Masonverb
Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 1:14AM The masonverb is a diy mic with a reverb like effect to it, basically its a glass plate reverb, it was made by building a contact mic into a masonjar which leads to the name.
This idea happened by a accident of sorts i made the jar with the contact mic in it to use with ants to record their movements but i then seen while recording a video how well the sound from my camera turning on traveled throught the jar and decided to go with it from there.
The way it works is the sound travels through the mouth of the jar and vibrates the walls as it travels down to the base where the contact mic is, The mic picks up the main vibrations of the sound that hit the jar as well as what travels through the jar giving it a nice yet different reverb to it.
Here is a little jam session of my friend joe and his brother playing Takamine guitars which i recorded using the masonverb and a mxl condensor mic for backup, tho almost all of the reverb is coming from the jar. Joe is playing a tweleve string and his brother jon is playing a six string.
Below is a little test using the jar with feedback the sounds we made throughout this were very interesting.
Reader Comments (3)
Sam Pura of The Panda Studies used a similar technique on the progressive band North's latest album.
He took a regular condenser microphone, put it in a condom, then submerged it in a mason jar full of water. Then he sat that in front of the guitar amp. Makes a really spacy tone.
This is really cool :D
-he,
I did a similar thing years ago. I filled my bathtub with water and submerged a condenser mic in it (protected by a plastic bag). Then recorded myself playing drums in by basement directly below the bathtub. Very cool results.
Bathtub dub... BathDub :)
-Marc, and He
i was going to do a test today placing the base of the jar in water and playing near it or things in it to see the results nice to see other people doing similar things.