reverb tank

2 Articles

Folding Lamp Becomes A Tasty Reverb Tank

November 3, 2025 by 6 Comments

If you’re a musician and you want a reverb effect, there are lots of ways to go about it. You can use software plugins, all kinds of rack-mount effects, or pedals. Or, as [David] has done, you could go with a lamp.

[David’s] build is straightforward enough in concept—he just chose a relatively unconventional item to use as a reverb tank. The lamp might seem like an odd choice, but it actually does a decent job at resonating because of its metal construction and the multiple springs that tension the structure. [David] turns the lamp into a reverb by fitting it with a Vidsonix Ghost audio transducer to put sound into the structure—picture the magnetic driver of a loudspeaker without the cone fitted, and you get the idea. Piezo elements were then used as contact mics to pick up reverberations from the lamp itself. Everything was assembled with a bunch of lab stands that give the build a rather nice aesthetic. The reverb time isn’t particularly long, but the sound is hauntingly beautiful.

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The Sixtyforgan Proves That Church Organs Are Definitely Chiptune

March 29, 2021 by 44 Comments

Church organs may be mechanically complicated and super old-school, but they share something in common with the earliest computer sound chips. In theory, and largely in practice, they produce very simple waveforms. The primary reason that church organs seem so full and rich compared to your old Commodore 64 is that they have the benefit of a whole church’s worth of reverb to fatten out the sound. [Linus] demonstrates this with the Sixtyforgan.

The Sixtyforgan is a Commodore 64 hooked up to a spring reverb tank. By running the relatively basic waveforms from the Commodore’s SID chip through this reverb, it’s possible to generate sounds that are eerily similar to those you might hear at your local Sunday service. While we won’t expect chiptune luminaries like [chipzel] to start busting out songs of praise at events like Square Sounds, it’s kind of awesome to think of the composers of antiquity rocking out to some mad Game Boy jams way back when.

It’s a great demonstration of the Commodore’s musical abilities, and we particularly like the application of the chromatic button layout borrowed from the accordion. We’d love to see this setup combined with an orchestra of the retro computers, like this demonstration playing The Sugar Plum Fairy. Alternatively, Billy Corgan on the Sixtyforgan playing Tiberius would be pretty great, too. Pretty sounding video after the break.

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