve, you should really put some more information like this out there. Your amps are quite simply, the best guitar amplifiers on the planet. Period. I've got an Artemus and a Slant 6V. The tones are lush, organic and amazing. I find this content super interesting and if I could I'd take your class...Keep up the great work!
Excellent video. I appreciate when people take the time to explain the science behind the amps. Even though it says "Black Art" in the title, it's not a black art at all; it's just basic science, electrical circuits, and mechanical engineering.
Yo I just bought a 77 Twin! Enjoy it! I'm loving mine! Hot tip: You can switch the reverb tanks out in these and use other types...but I'm not gonna say which type I'm using ;) not before I buy em up! Cheers!
Thanks Steve for a better understanding of Reverbs working.I have a fender Reverb tank that just died on me soon after purchase 6 yrs ago and am looking for a competent repair person.
I would like a sportsman, but I can't afford one right now. I like the headroom, and mid features on it. I had spoke to Dave a while back, and can not afford it; but I imaging having one. That is a good amp. My Princeton 112 plus solid state amp's reverb tank is barely working. It just drips a bit on ten. I would like an amp with the sportsman's bonuses; 'And be able to dial reverb tank parameters like you were mentioning: that would be some amp.
I have a fender acoustasonic Junior and there is a very annoying crunching Buzz along with any input signal I put into the amp if I play my guitar at a low volume that crunching noises there and it seems to have something to do with the Reverb circuit I pulled the amp apart and it looked like somebody had cut the wires on the Reverb tank and loosen the two screws that mount the board down by the river knob and I'm thinking they did that at Guitar Center so they could just get the amp working enough to where somebody like me would take a chance buying the amp thinking maybe we could do a repair on it. So I took the amp apart I've probed and I haven't seen anything burn nothing looks out of the ordinary everything seems to function fine I attach the wires to the Reverb tank, I get signal from the Reverb tank but there's no guitar signal going to the Reverb tank keeping in mind this is a solid-state amp. I'm thinking this crunchy buzzing sound has something to do with the Reverb circuit or the circus at fees the Reverb circuit and I'm wondering if it's possible you may know something that I don't about chasing that problem down.
Hello, why did Fender back in the day use a closed cell foam strip on top of the tank? Also they would use a cardboard base with wood strips.......than you for the tips.
I've had to repair my tanks many times over the years and the problem has almost always been the tiny wires from the transducers breaking off from the RCA jack in the tank. Usually fixed by stripping back the tiny wire and re-soldering. These things take a beating bouncing down the road!
Thanks for sharing. Of course he is using a old solder iron to point :) Trying to find out if can shift my stock spring tank in my peavey pro studio. I does not sound to good. Trying to learn as much as possible.
I would love for your to do a video on how to install reverb in a non reverb amplifier, I have a custom made jcm 800 10 watt amplifier and would love it to have reverb installed!
Does the driver need to be scaled to the size of the spring? With that I mean, if I would use a spring of 1 m long, do I then need to amplify the spring input according to the spring?
I have an original stand-alone 1963 Fender reverb tank that likes to sing along with a hum, after three or four days of intermittent play on my part. Tubes have been changed, cables have been changed ... I have heard that somehow there is an animosity between the transformer and the tank itself, which I cannot understand. If that was the case, it would always exist. Anybody got any answers? Thanks!
I'm trying to repair the reverb of a fender FM212R, it is a transistor one, so the reverb box is ok, sounds when I shake it, doesn't sound with the guitar, where do I look on the circuit for the problem? the driver side has the problem as you said, help
I have deluxe reverb reissue and reverb seems to have to much gain, I can't turn it beyond 2 and half before it's to much reverb. I there a fix for this?
Hey guys at Carr amps, I love my slant 6v more than anything but I really don't dig the reverb, the reverb on the skylark and Mercury v sounds as good as it can possibly get. Anyone have ideas for moding my slant 6v reverb so it can sound like a mercury i.e super lush, 3D, plate/hall like
Carr Amplifiers I guess I meant a combo I already have. Dual prof and Vibroking have a 6v6 driver, so I assume you’d need a tranny upgrade and punch a bigger hole. I was thinking of taking the normal channel 12ax7 and use it to add gain to the reverb driver.
