On the Legato - Staccato continuum, you can play staccato - palm muted, percussive picking that doesn’t let the note ring out and the Echorec
will respond with its signature syncopated multi-head repeats. And given the same setting on the pedal, you can then play legato - letting notes
ring out and overlap, especially when playing arpeggiated chord patterns and the Echorec will respond with a beautiful ambient swirl that adds
a tremendous feeling of space and dimension without the specific repeats sticking out - it will have an amorphous, soupy quality. Other delay
pedals can do this to a certain degree but the Catalinbread Echorec really excels at it due to our carefully voiced multi-head repeats and touch-
sensitive preamp. In general, it seems most other delay pedals excel at one or the other but rarely both - one might be great at creating ambi-
ence without well articulated repeats and another might be great at providing repeats that preserve the attack of your note but then fail to do
well when playing a more ambient style. So, really explore this capability of the Echorec! Practice playing tightly muted riffs in time to the synco-
pated repeats and then segue into a passage where you play arpeggiated chord patterns allowing each note to overlap into another and you’ll
hear this amazing swirl behind it that has hints of rhythmic pulse but is mostly this incredible space that fills up your playing with a beautiful
hypnotic dimension. Or just play a chord and let it ring out to produce a beautiful swirling decay.
We’ve already mentioned the touch sensitive qualities of playing from pianissimo to fortissimo with the Echorec. In fact, we’ve probably
mentioned it several times already in this guide. We just want you to hone in on something that may seem subtle at first but as you play it more
and more, you’ll discover how responsive it really is to your picking attack. The Echorec invites you to get inside it as you play. By this we mean
when you play at a medium level of picking attack, not so hard that you are squashing down upon the sound, you’ll find that it feels like the
pedal breathes - there’s room to go up and there’s room to go down in its dynamic response. A lot of other pedals make it feel like you’re always
playing on top of it, there’s no room to go up and no room to go down - it doesn’t breathe. With a guitar that doesn’t have too-hot pickups
plugged straight into the Echorec and then straight into a decent tube amp that isn’t mega-gained out, you can get quite a volume swing just
by how hard you’re picking. If the music you’re playing has lots of light and shade, you’ll really appreciate this quality of the Echorec. And of
course, if you’re balls out all the time, it ain’t gonna stop your rock attack!
Try this experiment: Set your amp for a clean tone. Now set the internal slider to true-bypass mode, set the Gain trimpot to have a slight bit of
boost when playing with a medium attack. Turn the Mix knob full CCW so you only hear your direct signal. Now with the pedal off, continuously
play the low E string on your guitar, going from as soft as possible to as loud as possible by picking softer and then harder. Now turn on the
Echorec and do the same thing, playing the low E string as quietly as possible to as loud as possible. You should notice that the guitar feels more
alive and really quietly picked notes breathe and shimmer while the loud notes get much louder! You have a variable boost that is responsive to
how hard you're playing! Now turn the Mix up and you'll feel the echoes also breathe with your playing! Echoes and breathe... Hmmm! ;-)
Speaking of rock attack, there is one more dimension we can talk about. If you have your Echorec set for Super Secret Fuzz Boost Mode, then
the other dimension is the volume knob on your guitar. You’ll be able to go from a loud, crunchy, fuzzy boost that overdrives amps perfectly to
a nice clean tone just by rolling your guitar volume back. We look forward to getting your emails on tricks and techniques that YOU discover
with your Echorec! Send us the YouTube link! ;-)
Summary of Contents for Echorec
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