ECHO freaks
Dubious
1,865 Posts
anybody ever mess with one of these?
Dubious
1,865 Posts
Comments
I am on the look out for one of these:
The grandmaster of em all. Been killin it since 1973.
Anyone got a tape echo?
there's one of these dynachords at a pawn shop up the street from me... gotta see what the deal is but it could be on the cheap side.
i want tape echo!!!!!
Can you completely stop the motor and then speed it up again on an RE-201?
i bought the big daddy to that one a couple of weeks ago for 150$. but i havent got enough cables for it to hook it up yet. its using 5 pin din cables and they're impossible to find here in my town.
how much was that one? i bought mine for 150$ but its the super 76 version, it has alot more knobs and buttons, and a nice extra feauture is the strong light that blasts you right in the eye while working with it!
are those din cables that much of a bitch to track down? I wonder how much hassle it would be to wire in some 1/4" jacks.
i just live in a small town and the dude in the local store didnt know what i was talking about when i asked about them. i have found some din to rca cables on ebay tho.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3280&item=5787559343&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW
but i would need din to line so i can hook it up to the mixer. im about to go on vacation to south of sweden tomorrow, so im just gonna hit up some stores over there.
im wondering what those 5 pins are used for, i highly doubt all the inputs are quad!
heres a photo of mine: CIMG0004.JPG
bottom knobs left to right:
volume reverb
bass treble
reverb echo mixer
text below the 2nd button: adagio
last knobs:
echo duration
bass treble
volume reverb
so there seems to be quite a few possibilities with it, more than the basic space-echo thats like 2 or 3 times the price of this.
i gotta look into this din connector thing.. don't need gear i can't hook up : )
these things suppossedly sound wicked from what i've been able to deduce.
how hard do you think it is to get new tapes for them? can you spool in your own tape and make your own carts?
hell that's alot of queries for you man.. especially since you havent even used it yet eh!
WEM Copicat IC400 Varispeed:
Melos Echo Chamber:
Both. Tape echo is just one of the most inimitable, versatile, legendary tools anyone can use to use to get creative with sound in a set.
The way I see it is, you can buy a lot of electronic effects units that can all kind of emulate the sound, but no digital or software based tools will ever truly get near the sound a proper tape echo can put out.
TO TIE IT BACK TO SS, THE ENGINE OF THE LIL' ECHO IS USED IN THIS FAMOUS BRAND OF CARS:
YO MAYNE, MY SCION WEIGHS A TONNE!
They say its fuelled by its own sound... to keep it movin, you need to turn the feedback all the way up to infinite repeat.
But if you can't find or afford a tape delay machine, here's is the OG replacement scheme: use a reel2reel tape machine.[/b] Any ol' thing will do, as long as it has seperate PLAY and REC heads. I used to do this all the time with my AKAI 4-track.
The procedure is as follows:
1. Connect an aux send from your audio mixer to the tape input.
2. Connect the tape output to a channel strip on the mixer. Alternately you can hook it up to an aux return, but then you can't feedback the echo.
3. Put the deck in tape monitor mode and press record (not paused, tape has to be rolling).
4. Get busy with that echo.
For the feedback dub style of echo, turn up the aux send on the return channel.
The key to the echo effect is the small distance between the PLAY and REC heads. You're feeding the signal to the REC head, which comes first, but you're monitoring through the PLAY head which comes second. Ergo you've got yourself a delay box!
The only shitty thing about it is the fixed echo times. On my AKAI I had two speeds, SP and LP. SP = fast echo, LP = long echo. But you can still have a lot of fun changing the speed, physically manipulating the tape and so on. Highly recommended and it works like a charm.
So can you completely stop the motor on any of these (just using the speed dial), and then start it back up again to resume the echo?
Man I had one of those and lived it. But it had some sort of wiring problem. After about 30 min it would start making this clicking noise, so i had to take it back. The guy pulled it apart and said they must have screwed up at the factory because it had several wrong wirings, At least it worked for a little bit.
as others have said you really can't beat a nice tape echo with a digital simulation. Im pretty much a non fan of plugins of all types in the first place.
i've gone from running protools / reason / ableton / peak with Waves platinum, and a zillion other plugins simultaneously to just using ableton live now. the only plugins i use any more is a tiny dash of verb a bit of delay and a four band eq... i'd rather get the sound right on its way into the recorder than twiddle with 100 processors after the fact.
with varispeed - Sound City Studios, Van Nuys, CA, 1970 - 76.