
Rock Dinosaurs - T-Rex and the rebirth of the Binson Echorec
"Listen, we ALL love gear. Every person involved in this project can't get it out of their minds because of the nature of the unit. For gear heads and techs, this is just like going to Disneyland." - T-Rex Effects December 2017
Tony Miln's blog post today was going to be the first part in our forthcoming series on the Binson Echorec: buying, owning, using, maintaining - and tips, tricks and insights gained from a couple of decades spent wrangling these exotic Italian beasts. Here at Soundgas we receive almost daily requests for information/advice/parts for Binsons, so I intend to build up a resource for anyone who wants to learn more about these fabulous and wild (and sometimes downright dangerous) machines.
An interest in Binsons is most usually sparked by one or more of the following:
- Hank Marvin and The Shadows. For a particular generation, Hank Marvin was the original guitar hero - his signature red Strat and Vox amps partnered with Binson Echorecs shaped the distinctive sound of the Shadows.
- Pink Floyd: from the psychedelic sixties with Syd Barrett's Telecaster and Richard Wright's Farfisa both shaped by their Binson Echorecs on Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, to Roger Water's Bass on Meddle and David Gilmour's Strat on Dark Side Of The Moon etc, the sound of an Echorec is the sound of Pink Floyd.
- Led Zeppelin: Jimmy Page owned a Baby Binson and used it to shape one of the most famous/sampled drum breaks in history - together with a Ludwig kit, the acoustics of Headley Grange and some bloke called John 'Bonzo' Bonham - on "When The Levee Breaks"
- Michael Brauer (The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Coldplay, John Mayer, Aretha Franklin, etc) - the celebrated mix engineer counts an Echorec 2 amongst his incredible arsenal of outboard effects at Electric Lady Studios (Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland). Many of today's top producers, mix engineers, artists and studios view a Binson Echorec as an essential effect for the unique sound they produce.
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