And so? And so the farther away from the record head the playback head was, the longer it took for the disc to rotate to that
spot and therefore the more delayed the echo signal was. So the Binson had four delay times based on the distance of the four
playback heads from the record head. How did they think of doing that? It’s kinda expensive having four playback heads and asso-
ciated electronics. Seems like it would have been cheaper and more flexible to have the speed of the platter vary or to have a
slider like on the Echoplex to move the playback head physically farther away from the record head. All we get with the Binson
are four really short fixed delay times in a very expensive and bulky package. Or is that all we get? Well, the unique twist the
Binson provided was that you could engage combinations of the four playback heads - from one head to two, three, and all four
heads - up to 12 different combinations were provided. And then the Swell control fed the signal from these playback heads back
into the input to create a beautiful wash of repeats. By selecting the head combination and adjusting the amount of repeats via
the Swell knob, you could get a lot of great slapback, echo, and faux-reverb sounds from the Binson that sounded huge and
dimensional. But as you played with it more, you found yourself reaching around on the control panel looking for a “delay time”
knob. But, alas, there was none to be found. The maximum delay time would always be found on head 4 - 300ms, no matter
what. If you select, say, head 2 and 4 then you get an effective delay time of about 150ms since head 2 splits that 300ms in half.
All four heads? About 75ms between each “repeat”. The Binson was a great echo unit. But if it could only get longer delay times
then another world would open up.....
Besides the four head (four tap) delay, the Binson also offered a beautifully luscious tube audio path that enhanced any instrument
plugged into it - especially a guitar and a good fuzz pedal, as David Gilmour showed us! And it could provide a nice bit of tube
boost to drive the input of the guitar amp into a nice warm saturation.
When we decided to undertake the resurrection of the Echorec concept, we knew that watching a few Youtube videos and looking
at the schematic would not be enough to truly know that we were able to deliver. So we went out and bought an original tube
unit and it needed to be completely overhauled. After we had experienced the Binson Echorec for ourselves we knew we had to
figure out a way to bring back it’s unique musical qualities to you in a modern stompbox package without sacrificing any of the
qualities that made it so compelling. Once the overhaul was accomplished, we still wanted to be certain so we borrowed a
perfectly functional Echorec from a friend of ours. Armed with two functional examples, we were confident enough to then set
out to develop the Catalinbread Echorec! The end result of years of hard work was a circuit that was so Echorec-like that we went
out and officially trademarked the name Echorec!
Echorec™!
Summary of Contents for Echorec
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