Teaching Machines - Wellspring (Stereo Spring Reverb Machine)

A Magical Device: In Wellspring, Teaching Machines combine Delay, Filter, Modulation, and Spring Reverb all in one unit, and all of it in stereo!

The sound of a spring reverb is something quite special and has been accompanying our ears for quite some time. First in a Hammond organ, then in spring amps, and soon to be found in almost every studio, spring reverbs make up an important part of the 60s sound.
One characteristic of spring reverbs is the rather muddy, dull, and metallic sound. This is attributed to the springs which, when shorter in length, can only reproduce a small frequency range. The affordable price and this unique sound made them interesting for psychedelic rock, dub, reggae, and much more.
The most famous effect pairing and the signature sound of entire genres is reverb and delay - more precisely: spring reverb and tape delay! Teaching Machines deliver with their wonderful Wellspring exactly this fantastic combination, contemporarily expanded to fulfill your wet Dick Dale dreams - in stereo!

Wellspring comes from the capital of Wales and is a tribute to effects that we all use and love. Built in a high-quality metal housing, you'll find a powerful preamplifier, a work-horse delay, a crisp filter, a four (!) springs for reverb, as well as modulations. Nothing is missing here, and despite the multitude of functions, Wellspring has remained clear and intuitive.

Your signals arrive at the rear stereo input, with a guitar/line input also available directly on the front of the device. You can control your signal's amplitude here using the level pot and even add distortion. Next, it goes into the delay circuit, which is based on the ubiquitous and tried&tested Princeton PT2399 chip from the late 80s. This chip is full of character and degrades sound quality at longer delay times. Therefore, it is still often used today as a substitute for expensive and fragile tape delays. There are individual controls for the left (time 1) and right (time 2) delay time. Via a switch, "Follow" can be activated, whereby the time 2 control acts as an offset control for the time set in time 1. This is great for two-voice karplus strong or ping-pong delays. The feedback parameter acts in a classic manner or additionally allows you to switch the left and right feedbacks!
The next component is an analog filter with four modes. No frills, but with everything you need. Mode-Switch, Cutoff and good sound. The filter in this device is a very important component for obvious sound shaping, but also for removing high frequencies from the delay chip (if desired) or taming the feedback. The whole section has a Dry/Wet control.
The mixture set here then goes into the springs. Wellspring is loaded with a total of 4 springs, each 38cm (15”). This means Wellspring sounds completely different from a typical spring reverb. The sound is not muddy and dull but vast and clear. It will never sound like a digital reverb, but that's not the point. A spring reverb sounds like a spring reverb, and that's the beauty of it! Of course, there's also a dry/wet parameter here. Here, "Dry" uses the mix from the previous dry/wet.
A central parameter of Wellspring is "Magic"! This is a feedback loop that feeds the springs back into the delay. A great way to achieve escalating feedback while still maintaining full control over the sound by passing through all stages again. Here, the filter comes into play again, allowing you to achieve very extreme (high resonance) or very gentle (strong filtering) results. Especially in combination with the integrated LFO, great things are possible here. The LFO has two waveforms and can be independently assigned to filter and delay. The LFO speed goes into the audible range - very cool!

This is not a Lexicon or Altiverb. This is a dub stereo reverb space & time laboratory. This is about the auditory spatial impressions that only electroacoustic tinkerers and dub scientists can achieve. The people behind Teaching Machines have designed a great first product with Wellspring and clearly put in a lot of effort.

Features:

• Stereo Delay (Princeton PT2399)
• Analog multimode filter (low, band, high, notch)
• Stereo spring reverb with two 15" springs per channel
• Magic parameter (feedback from springs in delay)
• LFO as modulation (ramp and sine wave) up to audible range
• Individual attenuation for delay and filter (inversion of the right channel possible!)
• Stereo input and output on the rear panel
• Mono input at the front (line or instrument level)
• Input gain
• CV input