DIY Plate Reverb with a Contact Mic

Buy Metal Marshmallow Pro Contact Mic Here:
metalmarshmallow.com/product.php?product_id=16
Or buy a Phantom-Powered DIY Contact Mic Kit:
metalmarshmallow.com/product.php?product_id=29
You can download the impuse response from my blog:
metalmarshmallow.com/blog_post.php?id=13

[@davidneale-lorello2954]

Man, you deserve SO MANY MORE VIEWS than you’re getting. Love your channel; love your work. Keep going - I’ll share!

[@stulora3172]

Here's an idea for a cool spring reverb that I proof-of-concepted once: Get an old, broken mechanical clock. If it's not broken, break it. If it has an alarm, you will find two spiral springs, otherwise break another clock if you want stereo. Connect the centre and the outer end via a long stiff wires to piezo acoustic elements. You will need some amplification and impedance fiddling, to get audio into one piezo and out of the other. voila! I was really surprised how good this experiment sounded. I called it "Clockwork Reverb". edit: I just noted, this is a company that makes contact mics, so use those instead of the piezos

[@armybirds]

really interesting and well done video, glad it showed up

[@rivulus]

a Bach cello suite on shredder guitar and washing machine. Because why not 😂

[@metalmarshmallowllc]

Because 6-string guitars are for the weak of spirit, hahaha!

[@r0bophonic]

The final result actually sounds a lot like the natural reverb of a very small room!

[@mikolasstrajt3874]

Great trick. I need to test this with big metalic grill we have at home which reverberates even if I talk in it's general direction.

[@sr3d-microphones]

A washing machine? Cool, last time I used kitchen furniture for anything else other than what it was intended for was a fridge back in the 80's, I connected my PL259 plug to the door (simply touched a metal bit by the hinge and was able to adjust the SWR by opening or closing the door!) and got a 5-9 report to my buddy down the road on his CB :P True story! Sounding great there BTW..! You are full of surprises.

[@metalmarshmallowllc]

Haha cool! I always wanted a bootleg ratio station!

[@JesusIced]

x10 was very good. cant say was it realistic or not because ive never ever seen such caves, but other in other cases its as if you had actually recorded vocals and guitar in a tiled bathroom. unbelievable quality. i need one of these contact mics, probably ill cannibalize some of my mics to make it diy. great video, subscribed, liked, etc!

[@5minuterevolutionary493]

So awesome. And yes about the spring reverb and Dick Dale, almost certainly. Unless someone is going to have receipts, I am convinced his sound was springs.

[@7171jay]

Cool idea but the reverb sounds kind of muddy / boomy. First thing I would try is placing your driver and contact mic a bit differently maybe try avoiding the middle of the washer and keep both more towards an edge or corner rather than center. Next I'd try eq on the reverb. Try eq'ing the send and/or the return to and from your washer. Low cut and even cutting up to 200 or 300hz will probably help things. Also boosting high mids and highs I would think may produce interesting results.

[@metalmarshmallowllc]

Uncle Roger was so upset that I had to put my leg down from chair in solidarity

[@jamisondonald384]

This is great. More experiments, please

[@dreamingone615]

Well, I clicked bc it looked like this might go in a field recording direction. I was hoping you were using a big grain silo or something as your reverb plate. I loved the classical guitar on the pointy shred axe.

[@Levibetz]

Another thing you could do is playback the signal into the plate at 2x speed, then bring it back down to real speed and it'll double the length of the tail and sound like a larger room.

[@Hsuanice]

This is so fun! Thanks for sharing~MM Pro the best!

[@robertharker]

Great idea. Thanks!

[@soundhobo]

…& respect to you sir, great project 👍

[@abrakadeep8810]

It would be so cool if you could describe your whole process, the software you use for making the impulse responses. That would certainly be super helpful. What a wonderful video, what a wonderful way to show how easy it can be, could you possibly also link the kind of power amplifier you used or tell it here in the comments :) wonderful wonderful stuff!

[@metalmarshmallowllc]

The software for making the impulse response was Room EQ Wizard, it is just a few clicks to play the sweep, then there is an option to export the impuse response as a wav file. My power amplifier is an AK170, which is an unbranded thing you can get from many sellers for under 20 USD. I haven't used it with actual speakers, but glancing at the board inside it appears to be surprisingly well-designed for the price.