Hello, realize this is a older video. But maybe you could help, I have ampeg reverberocket r12r reissue, no reverb from 1-3 weak until 7 1/2. Newtank, no change, swapped tube, no change. Just learned it is not tube driven, failing rca could be the culprit but its rca into tank and quick disconnect to board. So hard to make that cable to test. What else should I be looking at? Especially now I know it is not tube driven. I would love a reply. I csnt find much info on this issue..
I had a brand new 35 watt Vox amp arrive, and the reverb was completely dead-I have ordered a new tank so I will see if this fixes it, I will look at the circuit next if this doesn't work
sometimes wen i turn on my fender blues jrIII the reverb's dead dose nothing! but if i lightly jolt the amp by rocking it lightly front to back or picking one end up a few cm it comes back on!, i re tubed it and had no luck, checked the leads coming from the tank and everything is fine, is it time to upgrade the stock tank or is that not the problem?
I have lot of white noise when the Reverb gets above 5. Same issue w/ the Presence but not as extreme. Does this mean i need to change the Driver tube or is it the Return tube?
Steve..i have a question when i travel with my amp in my car, i hear the reverb going berzerk wwhen i hit bumps..can that damage it? it seems like a fragile piece of equpiment..
Good info! I didn't know about the bending of the ends to stop feedback. Im building a 18watt marshall type circuit on my next build and want to use a 6bm8 for a 1 tube reverb from el34.com Have you ever tried that?
that's not how it works at all :) the amplified signal goes into the first transducer which wiggles the spring, the second one converts the spring vibration back to electric signal :) so they're basically electric to kinetic energy converters working both way. no electricity flow through the springs, they just mechanically used ;)
I just needed to see it drawn out a bit more. This fabulous article goes into a lot of detail and also has a bit of a fun history lesson on how artificial reverbs came to be prior to their adoption by Fender. www.tubesandmore.com/tech_corner/spring_reverb_tanks_explained_and_compared Enjoy. I did.
Spring reverb is what creates the most 'hissing' noise in amps. A tube amp is far better off with analog delay which is silent and never breaks down. I keep the reverb at zero and use a pedal.
I guess my tank problem doesn't qualify as common....ends where the springs attach broke off.... each spring has one missing (opposite sides)......its a nearly 50 year old amp so I wouldn't even know what a suitable replacement would be. Since the springs are bare metal are they actually making an electrical connection with the transducers?
The reverb transducers have little hook-shaped pieces of wire with a bead-like magnet on them, and that is what attaches to the springs; but from your description, the hooked wires have apparently broken free from the soldered joint at the far end of the brass tubes. You could solder the hooked wires back in place, but the magnets may have slipped off the wires and disappeared, and the reverb drive or return won't work without the magnets. The magnets sit within the laminated metal core of the transducers; when the input transducer of the tank is fed with a music signal, the transducer core generates a magnetic field and the springs will vibrate as the bead magnets "dance" to the varying magnetic field; the vibrating springs will shake the magnets on the return end of the tank, generating a voltage in the transducer coil (very much like a guitar pickup does), and that "wet" reverb signal is fed back into the amp. If the little metal hooks still have the magnets attached, It may be possible to solder them back into the brass tubes so that the magnetized beads sit in the area of the transducer laminates. If the bead magnets are missing, I don't know if you can get replacements except maybe by pulling them from another old, damaged or dead reverb tank. Otherwise, the simplest repair may be by replacing the entire tank since they only cost about 40 bucks or so. It's important to match the impedances and type of replacement tank to the specifications of the original tank. There should be a number on the metal shell of the original tank that can be looked up online to tell you the specs and to allow you to buy a matching tank usually a number that will start with 4 (4 being the number of springs in a typical reverb tank, each spring length actually being composed of two differing springs); the other numbers are a code that details the input and output impedance of the tank and the manner in which it is designed to be mounted, whether it's vertically or horizontally and so on ( You can find a decoding chart for the reverb tank online). It is important to note that the tank found in virtually every model of Fender amplifier, whether vintage or new, is of the transformer-driven type; interchangeable from one Fender to another, BUT, other amps such as Magnatone and Ampeg often used a capacitor-driven reverb circuit, which will have very different electrical characteristics than the Fender circuit. You will need to match a replacement reverb tank to the characteristics of the original tank in your amp, which shouldn't be difficult if the numbers are on the original tank. If the tank doesn't have any numbers on it then you may have to do some research into the type of reverb drive-circuitry used in your amplifier in order to find a correctly matching reverb. If the tank impedances aren't matched correctly to the circuitry in your amplifier than a replacement tank will work poorly or not at all.
