Hawk HE-2150 5 Head Echo Unit

Another of these ridiculously good-looking Japanese tape echo units – a Hawk HE-2150 5-Head Echo Unit fully serviced (see note below) and excellent working order. Price inc 20% VAT (see below).

Mid-seventies Japanese manufacturer Hawk Technical Works Co Ltd put out a range of tape echoes and spring reverbs branded Hawk/Mirano aimed squarely at domestic home recordists. We were immediately intrigued on first sighting the Hawk HE-2150 open reel style tape echo: even if it sounded bad, it was one of the coolest tape echoes we’d seen. Classic clean seventies hifi styling and backlit vu meter below twin aluminium spools spinning behind the translucent smoked (aubergine!) plastic dust-cover; adds a dose of classic Bond villain lair to any studio…

It doesn’t just look cool: serviced and fitted with new custom tape loops, this five head echo sounds as good as it looks. With three switchable replay heads – Off, Super-Repeat (at 0db), Repeat & Swell (at -6db) – and controls for tape speed, input level (for echo and dry signal), echo level/repeat/tone and master output – this is a full-featured tape echo. The sound is somewhat classier than the contemporary Ace Tone EC-20 – with which it shares a similar feature set – especially when driven into self-oscillation; this is yet another distinct flavour of tape echo – flexible and with a very pleasing sound quality indeed.

The condition is near mint – a very clean machine. Minimal signs of wear and age. Maximum wow factor.

Note that this machine has been serviced but did not pass our testing and so it has gone back to the engineer for one last tweak. We expect it to be ready to ship in early September.

We’ve got seriously into these Hawk machines over the last year or so – read about some of them in our Hawk/Mirano tape echo and spring reverb blog post.

Here’s a quick demo of another recent HE-2150 we posted to our Instagram:

Price includes VAT at 20% (for sales in UK/EU) – buyers outside the EU please contact us for tax-free prices. VAT-free sales possible to businesses and individuals in the EU (outside the UK) with a valid VAT Number.