[Scott Dorsey]

Christian Best wrote:
On Thursday, 18 December 2014 14:57:24 UTC, Scott Dorsey wrote:

"That's no reason to butcher it and turn it into something else"

if i use the b54 tube amp to drive the plate and put two other pick up's on=
it and power the pick up's,be it piezo or martech's,would you real conside=
r that butchering.

It wouldn't sound like the original EMT plate any more, so I'd call that
butchering or at least messing it up.

The reason why you get an EMT today is because it sounds like an EMT, so
if you do something to it that makes it sound like something else, you have
defeated the whole idea, and spent a lot of work doing it.

Back in the sixties, when the EMT was all there was short of a chamber
reverb, people did a lot of crazy things to alter the sound including
dabbing paint on the plate to try and break vibration modes up, using
different pickup, and changing the amps. People did all sorts of stuff
with pre-delay, using garden hoses with compression drivers and microphones
at the end, or magnetostrictive delay lines from military radar systems.

Most of this stuff was done to try and get a more natural sounding reverb
from the EMT. Today, if you want a natural reverb there are a lot of
pieces of equipment to get it, and you don't use an EMT for that. You use
an EMT because it sounds like an EMT.

it would very easily be brought back to its glorious mono situation by remo=
ving the piezo or one of the new pick up's and drive and amping from the v5=
4 amp.

Yes, and if you do that, make sure you document what you do, make sure you
keep the parts removed, and make sure all this stuff is kept with the EMT
and not in some other place in the facility where it will become separated
someday.

i would hazard a guess that a lot of plates where converted to stereo becau=
se of peoples individual preference to it being stereo rather than mono.,,,=
I've heard worked in studio's with Emt 140's before and think i'd prefer a =
stereo,,if someone would swap a stereo for a mono, id gladly trade plus cas=
h,,not sure i'll have any takers tho.

Try it in mono and see. Pan the return a little bit to the side if you
want some stereo width. Think of the EMT as an effects device, not like
a room reverb.

If you actually want stereo spread on the reverb return, put an Orban
stereo synthesizer on the reverb. The effect holds up very well, and
the Orban units sell for next to nothing today.

You're probably not going to be using the plate on the 2-buss anyway, it's
mostly going to be used on isolated channels. The effect builds up and can
become very heavy-handed if you aren't careful.

anyway.one step at a time,powering the amp is the first real concern,it was=
gone over before going into storage and that was 15 years ago so,,how know=
s what died in that time.

Were all the caps replaced back then? If the original paper caps are in
there, now would be a good time to replace them with film caps. They will
not sound quite the same, but they also won't fail and take out other
components right and left the way the paper caps will. The electrolytics
in the power supply you can bring up slowly and hope they form properly.
If they don't, replace them. If you don't have a variac, use a 100W lamp
in series with the power cord for a couple hours to let the thing slowly
come up at lower voltage. Watch the rectifier, if it shows signs of getting
really hot, shut it down.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."