DIY tape echo

i see many people think that you need a looped tape for the echo effect, which is not true. tape echo units have looped tape so you don't have to rewind it when the tape reaches end. maybe people get confused and associate the tape loop with the signal repetition of the echo effect, which is wrong, the repetition is achieved with an AUDIO loop (feedback). the easiest way to make a tape echo is without a tape loop.

for instance: take a reel-to-reel or even a cassette deck with 3 heads (erase head, recording head and playback head). that enables you to playback what you're recording - straight from the tape. because the recording head is ~1cm before the playback head there is delay (if the tape moves ~5cm/s and if the distance between the heads is ~1cm then the delay would be 1s/5 which would be 200ms). now you have just the delay.

now you can take that delayed signal and feed it back mixed mixed together with the original signal to the input. and you get multiple repetitions, less of them if you attenuate the signal more in the feedback loop and more of them if you attenuate less (which can also lead to nasty self-oscillation if you attenuate too little).

now you have an echo but with fixed timing. if you want to change the timing (speed, delay, whatever you call it) you have 2 options:

1. change the distance between the recording and playback heads. that's a difficult thing to do on most devices as the heads are usually fixed.

2. change the speed the tape moves. you can do that quite easily, changing the motor speed. if the motor runs on DC it's easy - technically you have to lower the voltage supply of the motor, a simple pot on the supply line could do but it's better to put a variable voltage regulator. this can be done in less than 1 hour even if you haven't done things like that before. you can take a look at this: link

if the motor is AC (which i doubt there are any in tape recorders) then it's more difficult.

insert a good quality tape and that's that. 3 head cassette decks can be bought really cheap, i got mine for ~$50 but it's a good one.

if you do want to make a tape loop you can do it with cassette too :) the quality will be gradually worse but i guess you can get some interesting effects. see this

then you can disable the erase head of the recorder (cover it with something) and record over and over and over... :)

i'm currently modding the cassette deck i bought 2 days ago and i'll soon have pics, sounds and vids to show.

Disabling the erase head is called "Sound on sound" on the Space Echo. It pretty much just makes the feedback go instantly out of control.

See most mid 70's Lee Scratch Perry records

how can the feedback instantly go out of control if you have delay times in the range of 10 seconds?

Cool info. Would only imagine its something along those lines

  kokoon said:

how can the feedback instantly go out of control if you have delay times in the range of 10 seconds?

Well it wouldn't. But that's not what you normally have.

how long are loops then?

You mean, what's the max delay time on these things? No clue. I used a 501 for a few sessions and got a pretty good feel for it. I'd say it was a bit over a second on that one.

They all had different combos of tape length and tape speed, so you cant tell what the delay time is from with of those numbers. I've tried googling for max delay times and come up with 1.5 - 3 seconds for most models, with one claimed at 8 seconds. I'm guessing a longer loop would give you shorter tape life (more chance of it strching or tangling), plus no one in the ealy 60s was making Dark Side Of The Moon, so 2 secs max sounds about right.

oh, and also you want to run the tape as fast as possible to get the maximum fidelity. so another reason to keep max delay times on the low side.

no what i meant was more like min delay time. cause you have to have a very short delay for the feedback going mad like you described.

sure you want the tape speed as high as possible but still i'm not sure if you can get a tape loop short enough for such short delay times. i mean it's physically impossible... isn't it? the loop could hardly be any shorter than 20 cm and if you're running 38.1 cm/s it's still more than half a second delay.

Well, I would probably have been running the 501 at 500 to 800msec most of the time, and every time I switched it to SOS it would pretty much start feeding straight away. That's all I can tell you.

It's not like it's a bad thing, either!

yeah it's just that i always thought of tape loop echos as extreeeeemlyyy sloooow echos :)

btw right now i'm having a mighty hard time opening the motor of my cassette deck. this is how it looks:

the left is (i think) the motor that lifts the heads. the middle one is the motor i'm trying to open and the right one is for ejecting. now apparently those 2 holes are for opening the sucker but i can't do it. i have tried twisting the lid both ways, bending the outer rim of the casing, bending the lid, ... but it's so hard i can't do anything.

and taking the motor completely out of the machine is nearly impossible unless i unsolder ~30 wires first... shit.

Are you following some instructions you found online?

The delay on Steppingfilter sounds like its just under a second. That was heaps when BBD could only do 600ms!

a few nice guys from over the electro-music forum are helping me with some advices with this deck.

yeah BBD is short. but you can always stack them ;) BBDs have beautiful sound. that's why i'm building me a BBD reverb.

My pride and joy is my 1976 Ibanez AD-3000 rackmount BBD delay

So, what's the practical upshot of all this then? Can you feed your laptop/synth/sound module through any of the things you describe? Or is it just a bit of a laugh?

  BCM said:

So, what's the practical upshot of all this then? Can you feed your laptop/synth/sound module through any of the things you describe? Or is it just a bit of a laugh?

It's tape delay! Tape delay is always awesome!

  BCM said:

So, what's the practical upshot of all this then? Can you feed your laptop/synth/sound module through any of the things you describe? Or is it just a bit of a laugh?

um.

www.analoguewings.com

in particular

You got this bad ass niziggah on the lead synth.

SOS kicks in at the end :arrr:

  BCM said:

So, what's the practical upshot of all this then? Can you feed your laptop/synth/sound module through any of the things you describe? Or is it just a bit of a laugh?

you can feed your laptop/synth/sound module through any of the things i describe.

analogue wings, you have to admit that the 501 is the least good looking RE of them all... okay except maybe the 101 :D

  kokoon said:

analogue wings, you have to admit that the 501 is the least good looking RE of them all... okay except maybe the 101 :D

Yeah, it's hard to top the chrome and earthtones combo. Roland should re-hire that guy, if he's still around.

EDIT: but you don't buy a 501 to look at :arrr:

true that :)

Hey mister wings is that a jx-3p doing the sample&hold pad/organ thing in wise baby dreams?

  αnalogue ψings said:

  BCM said:

So, what's the practical upshot of all this then? Can you feed your laptop/synth/sound module through any of the things you describe? Or is it just a bit of a laugh?

 

um.

 

www.analoguewings.com

 

in particular

 

Lumiere - Wise Baby Dreams.mp3

Aha.....I see.....thanks!