[@abrakadeep8810]

@@metalmarshmallowllc Thanks a bunch for that quick shot, nicely written and informative answer! Im very happy to have found ypur channel, having trained my algorithm well enough to get this as a recommendation :) i plan for building spring, aswell as plate reverbs for a long time, but have for a long while omitted the way of trying it with cheap gear and things, but wanted to go for the higher quality stuff instantly, which really brought down my plans of even starting more and more. Cause figuring out which neat and powerful amp id use and where the heck id get an actual surface transducer that was used with emt140 plate reverbs back in the day and which microphone combo... just broke my brain a little... so yeah. Input like your video is really welcome in my brain cause it illustrates the possibilities really nice and gives a better opportunity to play with the idea of it all. So i will build 1-2 smaller ones until i attempt the huge original emt140 sized that i need to wall mount at my place :)

[@famitory]

can you just pull most of the paper off a speaker to get a surface transducer or is it more complex than that

[@metalmarshmallowllc]

You could probably get that to work, but I think the surface transducer is optimized a bit in terms of its geometry to work well this way.

[@RadianFilms64]

Hi there! I was wondering you are shipping products to Romania, Europe. I am interested in buying Marshmallow DIY Phantom kit from you. Let me know when you get the chance. Thank you!

[@senncer]

You are AWESOME!

[@metalmarshmallowllc]

No, YOU are awesome, hahaha!

[@senncer]

@@metalmarshmallowllc 😂❤️❤️❤️

[@funkbungus137]

eyo, this is fucking sweet. lol for some reason I get excited by people using REAPER.

[@Fl4ppers]

I'll point out a few issues with doing it this way and a couple of solutions. First is there is a boxy frequency range thats present when using painted surfaces. Enamel and other paint acts like a dampener on very low and high midrange upwards. Second if its a piezo doing the picking-up then they have a hard scoop in the low midrange. The solution to this is to cut the boxy frequencies and boost the low midrange and highs until the sound feels right. Another solution is to find a really nice, big bit of flat steel that is unpainted and suspend that. The lack of suspension on the washing also presents some issues with the way the sound gets transferred as it wont freely vibrate the way it could there.

[@pangyre]

I wish this were still what the Internet is.

[@AndersWeijnitz]

Nice! Works surprisingly well! Nice location too. Where is that? (Doesn't look like Bavaria, Germany where I am writing from :-)).

[@metalmarshmallowllc]

Thanks, that is the good old 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🔫

[@nerdycatgamer]

epic video B)

[@TheGubna]

I just made that same techmology reference elsewhere. Are you recording me with that thing??

[@metalmarshmallowllc]

Haha that is wack!

[@sea-ferring]

It's extremely dark sounding. Could be good combined with other effects.

[@kadorekun]

cool!

[@skunkman777]

they're calling him "The Frankie MacDonald of Audio Technology"

[@bydeattic8319]

Cool idea! Btw the IRs link has no IRs to download 😅

[@metalmarshmallowllc]

I'm an idiot, I never made it public, I just fixed it!

[@puvendranpillay8802]

Acoustic guitar body reverb?

[@metalmarshmallowllc]

Interesting idea, I'll have to try it out!

[@DavidMadeira29]

What's in the background? Fort Greene?! Namastè.

[@metalmarshmallowllc]

Just an awesome looking flour mill

[@ASTRALCXRXNA]

I honestly though the reverb sounded a little WASHED 😂😂😂😂😂

[@stulora3172]

Subscribing to support and encourage and motivate and.... because! Cheers

[@metalmarshmallowllc]

Aw, thanks for the support!

[@RegebroRepairs]

That's plate reverb in the same way singing in your bathroom is an echo chamber. 😀 Technically, yes, but it still sounds bad. But there are people who does build their own plate reverb. Loads of work, but not expensive.

[@metalmarshmallowllc]

Yeah, I bascially agree with this assessment

[@JazzyFizzleDrummers]

Eq probably would have helped quite a bit, but yeah

[@JazzyFizzleDrummers]

It sounds a bit boxy. Pun intended

[@BiblicalAngels]

BLOOD 🩸…. I mean, contact mic reverbs.

[@metalmarshmallowllc]

Its my favorite hymn 🧛

[@chineserockethands4578]

Booyakasha