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Post by Blackdawg on Apr 4, 2018 16:53:28 GMT -6
I have a buddy with an Ecoplate II. I hope to acquire it some day to fill the hole in my heart the EMTs left. Can't imagine they are bad sounding! Would be a fun DIY project too. Not much too them but man, take a lot of work. First one I worked with was a II, and it does bridge the I and III nicely. Cool. Hopefully I can aquire it someday. He never uses it and knows I would so Im just waiting for the moment. I believe the Echoplates use stainless steel versus the cold rolled plate in the EMT. Interesting! I know in the DIY stuff I've read, finding a good plate is where the magic is. I was blessed to get to know 2 EMT 140s for a few years. They were amazing. Has anyone heard an Echo Plate? Supposed to be quieter. I haven't heard an Echoplate but I have ordered some new piezos pickups and components to build some low noise preamps for the EMT. Even so I'm not finding the noise objectionable apart from a small amount of 50hz hum which seems to have quietened down in the past week or so. I have to say that the EMT is probably about the best purchase I have made. It literally sends chills down my back when I hear it in a mix and especially on a great vocal. Nothing else I have ever heard does what this magical vintage metal and wood monstrosity can do. Yeah they are amazing. We had two and one had a tube preamp and one was SS. The SS one was obviously less noisy. It still had a hiss to it. But I tended to cut the highs pretty brutally to anything going to it and even some more on the return. So lush. Nothing like them. Im haunted by their beauty.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Apr 4, 2018 20:05:00 GMT -6
I remember being told that the reason they had to discontinue the 140 was that they had run out of the original steel and not been able to find a good substitute.
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Post by rowmat on Apr 4, 2018 20:13:15 GMT -6
I remember being told that the reason they had to discontinue the 140 was that they had run out of the original steel and not been able to find a good substitute. Yeah that's what I heard... Maybe it was from you!
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Post by matt@IAA on Apr 4, 2018 20:26:30 GMT -6
I remember being told that the reason they had to discontinue the 140 was that they had run out of the original steel and not been able to find a good substitute. This arouses the skeptic in me. I’m a mechanical engineer by day and deal a lot with metallurgy in my line of work. I’d assume the stiffness for something like this is the only thing you can hear. In other words the Young’s modulus. I’d think any steel with good isotropic properties should work.
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Post by rowmat on Apr 4, 2018 20:35:55 GMT -6
I remember being told that the reason they had to discontinue the 140 was that they had run out of the original steel and not been able to find a good substitute. This arouses the skeptic in me. I’m a mechanical engineer by day and deal a lot with metallurgy in my line of work. I’d assume the stiffness for something like this is the only thing you can hear. In other words the Young’s modulus. I’d think any steel with good isotropic properties should work. I spent some time investigating steel sheet when I was looking to DIY a plate reverb. I think the issue is not only finding material of suitable quality/tone but also being able to maintain consistency of the tone over the production period. Changes in steel plate characteristics between batches that result too much sonic variation is something most users would probably prefer not to have to deal with.
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Post by matt@IAA on Apr 4, 2018 20:41:36 GMT -6
What characteristics are we talking about? It's going to be a certain size and shape, so the only thing that would change it's resonant properties (natural frequency and mode shapes) are its stiffness, density, and how isotropic it is (isotropic meaning, uniform properties). I can't think of anything else that will be of significance...
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Post by Blackdawg on Apr 4, 2018 21:52:09 GMT -6
Its more then stiffness though. Depending on how it was rolled the density can change through out the plate. I mean we are talking about a big sheet of steel. To find a piece that is a linear as possible throughout the whole sheet can't be easy.
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Post by rowmat on Apr 4, 2018 22:42:51 GMT -6
EMT no doubt specified the type of steel used after testing various samples. I'm not certain exactly when production of the EMT 140 ceased but the EMT 240 gold foil plate appeared around 1977 AFAIK. So there may have been a gap in production.
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Post by rowmat on Apr 4, 2018 22:56:59 GMT -6
What characteristics are we talking about? It's going to be a certain size and shape, so the only thing that would change it's resonant properties (natural frequency and mode shapes) are its stiffness, density, and how isotropic it is (isotropic meaning, uniform properties). I can't think of anything else that will be of significance... If the original plate material was custom manufactured for EMT and all came from one supplier AND was consistent in specification, if the supply then ceased (as rumoured) EMT may have been left with using off-the-shelf steel which could have differed enough from the original steel to be an issue. Also by this time if the EMT 240 Gold Foil plate was already on the drawing board then it probably wasn't worth trying to keep the 140 going. (This is all just pure speculation of course) Also while the overall size of EMT 140 is about 8' x 4' the plate itself is around 7' x 3.5' I could not find any sheet steel this size unless I had it custom cut to size. The standard closest size was 2440mm x 1220mm which is about 8' x 4' just for the plate itself.
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Post by matt@IAA on Apr 5, 2018 6:53:09 GMT -6
When you buy steel you buy to a spec. A foundry will do a custom pour to a certain chemistry, but minimum lots for that are usually in the tons - and thats just for a big ingot. Then you have to do whatever processing to it. So we have to assume it's a commercial grade of steel. It's *extremely* unlikely they were using some kind of custom steel. There's really no reason at all to do it - all you're going to hear is how it acts as a spring, and that is only influenced by density, stiffness, and uniformity. In the grand scheme of things, cutting steel plate is not a big deal - you can do it with a water jet or flame cutter or a simple band saw, depending on the size. A couple hundred bucks, and you could certainly batch process. There's no such thing as magic. Just out of curiosity, what is the thickness? Less than 1/8 (~3mm) or 3/16 (~4.75mm)? I can probably find a suitable specification for it to shop -- ASTM A1008 is probably a good starting point.
