Gear Info
Stereo Tape Echoes?
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.
More Space Echo
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Events
Gear History
When Soundgas met Roland
The story of how we sold Space Echoes to Roland, our trip to London to bring the vintage gear noise to the Boss exhibition launch and...
