Back through the mists of time the spring was the only way for musicians to get reverb on stage. With the tech also making it as far as the studio, we check out Waves’ newest Magma addition to hear its retro-metallic vibes.

In Summary

Waves Magma Springs is a studio spring reverb. Going far beyond the simple stage spring, features such as input drive, built-in pre delay, spring options, and output shelves promise a tool for returns that delivers the classic spring reverb sound in any DAW.

Going Deeper

Why Use Spring Reverb?

For live musicians in the 1950’s and 60’s hoping for some reverb-like atmosphere on guitar, the decision on what reverb to use was simple: Use spring reverb or stay dry. These small simple units attach transducers to excite real springs and pick up the result, making them easy to fit inside instrument amps and other boxes.

For a while dedicated studio units were made by the likes of AKG for studios that didn’t have the room to house its big plate sibling or a simple chamber. For others, the spring sound provided an extra reverb flavour, available to be on tap alongside more expensive sounding treatments. Later, rack mount offerings from Tascam and Fostex offered the sound to recording musicians who weren’t ready to sell their house to fund an early digital reverberator.

The spring reverb sound could be described as usually dark, with a tremulant, metallic flavour that’s easy to understand once you’ve opened one up. For some, its complementary twang is the Sound Of Surf, providing atmospheres from the west coast to the Motor City and beyond.

In Action - Waves Magma Springs

In the video, we patch Waves’ newest member of the Magma family into our return to soak in its retro valve-powered reverberation on guitar (examples courtesy of Mark M Thompson). We sit back and take in its seven spring models using no pre delay or shelving. We then demonstrate how Magma Springs’ pre delay can bring extra versatility, either for letting dry signals cut a path through higher reverb levels for an expensive sound, or for some classic reflections with higher feedback values. We also hear into its decay with Magma Springs’ three different spring lengths.

Waves On Magma Springs

Magma Springs is a tube-based spring reverb plugin. It contains seven unique spring models [from a] carefully curated selection of our favourite hardware units, each delivering its own sound, character, and emotional impact, coupled with the Magma analogue tube sound. 

Bouncing Back

With plenty of classic chambers, plates, and other electro-acoustic space makers getting their own DSP makeovers, the humble spring reverb has enjoyed fewer homages than most. Perhaps from its roots languishing in that bit of the amp where all the old string packets and bottle tops to go to mingle, combined with later more refined competition in the studio, the technology has sometimes seemed like a poor relation to bigger, more expensive designs.

Magma Spring’s halos of clang will bring a smile initially before its uses beyond pure revisionism become obvious. For Surf, Americana, and Soul, Waves Magma Spring could be hard to beat, but most importantly it could be the perfect antidote to airbrushed modern reverbs in any setting. Certainly it’s easy to love on anything that needs a coarser sprinkling of retro dust on the return. If you haven’t tried spring reverb yet, Magma Spring needs to be on your reverb radar.

A Word About This Article

As the Experts team considered how we could better help the community we thought that some of you are time poor and don’t have the time to read a long article or a watch a long video. In 2023 we are going to be trying out articles that have the fast takeaway right at the start and then an opportunity to go deeper if you wish. Let us know if you like this idea in the comments.