Let's see if this link to another TH-cam video will post; a detailed video about repairing reverb tanks. th-cam.com/video/sKqnqY8hvu8/w-d-xo.htmlsi=T1VJlcj5THWiczgt
Rewind Electronics posted a video a while ago about repairing reverb tanks; I tried to post a link here for you but the system is apparently configured to block them.
Every dude who builds amps wants to make this video, because he wants us to know. I promise this matters. I love a little power tube breakup. Can I buy you a beer?
You can greatly improve the sound of an inboard reverb unit in a handwired Fender amp, by taking the reverb return lead and running it into the normal channel of the amp, and EQing out most of the bass and increasing the treble. This requires an RCA extension cable, and a female-to-male RCA-to-1/4 inch jack to go into the channel's front input. Sounds swell!
This man just dropped gold on all of us. Thank you Steve Carr!
Thanks for the tip about bending the ends of the reverb tank... I cant believe it worked!
It's always a joy to watch a good teacher teach you something they're passionate about. I just learned a lot, thanks!
You explain things well Steve.
You nicely simplify things for us, thanks :)
I know this is from a couple years ago, but man Steve, you should really put some more information like this out there. Your amps are quite simply, the best guitar amplifiers on the planet. Period. I've got an Artemus and a Slant 6V. The tones are lush, organic and amazing. I find this content super interesting and if I could I'd take your class...Keep up the great work!
That’s an awesome explanation... wish my electronics teacher at school was a bit like him!
This exactly what’s going on with my Supro Tremo-verb reissue! Thank you for posting this!
Excellent video. I appreciate when people take the time to explain the science behind the amps. Even though it says "Black Art" in the title, it's not a black art at all; it's just basic science, electrical circuits, and mechanical engineering.
I recently received a Carr Raleigh, Cowboy Barnwood amp as a gift. I love it!!!!! Great job,
Carr reverb is the best in the business no questions asked
I wanted to understand my ‘79 Twin a bit better. This is really educational, thanks.
Yo I just bought a 77 Twin! Enjoy it! I'm loving mine! Hot tip: You can switch the reverb tanks out in these and use other types...but I'm not gonna say which type I'm using ;) not before I buy em up! Cheers!
Thanks Steve for a better understanding of Reverbs working.I have a fender Reverb tank that just died on me soon after purchase 6 yrs ago and am looking for a competent repair person.
This is really fantastic content. I learned a lot, thank you!
I would like a sportsman, but I can't afford one right now. I like the headroom, and mid features on it.
I had spoke to Dave a while back, and can not afford it; but I imaging having one.
That is a good amp.
My Princeton 112 plus solid state amp's reverb tank is barely working. It just drips a bit on ten.
I would like an amp with the sportsman's bonuses; 'And be able to dial reverb tank parameters like you were mentioning: that would be some amp.
Finally a simple and clear explanation
Thanks for the very clear explaining. Going to open up the tank of my new old amp today :)
Great explanation! Thanks.
I had to sell everything to get a carr slant 6v my dream amp. I love carr amps 1 because of the tone and the reverb is always stellar.
Glad you got yourself one!
ótimo vídeo obrigado
Jorge Sul do Brasil
Thanks for the explanation, until just now I never really understood this :) Looking forward to try one of your combo beauties.
I have a fender acoustasonic Junior and there is a very annoying crunching Buzz along with any input signal I put into the amp if I play my guitar at a low volume that crunching noises there and it seems to have something to do with the Reverb circuit I pulled the amp apart and it looked like somebody had cut the wires on the Reverb tank and loosen the two screws that mount the board down by the river knob and I'm thinking they did that at Guitar Center so they could just get the amp working enough to where somebody like me would take a chance buying the amp thinking maybe we could do a repair on it. So I took the amp apart I've probed and I haven't seen anything burn nothing looks out of the ordinary everything seems to function fine I attach the wires to the Reverb tank, I get signal from the Reverb tank but there's no guitar signal going to the Reverb tank keeping in mind this is a solid-state amp. I'm thinking this crunchy buzzing sound has something to do with the Reverb circuit or the circus at fees the Reverb circuit and I'm wondering if it's possible you may know something that I don't about chasing that problem down.
