For guitar pickin laserists (old ones)

[Pitts]

Recently came into two Watkins Copicat tape echo units..

Now all you young ones can wonder and ponder but any UK. Aussie or NZ guitar plucker will well know these boxes. (although they were exported to the USA)..
This is classic "made in England" stuff...

The guy who made them, Charlie Watkins, started around 1958 (1960 depending on who you believe).. he has been making echo units for fifty years... !!!! yep fifty years

What's more he has just released (late 2009) a digital unit which is getting high praise..

One of these units is in its case and is fully operational its Mark4 the other possibly a Mark 2 or 3 is a valve job (three valves)... [ no case but very tidy] has no erase head uses a magnet..
I just love the Surface Mount components in this puppy.. (they have to be surface mounted there just too bloody big to do anything else with..

Ahhhhhhh for the old days , brings a tear to an old technicians eye..

Cheers

Ray
NZ

[Banthai]

Nice....

I had a couple of these in my time .... one which met an untimely death .... due to it sitting on top of my amp stack me running across stage .... and forgetting that i was using a shorter than normal guitar cable .... which suddenly went tight .... and pulled the copycat from the top of the stack ... to the floor .... the sound it made hitting the floor was amazing ..... never to be re-created

also had a valve "swiss echo" .... same as a copycat but really complex, unreliable and constantly required valve changes ....

then fortunately ..... "the bucket brigade" analog delay line was developed ..... at last no moving parts ... but delay was short and sounded crap

then i built one of the first digital delay units .... it was a "Powertran" electronic kit that i purchaced from a electronic magazine in the 80s and designed by Tim Orr .... superb

see here .... http://www.loopers-delight.com/tools...n_review1.html


these kids today with thier DSP digital delaylines .... dont know half of what it took to get an echo

all the best ...

Karl

[Doc]

^^^^ yeah I must admit to using digital ^^^^

But with tube amplifier sections, clean and smooth S-DiscII 24bit digital section; the RP7 valve delays sound sweet, clean and warm.

[Retina Burn]

reminds me of the old EchoPlex

[-=Jim=-]

reminds me of the old EchoPlex

Back in the late 70's and early 80's I used and EchoPlex for vocal's in live concerts. I was always concerned about the residual "Voice" from the short tape loop. That was when I bought a Teac 3340 4 track and used the 4 tracks to stack the echo. My thought was I would use one tape and then bulk erase it so I always had clean echo. I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised when found that vocals sounded like crap with a pure echo.

[Jem]

Nice...

Used to have one of those, however, I now have the 'Copycat' VST Cubase add-in. Not quite the same, but it's still brings back the memories when I see it on screen

Jem

[aijii]

NI guitar rig FTW