We are regularly asked “do you have a stereo tape echo?” or “can I get a stereo pair of tape echoes?”, so we thought we’d put our answer and some demos here for easy reference. Spoiler: the best answer is… a pair of Roland RE-201s.
ARE THERE ANY STEREO TAPE ECHOES?
There are one or two – one of the Hawk echoes is stereo – and very rare (we see 1 or 2 a year) and time-consuming and expensive to restore properly (for every one to two we restore, another is sacrificed for parts). There’s a stereo Russian tape echo that you may have seen around based on video tape heads/transport… the one we tried wasn’t very good and required a world of pain to possibly make better – not worth the effort.
We have plans to build a Soundgas echo at some point and discussions are ongoing as to whether we could/should make it stereo…
USING A STEREO PAIR OF ROLAND SPACE ECHOES
This is the “easy” option, and obviously it offers a lot of flexibility. A few of our customers run a pair of RE-201 Space Echoes in stereo: they’re not perfectly matched but that only adds to the character of the stereo image. Slight discrepancies in tempo/timing/tone make for a very distinctive and warm effect.
Michael Price is one of them – here’s his demo below, plus one of our friends Pete Philipson who works with Jane Weaver (we also have several great stereo echo demos on our instagram feed – we’ll add them here soon).
If you want to talk to us about getting a pair of echoes to use together contact us now. If you already have one machine then it is possible to send it in for a service – while it’s here we can assess a suitable partner for stereo use and hopefully find a closer match in terms of sound and performance (if that is a priority).
Some of this already appeared in our Roland Tape Echo Tips, Tricks & Tales resource.