Hello, why did Fender back in the day use a closed cell foam strip on top of the tank? Also they would use a cardboard base with wood strips.......than you for the tips.
Carr Amps are amazing by the way!
I've had to repair my tanks many times over the years and the problem has almost always been the tiny wires from the transducers breaking off from the RCA jack in the tank. Usually fixed by stripping back the tiny wire and re-soldering. These things take a beating bouncing down the road!
Thanks for sharing. Of course he is using a old solder iron to point :) Trying to find out if can shift my stock spring tank in my peavey pro studio. I does not sound to good. Trying to learn as much as possible.
I would love for your to do a video on how to install reverb in a non reverb amplifier, I have a custom made jcm 800 10 watt amplifier and would love it to have reverb installed!
Does the driver need to be scaled to the size of the spring? With that I mean, if I would use a spring of 1 m long, do I then need to amplify the spring input according to the spring?
I have an original stand-alone 1963 Fender reverb tank that likes to sing along with a hum, after three or four days of intermittent play on my part. Tubes have been changed, cables have been changed ... I have heard that somehow there is an animosity between the transformer and the tank itself, which I cannot understand. If that was the case, it would always exist. Anybody got any answers? Thanks!
great explanation, thanks a lot for the info!!!
any info for Princeton 65. solid state. I suspect the output to the tank.
I'm trying to repair the reverb of a fender FM212R, it is a transistor one, so the reverb box is ok, sounds when I shake it, doesn't sound with the guitar, where do I look on the circuit for the problem? the driver side has the problem as you said, help
I have deluxe reverb reissue and reverb seems to have to much gain, I can't turn it beyond 2 and half before it's to much reverb. I there a fix for this?
Great info, frustrating camera work at times though.
Is any current put onto the springs, or is it just movement from the transformer output? I see you have one end of the tank connected to ground.
Hey guys at Carr amps, I love my slant 6v more than anything but I really don't dig the reverb, the reverb on the skylark and Mercury v sounds as good as it can possibly get. Anyone have ideas for moding my slant 6v reverb so it can sound like a mercury i.e super lush, 3D, plate/hall like
I have an American blues deville and my reverb works but is very weak.... What could be some possibilities for this? Thanks for making great videos!
Alright Steve is there any practical way to make a fender style combo reverb “drip” like a stand alone fender reverb unit?
Dual Professional?
Carr Amplifiers I guess I meant a combo I already have. Dual prof and Vibroking have a 6v6 driver, so I assume you’d need a tranny upgrade and punch a bigger hole. I was thinking of taking the normal channel 12ax7 and use it to add gain to the reverb driver.
Hello, realize this is a older video. But maybe you could help, I have ampeg reverberocket r12r reissue, no reverb from 1-3 weak until 7 1/2. Newtank, no change, swapped tube, no change. Just learned it is not tube driven, failing rca could be the culprit but its rca into tank and quick disconnect to board. So hard to make that cable to test. What else should I be looking at? Especially now I know it is not tube driven. I would love a reply. I csnt find much info on this issue..
I had a brand new 35 watt Vox amp arrive, and the reverb was completely dead-I have ordered a new tank so I will see if this fixes it, I will look at the circuit next if this doesn't work
sometimes wen i turn on my fender blues jrIII the reverb's dead dose nothing! but if i lightly jolt the amp by rocking it lightly front to back or picking one end up a few cm it comes back on!, i re tubed it and had no luck, checked the leads coming from the tank and everything is fine, is it time to upgrade the stock tank or is that not the problem?
I have lot of white noise when the Reverb gets above 5. Same issue w/ the Presence but not as extreme. Does this mean i need to change the Driver tube or is it the Return tube?
Can you show me where to connect my spade connectors on my crate vc 5212they are disconnected
Steve..i have a question
when i travel with my amp in my car, i hear the reverb going berzerk wwhen i hit bumps..can that damage it? it seems like a fragile piece of equpiment..
Good info! I didn't know about the bending of the ends to stop feedback. Im building a 18watt marshall type circuit on my next build and want to use a 6bm8 for a 1 tube reverb from el34.com Have you ever tried that?
