Binson Echorec 2

very user friendly, if you can read you can use this device.

these old tube echoes take no tweeking to dial in a good sound...there just made to sound good no matter what you set them too. you can drive the tubes for some nice breakup in the echoes by driving the input section. its fairly quiet unless you crank the input and volume. you can also get some great sounds by turning up the length of swell knob, and it will start feeding back on itself (think floyd). the delays can be made to sound crisp if the volume is up and the input is down, or can be made warm and slightly overdriven by doing the opposite.
i play a tele through a vibrolux and this unit adds a little warmth to the overall sound of my setup and adds more volume and more tube distortion when turned up, these are natural symptoms of running your guitar through an additional 6 tubes!

i can rely on mine now, but thats after having the corroded wires replaced and a general check-up.
i use it to gig with on a regular basis, but i don't bring a back-up as they generally sell for $1600+ in good gigging condition.

find your own support....there's no binson these days.

i play anything from country, bluegrass to jazz and rock. this thing is brilliant in the studio and you can run virtually everything though it, like floyd did on darkside and meddle, they even ran the drums through it at points.
if it was lost or stolen......i'd hope i could find another.

6 Knobs. Rather intuative. Input level controls how hard you hit the tape and tubes. Length of swell controls regeneration. Echo volume controls the mix of the effect. Tone controls the umm... tone. 3 position switch allows for 1 repeat, multipule repeats, and swell (very spacy reverb). 12 position selector switch controls head selection. 1-4 are for individual heads. 5-12 are diferent combinations. This unit has three inputs and outputs. Has a cool indicator "eye". Plexi face panel lights up like a matchless amp.

I give this a 9 because its noisy and can bleed some treble off in bypass mode. But a buffered pedal in front can help with this. Nothing out there sounds like this thing. Line 6 has a emulation of the Echorec but its not close enough. Very lofi, dreamy, and spacey. The rubber jockey wheel has deterirated some and causes the echo to warble. This is what makes it sound so spacey. My favorite setting is the swell on head #4. This is a nice shoegazey reverb. Sounds best with single coils though a clean fender amp.

I bought this in non-working condition. The magnetic wheel had siezed up and the wiring had rotted away. I regreased the wheel myself but had a tech replace the wire (not cheap $250). I imagine most old Binsons will have to have their wiring replaced. Keep this in mind when purchasing one. Once fixed it should work for years. I might replace the old carbon comp resistor with lower noise ones in the future. No tape to change. Heads might need replaced or relaped though.

This is a great effect to give anything an etheral and atmosphereic sound.
I don't think I'll part with this. It's too unique.