Howdy. I fixed the reverb on this amp yesterday, and while it sounds great I wish there was a little more of it. The tone of it is perfect, it just doesn't get cavernous enough for my liking. Is there anyway to change something in here for more of the good stuff?
Here's the reverb in:
And the actual reverb circuit:
I first thought about just changing the pots to a larger value, but the resistors downstream make me dubious that's the best idea. Somebody suggested upping the value of the 0.005 cap off V1b but maybe someone here has some advice?
Depends... driving the spring harder can give you a deeper more "springy" sound, up to a point of course. More gain in the recovery stage will give a louder effect or mix. making the 0.005 cap bigger will allow more low end signal from the reverb to come through.
You could try raising the value of the 220K (330K-470k) resistor on the input, that would drive the reverb a bit harder, but it may distort it at higher volumes if you are not careful. You can't really change much else in that part of the circuit as the anode is already up at ~425v.
If you just want more of the same reverb signal then put a small cap 100-500nF across the 1K5 cathode resistor on V1b.
Tube amp and guitar tones straight from 1958… amazing how believable the sounds were back then, even without the modellers...
I'd try these things which will change gain but not frequency response:
1 - Pop a 22uF cap over the cathode resistor of the recovery stage, that will quickly tell you whether more recovery gain will do the trick or if it distorts.
If it does distort, but gets close to the volume you want, you can change that stage gain by other means to keep it from clipping, but before that:
2 - the 220k and 120k mixer resistors downstream of the volume pots form a voltage divider with the 100k right before REV OUT. Jump either/both of those 220k or 120k with another 100k to ~halve their value - this will increase the output volume by 3db, or alternatively increase the 100k to 220k-470k or so (harder since you'll have to pull at least one leg up vs tacking a component on top of what's there).
