Rona Vintage Spring Reverb is a Rona Audio emulation of a two-spring reverb tank – the reverb built into classic guitar amplifiers and vintage studio spring units. A single transducer drives two springs of different lengths; the sound travels along each spring, is reflected at the far end and returns, and every round trip smears it a little more into the characteristic ‘boing’: the low frequencies arrive first, the frequencies around the spring’s tension frequency last. The two pickups form a stereo wet signal. You control the drive into the tank (DWELL), the round trip of each spring (LENGTH), the decay, the tension, the amount of chirp (DRIP), the damping and tone, the stereo width and the mix – and you can KICK the tank.
Typical uses: surf and blackface amp reverb on guitars, dub splashes on snares and vocals, organ and keyboard tanks, lo-fi and electronic textures, and any track that wants the drip and twang only a spring gives. The open spring tank at the bottom of the panel shows the two springs, each trembling very slightly with its own signal.
Figure 1 – the complete plugin interface
- POWER — Click-free power; OFF passes the programme untouched (20 ms crossfade)
- INPUT — Input trim before the tank and the dry path
- DWELL — Drive into the tank transducer (tanh saturation, loudness-compensated)
- PRE-DELAY — Delay before the springs
- DECAY — RT60 of the spring tail at low frequencies (loop gain 10^(-3 L / T60))
- TENSION — Chirp / transition frequency of the springs (spring 2 sits 6 % higher)
- DRIP — Dispersion – the chirp spread: how much later the frequencies around TENSION arrive than the low frequencies
- DAMP — High-frequency absorption inside the springs (one-pole low-pass in each loop)
- LOW CUT — High-pass (12 dB/oct) on the tank input
- HIGH CUT — Low-pass (12 dB/oct) on the wet output
- SPRING 1 LENGTH — Round-trip time of spring 1 (echo spacing of its tail)
- SPRING 1 LEVEL — Pickup level of spring 1
- SPRING 2 LENGTH — Round-trip time of spring 2
- SPRING 2 LEVEL — Pickup level of spring 2
- WIDTH — Stereo spread of the two pickups: 100 % = spring 1 left / spring 2 right, 0 % = both centred
- MIX — Dry / wet balance, equal power (50 % = both at -3 dB)
- OUTPUT — Output trim
- MONITOR — OUTPUT = the mixed signal; WET solos the springs (MIX ignored)
- KICK — Momentary trigger: every OFF -> ON edge knocks the tank (impulse into both springs)
56 factory presets in 9 categories. Installed, activated and updated with RONA License Manager.
