DIY Speaker Pieizo Plate Reverb
Intro: DIY Speaker Pieizo Plate Reverb
Time to take reverberation to the next level of distortion, welcome the ice bucket plate reverb unit.
Combined with the DIY Speaker Kit and a bit of electronics, you can play your sounds through any old biscuit tin or metal box or tin that you can get your hands on.
STEP 1: Step 1: What You Will Need
You will need:
1 x Metal vessel (ice bucket, biscuit tin, tin can etc)
1 x Double sided tape
1 x DIY Speaker
1 x Piezo sensor
1 x Audio Jack socket (1/8 or 1/4 inch)
Tools:
Soldering Iron
Safety Glasses
Blue Tack
To use the Spring Reverb:
A sound source (keyboard/MP3 player/Guitar)
A output device (computer or Amplifier)
STEP 2: Step 2: Attach the Piezo to the Audio Jack Socket
Audio Jack Sockets are confusing at first sight, but not so hard to understand.
The Jack Socket needs 2 connections to make a mono sound signal: Positive (Signal) & Negative (Ground).
The Sleeve of the Jack Socket should be wired to the Ground (negative). This is the black wire on our piezo. The end of the Socket that connects with the tip of the jack should be wired to the signal (positive). This is the red wire on our piezo. Solder in place for a secure connection. (at a push you can twist and tape, but this is prone to coming loose)
STEP 3: Step 3: Connect Piezo Sensor
Attach the piezo to the side of vessel using a small square of double sided sticky tape. This sensor is going to detect the vibrations of your metal vessel and turn them into an electrical signal.
STEP 4: Step 4: Connect Speaker
Connect your exciter (the speaker part of DIY Speaker kit) using the speaker cable to the audio out sockets on the DIY Speaker.
STEP 5: Step 5: Attach the Exciter
Place the exciter from the DIY Speaker kit on the top of the metal vessel, this will be where your input sound hits the metal vessel ready to be distorted.
STEP 6: Step 6: Make Some Noise
The signal from the piezo will be too low to plug your headphones straight in, so you need to boost it with some software on your computer.
We used the free software Audacity to record the sound and add Gain to make the signal louder. Plug your sound input (microphone/keyboard/guitar) into the speaker. Plug the reverb unit into the computer through Audacity Listen on headphones.
2 Comments
Fernando_fdi 5 years ago
Nice! Questions:
Can you explain in detail what you did to the actual speaker?
Did you peel off the paper? So the moving element of the speaker is contacting the vessel?
A detail picture of the speaker would be great, please, so we can see it well and adapt this to any speaker.
Fernando_fdi 5 years ago
///Suggestions (to try): 1. hang the vessel so it can vibrate more freely. 2. place the speaker (exciter) in the body of the vessel and not the base, the more distant from pickup the better. I suggest this because my intuition is that the base and the walls of the vessel are somewhat isolated mechanically from one another by the bending from base to walls; if I'm right, this will dampen vibrations from base to walls to some extent. 3. Do the same but with a metal tray . If it has a handle, I would suspend it too///