VH verb-was it mono or stereo?

[dirtycooter]

So again fiddling with different ambience techniques and goin back and forth between w/d, wdw, and dww I am now noodling around with d/w yet again and got the wet cab honkin out verb only and in mono. While having stereo verb from dww this combo seems to be really easy to dial in compared to some other methods.
So it began me thinking .......

I know ..... YIKES!

Listening to the ISO tracks of Panama, Unchained, Hang em High, and from the first album Feel Your Love Tonight I have to say that there is not a whole hell of a lot of difference in that right speaker that chucks out pure reverb only.
I know dudes go on and on about the Sunset reverb room but I am thinkin its a plate.
Panama is from 1984 and it shares alot of reverb similarity to the first record. If you pan your stereo to only hear the right side its pretty damn congruent on all these songs. And I don't think Ed left 5150 to go add reverb to his shit down at Sunset for panama.
Anyhow-even if it was mic'd room or plate I believe the panned hard right sound is mono reverb. I used to think it was hard left was dry and some reverb center and hard right in stereo. But the more I listen and tweak in the rig on a plate setting and in straight mono the closer it seems to sound.
I know rooms could be stereo mic'd and plates were stereo as well.....
but do you think it was made and panned hard right in mono? My ears are thinking for the mixing of all things and keeping it simple thats what they did. It sure sounds ... more like it than stereo verb does. Weird but goin mono with it sounds damn good.

[julkke]

Dry on the left, mono verb on the right. That gets the sound!

[markstullkc]

So again fiddling with different ambience techniques and goin back and forth between w/d, wdw, and dww I am now noodling around with d/w yet again and got the wet cab honkin out verb only and in mono. While having stereo verb from dww this combo seems to be really easy to dial in compared to some other methods.
So it began me thinking .......

I know ..... YIKES!

Listening to the ISO tracks of Panama, Unchained, Hang em High, and from the first album Feel Your Love Tonight I have to say that there is not a whole hell of a lot of difference in that right speaker that chucks out pure reverb only.
I know dudes go on and on about the Sunset reverb room but I am thinkin its a plate.
Panama is from 1984 and it shares alot of reverb similarity to the first record. If you pan your stereo to only hear the right side its pretty damn congruent on all these songs. And I don't think Ed left 5150 to go add reverb to his shit down at Sunset for panama.
Anyhow-even if it was mic'd room or plate I believe the panned hard right sound is mono reverb. I used to think it was hard left was dry and some reverb center and hard right in stereo. But the more I listen and tweak in the rig on a plate setting and in straight mono the closer it seems to sound.
I know rooms could be stereo mic'd and plates were stereo as well.....
but do you think it was made and panned hard right in mono? My ears are thinking for the mixing of all things and keeping it simple thats what they did. It sure sounds ... more like it than stereo verb does. Weird but goin mono with it sounds damn good.

I completely agree. I remember the first time I played the 1984 RECORD and heard 'Panama', I though, wow VHII sound! Cool!!

I always heard they re-amped and added effects after the base guitar was recorded. Was not 5150 a handball court that got re-purposed? Maybe eddie built a chamber in there???

My gut says plate.

[Leotis]

I've got a TC Electronics Hall of Fame reverb pedal with a plate mode. How would you guys recommend setting it up to approximate Ed's reverb?

[dirtycooter]

I think its limited in its controls to a point that you have to rely on what you get is what you get. You will have to pick the right size and timber of room or verb and probably turn decay down much more than you'd think. Decay does not give the dimension or space-just its how live or hard the rooms walls are and how able they are to keep letting sound clearly bounce around more and more. Eds is bright, very little bass, no splashy long tail, very abrupt compared to say blues or surf stuff.

"Pre delay" is a small 0 ms up to 200 ms delay that is placed between the dry sound and the start of the reverb.
This control is rather detrimental to getting the sound to not fuck up a distorted sound.
You can slap verb on clean guitar almost anyway you want and it sounds titties. Start doin it to rock and higain tones and it can get really shitty muddy.
If you make the verb start around 100ms late it gives the dry sound room to give its attack and keeps it clearer by quite a bit. As well as giving dimension. I say 100ms because that seems to be the sweet spot.
I love TC verbs but the ones in my g force don't have strong enough early reflections. Its not as hard of a smack at its start as say my lex is. But the tc has the smoothness and is more natural on the tail as far as not being grainy and rough. But its sometimes these grainy reverbs that sound best in live situations as they are less transparent and hold together more solidly.

Right now I have a plate set up in the lex 100ms predelay and the decay short as it will go. Your going for a strong almost slap back delay if you hone in on the iso tracks right side playback alone. No huge splashy breathy tail that mucks up but it gives dimension with a long predelay of 100ms and the reflections are set to the largest room setting in the plate algo. This changes the timber of the early reflections when they appear they have a bigger appearant sound.

If your in a 100ft by 100ft room and clap your hands once you will hear your hands first obviously, then the predelay simulates the time it takes to leave your hands-travel to the walls-then travel all the way back to your ears. If your in the middle of the room then that 100x100 foot becomes 50 to the wall and 50 back to your ears to hear its first early reflection. Then you have all the variables of standing in different places then all the wall places become majorly offset and the reflections from a different point in the room become much more complex. So predelay gives the size dimension of a verb because feet takes time for sound to traverse through. It can be measure by speed of sound traveling so many feet per second goin out to the wall and back to you-anyway thats the math part of it.
With Eds verb its just a very dense focused reflection thats almost like a really hazy echo. You can pretty much hear the sounds attack and texture in the delay but its smeared slightly. Not a real complex verb by any means as its very focused and clear. Thats what makes me think it was a plate.
Diffusion in a reverb adjustment in the digital world is how smeared and undefines the reflections become and build up density. So you can adnust this in the tc or lex to smear up the initial reflections to taste and make them more or less defined.
But as far as the tail is concerened of the verbs trail off sustaining breath sound its kept very minimal and low.

Big predelay, strong hazy early reflections at the verbs starting point that give almost a slap sound, the bass is reduced considerably especially to pump out of sealed 4x12 in the verbs low end area-other wise it will be way to disturbing on the dry tone and boomy before you can get the mix up high enough where you want it. Its very thin on bottom here. So the verbs eq is important here as well. If you verb don't have a eq control then put it in a kixer and drop its channel feeding its bass knob and the verb will have less bass to react on. It will sit much better and sit much airier.
Anyway........ these are my experiences after hours of trial and error. Lots of hours!!!

[dirtycooter]

Another thing you can do to get an idea about predelay is take delay pedal set it 50/50% mix. Echo same loudenss as dry. Set with 0% feedback. Now take your one single repeat and move your time knob from 0ms to 200ms and listen to the dimension it seems to give. As you approach 200ms it really detaches itself from the sound. Around 100ms its detached and clear of the dry tone but barely. Just enough to hear some dinension and separation from the dry attack. Its fattening and gives dimension in a way. At 100ms it still seems like part of the sound. Toward 200ms its like another thing altogether and can fall apart to my ears. Of course you can experiment with the other 199ms in between and let your ears soak up some different dimensions. Longer times sound lime a bigger room, shorter times smaller room. Sweep that time knob around and listen to what it does.
If you listen to drop dead legs..... you'll hear the same kinda thing. But part way through that song they add reverb tail midway just before the solo. Like they pushed the send to the plate up on the console. Dry delay then suddenly it starts gettin tail.