Gear In-depth & Longer Blogs — Binson Echorec

When it's gone it's gone. A recent meeting with the man instrumental in saving Abbey Road Studios from being flattened for development gets Tony thinking about what can be done to prevent other irretrievable losses of cultural history. Last week we had the pleasure of meeting Peter Cobbin and Kirsty Whalley from Such Sweet Thunder when they visited Soundgas. The pair met while working at Abbey Road and are legends in the world of mixing sound for picture (2012 London Olympics - the largest multi-track recording ever made, assorted Harry Potters and Hobbits, 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics...). Peter was the first...

  In which Tony meets Nils Frahm and his Junos and RE-501s, and Nils meets a Soundgas Binson, and The Magic Typewriter... Barely a day goes by when I don’t consider how lucky we are to live and work in the hills of Derbyshire; beautiful countryside, peaceful villages, miles away from the noise and pollution of urban life. But being a hundred-plus miles from London does have its disadvantages: we miss most of the one-off gigs and special events that tend to only happen in the metropolis. Not so this month: a week ago last Friday I got to hang...

Some information on the how, and the why, of modifying vintage Echorecs with varispeed control. Binson Echorecs were all manufactured with a fixed speed motor and Binson founder, Dr Bonfiglio Bini, together with his principal engineer, Scarano Gaetano, created something very special with their considerations for the fixed head spacings of the Binson Echorec. The four playback heads on an Echorec 2 offer delay times of approximately 75ms, 150ms, 225ms, and 300ms. Dr Bini chose these spacings to create musically-related delay times: if the longest delay tap is a quarter note, then head three is a dotted eighth note, head...

How To Buy Vintage Gear Well (Part One) We all love a bargain; it seems nearly everybody knows someone else who got lucky and picked up a classic for next to nothing, though it never seems to happen to you or I (although, on reflection the price I paid for my first Grampian 636 now seems a steal, but at the time £70 was the going rate for one in need of work!). I remember the eagle-eyed guy who spotted a very early Marshall amp head sitting abandoned in a skip (dumpster US fans) full of garbage that, once restored,...

Part two of our series about the people who can fix all this old gear, people who really KNOW it inside out. And it’s also about what can be done about the slow but steady loss of this deep knowledge and real, hands-on experience from the world of vintage audio. Are you a tech looking for work reading this? Or maybe you want to learn (and are local to us)? More info below, but we definitely want to hear from you! This weekend I Iearned that we lost John Leimseider - a lovely, warm and generous man and a true...

Looking to buy a Binson? At the time of writing many of the machines that feature in the image above, and in the demos below, are available on the site. You can see the Echorecs we have listed for sale here, but if you can't find what you need then please get in touch; most of the valve T7E and PE 603T machines sell on a pre-order basis and rarely make it to the site. Which Binson Echorec? By Tony Miln I’ve been a Binson head for approaching a quarter of a century now, and have owned and used many examples from all eras of production:...

When Dan from That Pedal Show called in at the Soundgas HQ to choose a Roland RE-201 Space Echo for their new Pedal Barn, it’s fair to say he was somewhat blown away by the Soundgas Studio. On that night’s show, he told Mick that when he dies, he wants to be stuffed and put on a chair in there with his Tele!This was Dan’s second visit; it’s always a pleasure to host someone who’s as passionate and animated about gear and sound as we are. The first time, he came to collect a Gurus Echosex 2º for a Binson...

Why buy an original Binson Echorec? Original Binson Echorecs are the classic Ferrari of electro-mechanical delays. They’re rare, expensive, require specialist restoration and servicing, parts are scarce, and they need to be cared for and run regularly to remain in top condition. Once the preserve of the lucky few - in 1962 a Baby Binson cost around £140 (£20 less than a Fender Stratocaster, £20 more than a Vox AC-30) and most of those British guitarists wishing to replicate the sound of Hank Marvin and the Shadows, Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd (and latterly David Gilmour) had to make do...

"Listen, we ALL love gear. Every person involved in this project can't get it out of their minds because of the nature of the unit. For gear heads and techs, this is just like going to Disneyland." - T-Rex Effects December 2017 Tony Miln's blog post today was going to be the first part in our forthcoming series on the Binson Echorec: buying, owning, using, maintaining - and tips, tricks and insights gained from a couple of decades spent wrangling these exotic Italian beasts. Here at Soundgas we receive almost daily requests for information/advice/parts for Binsons, so I intend to build...

Tony Miln takes first look at the new Gurus Echosex 2º T7E. Yes, the brand new Gurus Echosex 2 T7Eº pedal is finally here - first stock to land with anyone in the world. It's Gurus recreation of the full functionality of the mighty Binson Echorec 2 T7Eº, complete with four "heads" available in 12 different combinations, plus the Age of Damage control to dial in the sound of a gradually ageing machine. Our first allocation was all sold on pre-order but we and other dealers will have more stock soon. We'll add more detail to this post soon, but for...

  Yes, big news indeed. That's just a quick screen grab above, but click on it and you will be taken to the Aladdin's Cave of Sound that is our new Bandcamp. OK, so right now the cave is a little empty but, as anyone who follows our gear demo adventures on social media will know, we have a huge bank of recordings of demos made with all a manner of vintage gear hooked up in different combinations. These recordings are now lined up to be edited, mastered and prepared for release - some will become tracks and others will be...

When we first got involved with Dawner Prince about selling their (then) new Binson pedal, the Boonar, I was impressed by the features that they'd managed to fit in such a small pedal, but felt the Boonar was too bright/clean and not quite right at higher feedback settings. Zoran from Dawner Prince was swift to react to our comments and an upgraded version of the Boonar swiftly followed. I soon became very attached indeed to my Boonar (which has now journeyed back to Croatia a couple of times for tweaks). I now use it all the time together with the Echosex 2º Ltd. The Echosex...

** UPDATE! WE'RE COMING BACK TO SYNTHFEST FOR 2017. BIGGER, BETTER, VINTAGER! The line up & exhibitor list is superb - find out more and book tickets HERE. ** Saturday October 1st was the inaugural Synthfest UK show at the Octagon Centre in Sheffield organised by Sound On Sound magazine as part of the Sensoria festival. Incorporating manufacturer/dealer displays and a modular synth meet, this was a celebration of all things synth, appropriately-located in Synth City. We headed up the road with a big stack of Soundgas gear to take a stand at our first full-scale show. By Friday night we were all set for the...

We are incredibly-excited to announce our partnership with Clouds Hill: we have the worldwide exclusive dealership for their incredible Floppy Disc Delay (FDD). Read on for a detailed review from Tony's first revelations and explorations of this effect. We had the last two of the intial run of ten completely hand-tooled Clouds Hill Echoes [now sold!], and are now taking orders for the main production run of the next 20 Floppy Disc Delay units which are in stock now. You can see our ECHO in action the youtube demo below, as well as on several demos on our Instagram feed. Another Analogue Echo? The Floppy Disc...

We found all sorts of things we'd forgotten about, and fell in love with some new things that we'd never used before. Pete from Teleman and Ben from Elephant Disco came down to help us get organised and so huge thanks have to go to them for kicking us into action. It's a facebook post so hopefully most of you can see it, but if you can't and you want to see pictures of a lot of vintage gear then give us a shout. We also made a load of video demos (thanks again to Pete for the great guitar...

  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...