Gear In-depth & Longer Blogs — Tape / Disc Echo

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...

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin. I'd heard whispered rumours of a Dynacord echo that with a flat spinning disc instead of tape, but as my searches yielded no further information, I put it down to being just another vintage gear tall tale. That was until a year or two later, when I happened upon what appeared to be a very stylish sixties typewriter, housed in a modest two tone carry case. Where a typewriter would ordinarily have a set of keys, this elegant machine had but a handful of buttons and knobs. A symphony of understated sixties...

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...

To describe Daphne Oram's Still Point as groundbreaking is akin to suggesting the Beatles sold the odd record. Composed for double orchestra, turntable manipulation and echo chambers with additional filtering - in 1948, when Oram was only 23. It predates the rise of the DJ as instrumentalist by three decades or more and is thought to be the first ever composition to feature real time electronic transformation of instrumental sounds.  IMPORTANT NOTE: You can listen to the entire Pioneers of Sound concert right now on the BBC iPlayer (if you are in the UK) - but this link will only work until mid-August!...

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...

A blog post going into some of the history and features of superb Korg's tape echoes, and also some useful information if you are asking yourself "Should I get a Korg Stage Echo or a Roland Space Echo?".

Roland’s black, green and silver (and later black and orange) Space/Chorus Echo units are familiar to nearly everyone who’s been involved in music-making over the past four decades - they are iconic and ubiquitous. Korg’s echoes are more down to earth - in livery as well as name. Swapping Space for Stage and jazzy colours for the muted - almost gothic - dark grey/black contemporary to their synths, Korg Stage Echoes are much less common than their cosmic cousins and, as a result, there are many yet to encounter them.

This is the story of how we sold Space Echoes to Roland, our trip to London to bring the vintage gear noise to the Boss exhibition launch and came to meet Miki-san, CEO of the mighty Roland Corporation. Pictures are of the venue, the epic exhibition of Boss & Roland gear, and our workshop set up; you can see a full album of shots from the weekend here.   Following the initial request from Roland/Boss asking us to supply serviced Space Echoes for their Cause And Effects show (celebrating 40 years of Boss guitar effects), our involvement grew, leading to us being...

HEADLINE NEWS: we're coming to London with a stack of vintage Roland gear - if you're able to get to House of Vans on the afternoon of Sunday September 10th then come and say hello. Cause & Effects: 40 Years of Boss History This was already very cool - Boss celebrating their 40th year by gathering every pedal and a load of other effects into one cool space in the tunnel exhibition gallery at House of Vans in London. The exhibition runs for two weeks and includes an opening weekend Sept 9th/10th with a gig and workshops - read more about...

We had some posts go viral on facebook... We like social media but we'd be the first to admit that we're still on a steep learning curve with it. This business began because of a passion for music and the gear that makes it, and that's still at the heart of what we do. And one thing's for sure - you'll never see us posting with some kind of grand plan in mind - apart from anything else we haven't got the time! So, our social media "strategy" essentially comes down to "share that gear and passion with people that...

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...

There are probably as many answers to this question as there are different models of spring reverb out there: even the most unpromising cheap plastic box with tiny springs can shine when you're looking for a different flavour. We happened to have a stack of vintage spring reverbs all in one place so thought we'd put them all against each other and produce: The Soundgas Snare Springathon - 13 Spring Reverbs head to head with a Roland TR-808 snare… (You may have already seen this video - we made it a few months ago now - but we'd always intended to add our thoughts...

Vintage Japanese Tape Echo & Spring Reverb Update:  Mid-seventies Japanese manufacturer Hawk Technical Works Co Ltd put out a range of tape echoes and spring reverbs branded Mirano and then Hawk aimed squarely at domestic home recordists. We were intrigued and decided to get hold of as many different models as possible and try them all out. The results so far are documented below - these are great machines with useful features, and interesting creative possibilities especially once pushed beyond their comfort zone. We're definitely keeping examples of some of them for the studio. This is a run through of our...

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...