Question on the DIY tape echo

  • Thread starter Thread starter nate_dennis
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I think he is actually using only ONE playback head. Sounds like he said the original is a combo record playback.
No magic here. My old Sony TC630 three head machine had a nice on board echo function...built in. Its basically creating a decaying feedback loop, where the playback signal is fed back to the record hard at a slightly lower level, ad infinitum. The distance between the record and play heads and the tape speed detemines the echo delay
 
but that's what I don't get. The tape only passes over the record/play head once and over the play head once, so how does it play multiple times? I'm really feeling dense. :drunk::confused:
 
The echo circuit on the deck internally sends the reproduced signal from the playhead back to the record head...the it plays back from the play head and the echo circuit loops it back to the record head andonandonandonandon...

Techno, my brother and I had more fun with our TC630 growing up. Its out in my shop right now. Cosmetically its in pretty good shape. I made some repairs on it a year or so ago...heads need lapped BAD and all the rubber needs replaced, but it is a great consumer open reel deck.
 
so the deck itself had an echo unit on it. This wasn't a superbly done DIY tape echo thing, it was just utilizing another machines already existing echo capabilities? COOL. Now I don't feel so dumb.
 
Any three-head machine can be made to act as an echo unit, though as in this case you generally need some kind of mixer to make it work that way. You're just utilizing the fact that there's a gap between the record and the monitor head, so you just need the mixer to feed the output back into the input.

What this guy did that's clever is adding a monitor head to a 2-head deck. I guess it was either a stereo deck that he modded, or he may have tapped the monitor head straight into the mixer.
 
I used to do this with my first reel to reel, a VERY old Ampex consumer model. Plug the guitar into the mic input on one channel. Feed the line out from that channel back to the line in on the same channel (or the other channel) and you have tape echo. The number of repeats is determined by the playback level. A higer level would give more repeats (and eventually the feedback he was getting), a lower level would give fewer repeats. Good fun.
 
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