Steve, why does running the signal through the physical springs cause the reverb sound? I've never heard a technical explanation of that.
that's not how it works at all :) the amplified signal goes into the first transducer which wiggles the spring, the second one converts the spring vibration back to electric signal :) so they're basically electric to kinetic energy converters working both way. no electricity flow through the springs, they just mechanically used ;)
I just needed to see it drawn out a bit more. This fabulous article goes into a lot of detail and also has a bit of a fun history lesson on how artificial reverbs came to be prior to their adoption by Fender. www.tubesandmore.com/tech_corner/spring_reverb_tanks_explained_and_compared
Enjoy. I did.
A soldering iron as a pointer; how cool is that.
Spring reverb is what creates the most 'hissing' noise in amps.
A tube amp is far better off with analog delay which is silent and never breaks down.
I keep the reverb at zero and use a pedal.
Have you ever played a Carr amp? Dead quite, no hiss no humm. For that matter so is my Princeton reverb. .
Is it normal to get that weird at the start of the video when you knock on the top of the amp?
Yes.
I guess my tank problem doesn't qualify as common....ends where the springs attach broke off.... each spring has one missing (opposite sides)......its a nearly 50 year old amp so I wouldn't even know what a suitable replacement would be. Since the springs are bare metal are they actually making an electrical connection with the transducers?
The reverb transducers have little hook-shaped pieces of wire with a bead-like magnet on them, and that is what attaches to the springs; but from your description, the hooked wires have apparently broken free from the soldered joint at the far end of the brass tubes. You could solder the hooked wires back in place, but the magnets may have slipped off the wires and disappeared, and the reverb drive or return won't work without the magnets. The magnets sit within the laminated metal core of the transducers; when the input transducer of the tank is fed with a music signal, the transducer core generates a magnetic field and the springs will vibrate as the bead magnets "dance" to the varying magnetic field; the vibrating springs will shake the magnets on the return end of the tank, generating a voltage in the transducer coil (very much like a guitar pickup does), and that "wet" reverb signal is fed back into the amp.
If the little metal hooks still have the magnets attached, It may be possible to solder them back into the brass tubes so that the magnetized beads sit in the area of the transducer laminates. If the bead magnets are missing, I don't know if you can get replacements except maybe by pulling them from another old, damaged or dead reverb tank. Otherwise, the simplest repair may be by replacing the entire tank since they only cost about 40 bucks or so. It's important to match the impedances and type of replacement tank to the specifications of the original tank. There should be a number on the metal shell of the original tank that can be looked up online to tell you the specs and to allow you to buy a matching tank usually a number that will start with 4 (4 being the number of springs in a typical reverb tank, each spring length actually being composed of two differing springs); the other numbers are a code that details the input and output impedance of the tank and the manner in which it is designed to be mounted, whether it's vertically or horizontally and so on ( You can find a decoding chart for the reverb tank online). It is important to note that the tank found in virtually every model of Fender amplifier, whether vintage or new, is of the transformer-driven type; interchangeable from one Fender to another, BUT, other amps such as Magnatone and Ampeg often used a capacitor-driven reverb circuit, which will have very different electrical characteristics than the Fender circuit. You will need to match a replacement reverb tank to the characteristics of the original tank in your amp, which shouldn't be difficult if the numbers are on the original tank. If the tank doesn't have any numbers on it then you may have to do some research into the type of reverb drive-circuitry used in your amplifier in order to find a correctly matching reverb. If the tank impedances aren't matched correctly to the circuitry in your amplifier than a replacement tank will work poorly or not at all.
Let's see if this link to another TH-cam video will post; a detailed video about repairing reverb tanks. th-cam.com/video/sKqnqY8hvu8/w-d-xo.htmlsi=T1VJlcj5THWiczgt
Rewind Electronics posted a video a while ago about repairing reverb tanks; I tried to post a link here for you but the system is apparently configured to block them.
Every dude who builds amps wants to make this video, because he wants us to know.
I promise this matters. I love a little power tube breakup. Can I buy you a beer?
Steve is that a soldering iron you're repurposing as a low tech pointer? 😅
Most spring reverbs suck except the ones used in the Selmer Thunderbird 50 Mark 2 were they used a 6BR8 tube!
You can greatly improve the sound of an inboard reverb unit in a handwired Fender amp, by taking the reverb return lead and running it into the normal channel of the amp, and EQing out most of the bass and increasing the treble. This requires an RCA extension cable, and a female-to-male RCA-to-1/4 inch jack to go into the channel's front input. Sounds swell!
Sept. 26/2023✝️
Ah, mercury II.