In the audio realm, there are plenty of effects that can be used as tools to create ambience, organic feel, or textures that are corresponding with what the human ear is accustomed to hearing.
The main one would be the reverb effect, that can be used not only as an effect to create different sounds and shapes to the song, but as a tool to create ambience of a certain room or space, giving the recorded sound a more natural feel.
The reverb has a twin brother, which can bring similar properties to its functions, but with key differences: The delay.
While the reverb emulates specific spaces or ambiences, the delay creates echo and repetition of the sound that runs through it.
The delay and reverb can be used together and most of the times this combination create beautiful special sounds.
And the hardware subject of today’s post is one of the first iterations of this effect and the most
classic one, replicated in various plug-ins, guitar pedals, multi effects consoles and many more: The Echoplex Delay.
The Echoplex is a tape delay effects unit, first made in 1959. Designed by engineer Mike Battle, the Echoplex set a standard for the effect in the 1960s, according to Michael Dregni, it is still regarded as "the standard by which everything else is measured."
Used by some of the most notable electric guitar players of the 1960s and 1970s, original Echoplexes are highly sought after.
Tape echoes work by recording sound on a magnetic tape, which is then played back, the tape speed and distance between the recording and playback heads determine the delay time, while a feedback variable (where the delayed sound is fed back into the input) allows for multiple echoes.
The predecessor of the Echoplex was a tape echo designed by Ray Butts in the 1950s, who built it into a guitar amplifier called the EchoSonic. Butts built fewer than seventy EchoSonics for guitarists including Chet Atkins, Scotty Moore, and Carl Perkins.
Mike Battle later copied Butts' tape echo and built it into a portable unit, another version of the story holds that Battle based his design on one by Don Dixon.
The Echoplex EP-2 is one of the most classic versions of the hardware, you can check this demonstration in the video below:
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