EMT 140 (1956)
A steel plate suspended in a tubular frame, and the studios that refused to give it up.
Overview
The EMT 140 is not a Lexicon design at all. It is an EMT product, the German company's stereo steel plate reverb, and EMT's own advertising placed it at the head of the company's reverb line as "the 1956 classic." The trick is simple: a sheet of steel, suspended in a tubular frame, excited into bending oscillations, and left to decay. EMT's manual copy explains that a steel sheet struck by an impulse delivers reflections that increase in density with time, and that the ear cannot tell the difference between that and the reflections of a three-dimensional room. Parallel to the plate hangs a panel of porous material, swung toward or away from the steel across an extreme distance ratio of about 30:1. That is the tone control, and it is why the 140 has a sound rather than a setting.
The plate material was not arbitrary. EMT's documentation notes that the choice of steel requires great care, taking into account internal damping characteristics and the resulting reverberation time, and that through appropriate steel and critically chosen dimensions it is possible to produce a plate with an adequate number of self resonances. The reverb time is a property of the metal, not a knob.
By the time EMT ran the advertisement that called the 140 "the oldest reverb unit in our line," the company was already offering its successor, the EMT 240 Gold Foil, alongside the EMT 250 and 244 digital units. Per that same advertising, the 140 was priced higher than anyone else's newest reverb, and it did not seem to discourage anyone. EMT's copy cited a Billboard equipment study finding that EMT reverbs were used by one-third of all surveyed studios, nearly twice the number using the next brand, and more than the second and third brands combined. That is marketing copy, not an independent verdict, but the claim that the 140 kept selling after its replacements arrived is corroborated everywhere the unit turns up in period studio listings.
Variations abound, so check which one you are looking at. The 140 was produced as Mono, Tube, 140ST Stereo Tube, 140 Stereo Solid State, and Q Quad Return Solid State, all available with or without servo remote. The tube and solid-state electronics are not interchangeable in character, and the stereo and mono versions are different machines entirely. A studio equipment list from the period shows a pair of stereo EMT 140 plates side by side, one with tube electronics and the other solid state. That suggests the two were treated as complementary rather than redundant.
The 140 is not a clean, quiet, modern reverb. It is a mechanical device with a steel plate that has to be tuned, and a pickup system that has to be aligned. The sound is dense and slightly dark, and it sits in a mix in a way that digital reverbs of the era simply did not.
The 140 turns up constantly in period studio listings. It appears in console and outboard inventories for rooms running Neve 8088s, SSL 4000 Es, and Amek APC 1000s. It shows up in a Westlake-equipped room next to a Lexicon 224X and an Eventide SP2016. It shows up in a Russian Hill studio's outboard list beside a Lexicon 224 digital delay and a Lexicon Prime Time. It shows up in a New York room with a Lexicon 480L and a TC 2290, as documented in Mix (March 1993, p.154). The pattern is consistent: the 140 is the analog reverb that stayed in the rack after the digital reverbs arrived.
For a specific example of how it was used, engineer Kevin Beamish described to Recording Engineer (undated excerpt) his approach on the REO Speedwagon track "Keep On Loving You." It had a doubled lead vocal, plus two different kinds of echo: a Lexicon Delta T digital delay and an EMT 140 with a slap for the return, set for about a 13 IPS delay, a little bit under 15 IPS. The combination of the human double and the plate echo is what made the sound.
A caution on identification: the EMT 140 is frequently confused with the EMT 240 Gold Foil, which is a different unit. The 240 is one-fifth the size of the 140, virtually impervious to outside interference, and pitched by EMT for mobile use. Listings that blur the two are common. The Ecoplate from Studio Technologies and the Audicon Plate were introduced after the various EMT patents expired and work on the same basic principles, but they are not EMTs and do not command EMT prices.
Expect maintenance. The plate is a mechanical assembly, and the tuning of the plate, the alignment of the pickups, and the condition of the tube electronics (on tube models) all affect the sound. Period classified listings show EMT 140 stereo plates trading at $3,000 in the late 1980s, with the EMT 240 Gold Foil at $4,000, so the successor often cost more than the original. The 140 is not a plug-and-play purchase. It needs a technician who understands it.
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