Ultimate History of Tape Echo

grab a snack a notebook and put your phone on silent because today I'm walking you through the complete history of tape delay like the whole thing kind of [Music] just to be super clear this is not an episode about tape delay style pedals at all I'll do that at a later date and the only pedal I'm gonna use today is my trusty TS tin tube screamer in the event that I need some overdrive in the jam sections now this story is massive and I want to talk for days and days about it but I can't do that because I'll lose your interest I'm gonna hone it down into the things that I find super important and you just got to trust me if I leave a thing that you've heard out just know that it's cool but I had to do this a certain way and Nick actually did the math and if I talked about everything I wanted to talk about what's that number yeah it would take 60 1694 thousand minutes I don't can we do an upload that big no all right let's move on all of this started in the 1940s when people started experimenting with creating fake space make your room sound bigger than it is so you chained together two reel-to-reel tape machines one recording and one playing back next to it in real time and this created an echo effect of the original source now the biggest contributor to this was 1945 when Les Paul created his reel-to-reel tape echo machine this was eventually turned into a single unit that you're gonna see a bunch of and just know that this effect was massively popularized by Sun Studios in Memphis and the brilliant Sam Phillips who used it on all of the Elvis recordings the first big innovation that got tape delay into the hands of the normal electric guitarist came in 1953 when Ray Butz invented the echo sonic guitar amplifier the story goes that Chet Atkins bought one of these original 70 units and then Sam Phillips that son who I mentioned earlier was using his DIY tape rig but he hears this recording and learns that Chet's echo sound is coming from a self-contained tape delay in a new style of guitar yet he freaks out orders one and the house guitarist Sun Records used that his name was Scotty Moore and he played it on every single Elvis track that he recorded on next up in 1953 we have the version one of the binson echorec don't confuse this Benson with my good friend Chris Benson who builds amps in the Pacific Northwest he is a gentleman and he's handsome but this is an Italian company that had six employees echorec simply means echo record and it's a fantastic unit if you can find one I've never found one I'm okay with that next comes from 1958 with the Watkins copycat Watkins is also known as w ee m if you've seen any of that gear around basically the inventor Charlie Watkins created this guitar shop out of a record store and one day he notices a local studio chaining together tape echoes and he says I think I can put this all in one box he does that a band uses it called the shadows on a track called Apache it becomes a big hit and everyone wants one the legend is that the first 100 units sold out instantly with people lined down the sidewalk I think that's a pretty good Sun product also in 1958 Benson released the baby Benson look at look how cute it is it's little right after that Vincent obviously hadn't had enough so they released the binson echorec 2 now this was one of the first units if not the first ever tape unit to include reverb it's beautiful because it's golden I mean when you look at it you want to buy it instantly it was also sold under a few other names they rebranded it under Sound City echo and I think there's some other companies but what you need to know here is David Gilmour used this one and when David Gilmour uses something it's cool in 1959 an electrical engineer named Mike battle decides he wants to take the REA Butz echo sonic amplifier and pulled the tape delay unit out and make it as a standalone device he accomplishes this and he makes some minor tweaks and releases it in 1961 and it's a big hit in 1962 a company from Cleveland Ohio named market electronics begins to make these and they distribute it through maestro who many of you know from being associated with Gibson two really notable facts about this are that it was one of the first ever to have the slidable tape head using the mechanical handle and then secondly it has a very different repeat nature than the coming ep2 and EP threes that maestro would distribute the reason that is because those two and three versions filter and EQ the repeats inside of an effects loop and that keeps the repeats really stable and almost identical and no matter how many repeats you go but on the EP one it's done outside of that loop and it gets a little crazy every repeat gets brighter and brighter and it kind of chokes off into a weird squeaking dynamic but it's really awesome for slapback delay and that's what I'm gonna use it for [Music] [Music] market electronics was late to the transistor game everyone else had replaced their tubes with that but they didn't want to do it because mic battle didn't think it sounded good so market kind of forced him to design a transistor version and he finished it they released it but he was so dissatisfied with it that he sold his stock in the company and left upon its release that's super intense and kind of ironic because the EP 3 is the most famous tape echo that he ever designed used by Jimmy Page Brian May all kinds of people it's the one you see