spring reverb machines

little laneli (sp) - a very well regarded spring unit in pedal form.

fender makes a reissue of their old standalone spring reverb box. it's pretty expensive and probably just ok.

the EH holy grail pedal has been picking up amazing reviews. never played one but for all accounts its the best spring sound short of an actual spring...

Danelectro makes a spring reverb pedal. I think it's called the Spring King. Never played one myself, but it's a big pedal with a real spring in it, not one of their hit-or-miss plastic jobs.

I don't know much about spring reverbs because I just use the ones in my amps. I have a Holy Grail for the amps with no reverb built in.

i do like the sound of the EH spring reverbs but the workings of the pedals themselves don't quite fit my needs.

Actually I've wanted to try the Spring King for some time myself. It has one feature that I think could be really cool if it works right. There's a little pad on it you can tap with your foot that causes that clatter spring sound you hear on a lot of early surf recordings. If that works well, it'd be a good alternative to what I do now to record that sound (which is what they did back in the day): drop one side of the amp 8 inches onto the floor or kick a Princeton reverb as hard as I can with boots on. :0

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Great-British-Spring-vintage-reverb_W0QQitemZ7372707770QQcategoryZ23790QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

would it be super stupid and inordinately expensive (let alone possible) to have my (reissue) bassman modified to include a reverb tank? i miss being able to make crashy boom noises by shaking my amp.

i like a little reverb in my basic sound - i usually had it somewhere between 2 and 3 on my old tanked amp - but i'm mostly interested in sound effects. i'm not really tryna spend $500 on one of the fender reissue units because as undoubtedly nifty as it is, reverb isn't all that important to me.

all the reviews i've read of the spring king make it sound like a piece of junk tonally - are there any other pedals i might be able to use to get that boom-crash thing going? the little lanilei looks cool but i don't know if that'd work. any advice/experience would be super helpful.

it's possible, but it'd probably cost close to $500. it's not just a matter of sticking in the reverb unit, the amp has to be modified

I have to give props to Audiothing's Springs plugin, I've never been happy with spring reverb emulations and it really nails it. You get like every type too, all the different flavors, which makes me want to use it even over a real one (some types just blend better into different tracks, frequency-wise).