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Post by Blackdawg on Apr 5, 2018 8:00:33 GMT -6
When you buy steel you buy to a spec. A foundry will do a custom pour to a certain chemistry, but minimum lots for that are usually in the tons - and thats just for a big ingot. Then you have to do whatever processing to it. So we have to assume it's a commercial grade of steel. It's *extremely* unlikely they were using some kind of custom steel. There's really no reason at all to do it - all you're going to hear is how it acts as a spring, and that is only influenced by density, stiffness, and uniformity.That..is pretty important though. I know that tensioning the plate as well made a big impact. I mean we are talking the 50s-60s here. I don't think its crazy at all to have ordered custom steel for it back then to very specific specifications.
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 14,982
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Post by ericn on Apr 5, 2018 8:30:28 GMT -6
Ah, what doesn’t Jim know how to tweak ? The Otari Status sitting in my storage locker, well it was more of it would still sound like an Otari Status!
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Post by EmRR on Apr 5, 2018 9:07:16 GMT -6
It's also likely that the convergence of available material that met spec / price / future sales said it was time to quit. Not that it couldn't be done, but perceived future sales versus new R&D costs killed it. End of patent (or similar) too; I believe Cunningham/Ecoplate entered the market only when it was legally possible to do so. That also impacts potential market.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Apr 5, 2018 11:38:22 GMT -6
I think it's mostly a matter that they lucked out with an original roll and what's attractive are the peculiar non-linearities. I can't imagine more than a thousand were ever made. This was before home studio daze.
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Post by matt@IAA on Apr 5, 2018 13:05:27 GMT -6
When you buy steel you buy to a spec. A foundry will do a custom pour to a certain chemistry, but minimum lots for that are usually in the tons - and thats just for a big ingot. Then you have to do whatever processing to it. So we have to assume it's a commercial grade of steel. It's *extremely* unlikely they were using some kind of custom steel. There's really no reason at all to do it - all you're going to hear is how it acts as a spring, and that is only influenced by density, stiffness, and uniformity.That..is pretty important though. I know that tensioning the plate as well made a big impact. I mean we are talking the 50s-60s here. I don't think its crazy at all to have ordered custom steel for it back then to very specific specifications. Yeah.. but 99.99% of steel in the world has the same density and stiffness within an extremely small range which is what made me start to think about it in the first place. Nearly all commercial grade carbon steels are .289 lb/cuft and 29700 ksi stiffness. It's just normal, you can't make it change, because those are steel properties. Strength, corrosion resistance, toughness, all those kind of things change... but not stiffness and density. You're talking about specific requirements, but you can't specify density and stiffness, because they're just what they are. Even in the 50's and 60's. It essentially becomes a question of how uniform the roll is. Doesn't seem like that big of a challenge. I suspect EMRR is right.
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Post by rowmat on Apr 5, 2018 16:31:08 GMT -6
It's also likely that the convergence of available material that met spec / price / future sales said it was time to quit. Not that it couldn't be done, but perceived future sales versus new R&D costs killed it. End of patent (or similar) too; I believe Cunningham/Ecoplate entered the market only when it was legally possible to do so. That also impacts potential market. I agree the EMT patent expiration was likely a major factor in the end of the 140's production. The EMT 240 was a smart move at least from a marketing point of view as it was so much more compact than traditional plates.
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Post by rowmat on Apr 5, 2018 17:32:37 GMT -6
I think it's mostly a matter that they lucked out with an original roll and what's attractive are the peculiar non-linearities. I can't imagine more than a thousand were ever made. This was before home studio daze. My 140 is Serial No. 03900 but it is from around the early to mid 1970's so I think it was close to the end of production.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Apr 5, 2018 18:01:31 GMT -6
It's also likely that the convergence of available material that met spec / price / future sales said it was time to quit. Not that it couldn't be done, but perceived future sales versus new R&D costs killed it. End of patent (or similar) too; I believe Cunningham/Ecoplate entered the market only when it was legally possible to do so. That also impacts potential market. I agree the EMT patent expiration was likely a major factor in the end of the 140's production. The EMT 240 was a smart move at least from a marketing point of view as it was so much more compact than traditional plates. But the 240 sucked!
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Post by rowmat on Apr 5, 2018 18:21:05 GMT -6
I agree the EMT patent expiration was likely a major factor in the end of the 140's production. The EMT 240 was a smart move at least from a marketing point of view as it was so much more compact than traditional plates. But the 240 sucked! That's what I've heard.
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Post by jamiesego on Apr 27, 2018 18:16:23 GMT -6
I'll take any of those awful EMT 240's off your hands! There's only one in town but I thought it had a really cool sound the times I've used it. I actually picked it over the 140 in the studio because I thought it had more character.
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Post by thirdeye on May 12, 2018 16:03:46 GMT -6
Our 140 is Nr. 03617. It has developed a little buzz on the left side, so we hardly use it. Would love to get that fixed someday. Attachments:
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Post by Guitar on May 12, 2018 16:06:36 GMT -6
Our 140 is Nr. 03617. It has developed a little buzz on the left side, so we hardly use it. Would love to get that fixed someday. Oh that's a shame, you've gotta get that fixed!
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