the most it sounds amazing and it might be my favorite I don't know the EP 3 was also the longest made version of the Echoplex from 1970 to 1991 can you imagine the stories it can tell [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] in 1974 Roland drops one of the most amazing and arguably most important tape echoes ever made in the space echo this had a really unique design using a capstan driven tape system that removed all kinds of mechanical parts and basically just lets the tape move freely in an upper compartment this makes the tape last longer the machine last longer and it sounds amazing it has three playback heads so you can stack different sounds and make massive ambient textures a bass and EQ control on the echo itself you also have spring reverb and Brian Setzer and Radiohead have all used it not at the same time on the same stage because that'd be really strange but I'd probably Pacey [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] in 1977 Korg releases the SC 500 it is a response to role in space echo it was for studio musicians I don't have one so I'm not going to talk about it because I kind of don't care about it because the next year and 78 they released the guitar version the SC 300 it was considered the more hi-fi quality system than the space echo which I find interesting because the Korg that I have actually sounds more lo-fi but I love it and I'm gonna drive the preamp on it get a little overdrive going and it's pretty amazing really amazing [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] sometime in the late 70s I can't quite pin it down a Japanese company called multi Vox releases the multi echo and this is quite possibly one of my favorite pieces of gear that I've ever owned I've used it in the studio I've used it live sometimes I just sit around and look at it it's amazing it has a really unique playback head separation I've actually modded these to have separate outputs for each head so you can split it into multi tracks it has reverb you can overdrive the preamp and it sounds beautiful I love it on vocals I love it on guitars all of it on snares 11 on bass I just love it and it's like the next level space echo that should have been no more I don't know I just love it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] this next tape echo is Japanese and it's from the early 80s and I love it I love it so much and I owe an eternal debt to a fan of the show Nick Turner he found this at a garage sale we could talk about that for a few hours and then he sends it to me and it's mind-blowing it's like surgically precise it's amazing and when I took it apart I was stunned it doesn't use reels of tape it uses an actual disc like an old floppy disk it's closer to a Benson style thing than an actual EP tape real thing I don't know I don't know what to say garage sale it's phenomenal I'm gonna play some Pink Floyd style thing on it it's amazing it was made under some other names as well I'm just overwhelmed that you found this I brush so I want to know where you live I want to know the people you live near I don't want to know what their garages look like [Laughter] [Music] [Music] let's move into the modern age of tape delay meaning that these are tape delay units that are currently made and you can buy them brand-new and I don't think there's any bigger contributor to bringing tape delay into the modern age than Mike fuller a full tone he's recreated two classic units the EP one tube and the EP three solid state and it is insane the effort that he has put into these I actually want to read a list of all the things that he had to do to pull this off he started in 2000 started selling him in 2004 but in those four years here's some of the things that he had to do he had to recreate all mechanical parts and he designed them himself in CAD these parts are the head mounts the gliding laser-cut playback head track the car the roller lever the roller mount top plate chasis the wooden box it's in every bracket even the ball bearing roller that you see the little red thing that's in the classic echoes and the motors that he chose are these overweighted vintage VCR rollers that are perfect for a tape glowing machine so what I'm trying to communicate here is these full tone units are ready to tour the world they sound amazing and they just last my vintage units break like every year if not every eight weeks but these are built like a tank and I'm so impressed with them the first of his two tape delays that I want to jam on is his solid state echo and I'm gonna use the TS ten tube screamer for a little bit of overdrive and to slam the front and to be honest I was completely shocked when I started playing this unit it's crystal clear it's super precise and it's really wild to play a brand new EP three kind of device it's crazy no rust no grime no warbling mechanical parts it's really [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] next let's play the full tone tube tape echo so this is the EP one style it is so awesome you can feel the harmonics as a slap echo it really blows my original EP one away it's obviously more reliable I'm in love with both these full tone units check it out for yourself it's really really great [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] 20:15 t-rex released the replicator series of tape delay effects this is the jr. and I now I promise no pedals but this is an exception because it's not emulating