Ronnie Vannucci's Echo Mountain

Yes - look at that lot! Our good friend Ronnie Vannucci took me on a Facetime tour of his fine basement studio last week and he's let us have a couple of pictures to post on here. He's amassed a stunning collection of desirable gear, including a whole heap of echoes, vintage and modern. Having initially come to us for a fully-serviced Roland RE-501, he got bitten by the Binson disc echo bug and added a holy trinity of Binsons to mix the new Big Talk album with Alan Moulder. As well as a stunning Binson Echorec 2 (second from top left), Ronnie went for one of our modified PE-603s with twin record heads (third from top left), and a beautiful early T5E (top of the middle left stack with a gold front).

Marcello Patruno's amazing Special EVO Binsons are stunningly-engineered machines that move the Binson concept forward into the 21st century and are the ultimate disc echo. There's two of them to be found on echo mountain: one just  above the Roland CR-78, with its brother nestled right alongside.

We also suggested a rare British-made ESE Echomatic VI for inclusion in Ronnie's heap of echoes. Echomatics were the brainchild of the late Eric Snowball of ESE Music & Binson UK - his beautifully-designed and engineered machine (a six head tape echo) richly deserves its place in such hallowed company; it's in the right hand stack under the black Special EVO Binson.

We're super-excited about hearing the new Big Talk album - currently being mastered in NYC. Ronnie and Alan used no plug-in effects on the mix: the sounds of Echo Mountain are all over the album - promises to be a real treat for analogue lovers...

Thanks to Ronnie for the tour and for sharing the great pics.