I’m from the generation that remembers the bad old days of spring reverbs. They were something to be avoided. Remember how touching or moving a guitar amp the wrong way would excite the spring tank and generate a horrendous blast of ugly metallic resonant reverb? If you don’t, you’re not missing anything. Those early, crappy sounding by today’s standards, 12 bit digital reverbs that came next were a considerable improvement.
If I sound like an old curmudgeon, I am when it comes to spring reverbs. I’ve never coveted plug-in emulations and almost always turn them off in guitar amp sims. That is, until now.
Eventide has just released Spring. Enter a new generation of Spring reverb. Eventide has given us all the useful parts of spring reverb, without the bad parts. Although, you can still get the metallic ringing effect by moving the Tension knob if you want it. Eventide has taken the idea of spring reverb and expanded on it by including a tube style tremolo that can be placed either after or before the spring reverb. The addition of tremolo opens a vast realm of exciting sound design possibilities. By pushing things further and creating access to parameter controls not available in physical spring reverb, Eventide has created a truly unique tool for creating distinctive sounds.
The tube tremolo can be placed either before or after a choice of two spring tank sizes. The reverb decay rate and tremolo speed can be synced to tempo. Modulation is provided for chorusing, and resonance can be added at the high damping frequency. These are just a few of the unique features that make this a versatile and creative tool. Watch in this video as I put multiple instances of Spring to work on various instruments in a mix.
Eli Krantzberg’s greatest loves, beside his wife Mariam are drumming, his vibraphone, Logic Pro, and jazz. Leader of a commercial band for three decades, Eli has been demystifying and simplifying music software since 2008.