Four-speaker stereo sound arrived in cars about the same time it became impossible to buy a reverberator for car radios (I think, but am not sure, that even very expensive radios had no reverb, and I know it was harder to get a separate reverb to go with the radio in the car.)
They seeemed to be saying that with 4 speakers there's no need for reverb. I think there is just as much need. What say you all?
And, less important, do you know where I could get a small reverb, especially with a remote reverb switch, since there is so little room on the dash of the small car I'm forced to own.
Although there probably were some stereo reverb units made, I think the main gimmick with the car reverb system was to give a mono signal some depth.
Remember back then most cars, if they had a radio, was a mono AM with a speaker in the center of the dashboard. Many cars had cutouts in the rear shelf panel, so adding in a reverb unit with an extra speaker was a common practice.
One problem, if you find one from the 60's (the mechanical ones) it probably won't work with most modern day car head units. Back then everything was common ground, even most radios grounded through the dashboard being they were made of steel back then. So you had one wire for power, one for the audio out and maybe a ground strap (maybe). The speaker only had one wire going to it, the minus side went to a short wire grounded near somewhere it was at.
Point is, most current radios have like a differential output to get a few more watts out of it, neither of the speaker terminals are at the cars ground.
Those old mechanical ones depended on that, usually they were tapped in at the hot of the original factory speaker, through the transformer/spring assembly to the other added speaker, with the ground or minus using the cars chassis/frame as the ground again.
Pretty sure in the 70's when the digital delay stuff came out (bucket brigade I think it was called) someone probably had car radios with the reverb-like feature built in. Might have better luck finding one of those somewhere and fitting it the car.
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