We recently featured an ingenious video from Youtuber Leomakes in which, by adding a transducer and pickup, he converted a steel shelf into a rudimentary plate reverb. While this was a very clever illustration of the operating principles of a plate reverb, the sound was at best a character effect. Not even a shelf EQ was going to help (groan…). If you wanted unique, trashy reverb it might have seen use but for the 99.9% of the rest of the time it wouldn’t be a serious alternative to a “proper” reverb.

Fixing The Issues, One At A Time

To address this, Leo has revisited the project and has worked through the issues one by one and has taken a proof of concept, through to a not at all bad DIY plate reverb working through issues with the plate itself, how it is mounted, how effective the driver and pickups are and how well it matches in terms of impedance with the rest of the system.

• 0.57 - The Sound

• 3.02 - Form Factor

• 5.25 - The Electronics

• 9.35 - On Failure

• 12.09 - Final Assembly

• 12.54 - Audio Examples

• 17.22 - Conclusion

We like this project as it shows the problem solving process in action and even if you never touch an electromechanical reverb, those same principles are essential to everything we do as audio engineers.