contact mics and springs

[Max Lord and The Reprobates]

Springs good!

I would site Einsturzende Neubauten as an example of the
extraordinary results that can be achieved by thwacking
extremely large springs. You can hear it on almost any one
of their records.

They use a very heavy spring that's about three feet long
and played with metal mallets.
I assume it is contact mic'd in the fashion described here.
They also tend to process the sound extensively
and gate it. It makes a sort of a gut-turning  bassy crunch .
Very nice sound.


I did some experiments at home with a garage door spring
that was wired up into an MS-20. The spring was amazing when
modulating the oscillators and processed through the filters.
A great sound that was simutaneously very electronic and
also very acoustic.

Incorporating feedback is also an exciting technique. You can
do this electronically with a large spring, or acoustically with a
small reverb spring. The quality of the feedback inside the spring
is wonderful.


MAX


At 9:47 PM -0500 9/8/1999, harry bissell wrote:
>Yes... airrifle pellet... very light (as pellets go) and has a flat nose so it
>is easy to glue reliably...
>
>The piezo as a driver will probably not have enough "balls" to drive a spring,
>esp at low frequencies... I'd use a iron spring (or iron rod... pipe etc)
>ir for
>a small spring, a ferrite bead... and drive with an electromagnet driven
>from a
>stereo amp... Get enough turns so you don't fry it...
>
>Slinkies make good springs... if you put a magnetic pickup on a few stretched
>slinkies, and then KICK it it makes a wonderful explosion...  "Yes" (the band)
>shared that idea during a soundcheck during the "Relayer" tour... used in "The
>Gates of Delirium"... Its like kicking a spring reverb but much BIGGER !!!
>