Tape Echo Maintenance

stranded horse · Post by **stranded horse** » Thu Mar 24, 2011 11:32 am

Hello,
I own an Evans EE-3. It's pretty sure not as good as the Space Echo (the tape loop is only about 50 cm long, and the motor doesn't change speed, you have to move the recording head like on the echoplex), but it's got its own flavour, and who said you need the Space Echo to make dub?

However I think it could sound better with a bit of maintenance.
The sound is a bit chorusy, and the decay is huge, in fact so huge, that its not possible to set it to more than 4-5 delays without them melting together and becoming one big noise.
Do you think changing the tape and cleaning the heads would deal with that, or is the reason for the big decay the short loop?

regards,
Franz

Neil C · Post by **Neil C** » Thu Mar 24, 2011 7:29 pm

UAD's SpaceEcho emulation similarly has few repeats then it's just a big noise, to the extent I find it generally unusable.
So, although your unit may be worse and could be improved, it seems to me not a whole lot different to others in this respect.

Post by **interruptor** » Thu Mar 24, 2011 8:28 pm

Cleaning the tape heads and also replacing the tape will without any doubt help to maintain the signal quality for more delay repetitions. A longer tape loop will not help in this respect.

stranded horse · Post by **stranded horse** » Thu Mar 24, 2011 9:12 pm

In my unit the tape is fixed an has no slack anyways, so I can't insert a longer tape. But I found some replacement tapes on mytapeecho.com
I hope the new tape will deal with the problem

cheers,
Franz