tape it actually has tape in it it's a real tape echo device and they added tap tempo which is crazy bonkers from an engineering standpoint now what I want to know most about this and what makes it most fun to me is that it uses eight inch tape in comparison to the much larger tape sizes that you see on a space echo or an Echoplex plus it has tap tempo that's crazy it's really crazy [Music] [Music] last but not least on this tape delay journey is a release from 2019 from an Australian company called echo fix and the unit is the tape echo EFX - it is brilliant first of all because it's based off of the classic role in space echo but it's also brilliant because the guy who created it Shane went through great detail to do this the right way he found himself about ten years into servicing space echoes seeing all the problems all the things that come up and he decided I'm gonna make one of these that's built to last and that sounds phenomenal and that's exactly what he did it took him about three years and a lot of money and a lot of time to pull it off but it's spectacular I'll never forget pulling this out of the box turning it on and just being blown away at looking at the beautiful chrome the no dents or scratches that are always all over a space echo it's just wild to see a brand-new space echo type device really really cool I don't have much else to say about this except one thing you need to go watch a ton of demos because what I'm about to play is cool but this has so many features I love the reverb I love the EQ on the repeats and I love the control it's just a masterpiece of a tape echo I'm gonna use the TS 10 tube screamer again for some overdrive here you go Bridget [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's really wild to look at this massive timeline that we've walked down and see how a tape echo unit has developed from this DIY rigging of multiple tape machines together through the decades into something as spectacular as these modern units that we have and I love also how these originators of the compact tape echo units we're doing the same exact things from all over the world having not known each other they just saw the use of these rigging of tape machines and decided I want to make a standalone box and whether that's the Echoplex or raid butts or Watkins copycat they were all doing it at the same time chasing the same sound and I think that speaks to us as musicians we all want to follow and find that new thing and that's what tape delay is all about and now I look at these brand-new units by Mike fuller and Shane and it's incredible the links that they've gone to to recreate these vintage units but bring them into the present age going through such crucial details that they've had I wish I could share the phone calls that I've had in emails with both those guys because it's really crazy what they had to go through to launch these new tape plays but it's awesome and I think it also just proves that tape Billy's still sell because they're awesome you can emulate it but you can still play the real thing and that's what these new units are all about today's record time is brought to you by Les Paul and his trio the album is called after you've gone now this is an album that's basically four records and a ton of trio songs it's my favorite Les Paul record there are some really famous songs by him because he was an original innovator of linking tape machines together one of those songs is called lover and it's really wild and the other is how high the moon so go find those elsewhere they're really awesome and their own several albums and for this episode they're a must but to get to know Les Paul the innovator and how great of a guitar player he was and a musician I this this is kind of like a Greatest Hits that aren't necessarily all hits they're just really great songs and I think it's a great intro to his music in the comments below let's talk about what your favorite Les Paul song is if you didn't know Les Paul is an actual guy it happens drop that in the comments and if you had no idea that Les Paul the namesake of the Gibson guitar was actually one of the inventors of the tape delay effect we'd love to talk about that as well in the comments there's a lot to talk about and a lot to listen to check it out thanks so much for watching this episode I hope you enjoyed it if you want to become a patron of the JHS show there's a link in the description below just check that out there's a video or I described why we have that and all the cool stuff that it enables us to do also check out the ghs show com for shirts posters all kinds of fun stuff that you kind of need but don't need but you might want I don't know but anyway if you liked this episode hit like subscribe to the channel and click the Bell icon to get notifications of future episodes and have a wonderful day

Channel: JHS Pedals

Views: 191,054

Rating: 4.9538355 out of 5

Keywords: JHS, JHS Pedals, Guitar, Guitar Pedals, Electric Guitar, Guitar Effects, Guitar Player, Guitar Playing, Pedal Demo, Guitar Demo, New Pedals, New Guitar Pedals, Josh Scott, Guitar Gear, Music Gear, Guitar Tones, Pedal Tones, Good Guitar Tone, Best Guitar Tone, Best Electric Guitar Tone, Analog Guitar Tone, Guitar Sounds, JHS Guitar Pedals, JHS VLOG, JHS Videos, The JHS Show, Music History, Music, Education, Effects

Id: Bja7B3uR6QI

Length: 26min 7sec (1567 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 07 2020