Carlsbro Echo

super easy

ok, grungy and crunchy, but thats the charm

one knob is a bit scratchy, but thats normal with old stuff

mainly the reason why i send this review,
i contacted carlsbor (they still exist and make amps and stuff), if they had any info on this baby..
forgot about my email request and then some time later..
i get a full package of schematics of all their echo pedal and copies of the original leaflets...

what more support u could wish for a product from the 70ies(?)

cool toy

very easy, three nobs two outputs an LED that tell's you when it's on (until the LED breaks which it did on mine). no bother! There's no batteries in it.. It looks sort of like a really bad attempt at copying an electro harmonix pedal. (the casing is a cool green colour with echo written on it which is nice though!)

I use it in line with a tele or a hagstrom futurama after a boss tuner, rat, boss compressor and occasionally a marshall trem into a 50 watt selmer treble 'n' bass tube amp. It is noisy. but not too bad. Also there's a level drop when you use it but i compensate by putting it into the other channel of my amp and having the volume and treble slightly higher.. (it's pretty subtle volume wise). It can make absolutely brilliant crazy noises when you fiddle with the time nob. and has a nice subtle almost reverb but still delay type sound. It's quite lo tech and it's certainly not a memory man (you can almost get the edge type sounds (not that I want them I hasten to add!) but it's hard to find the spots on the nobs). I use it either for a chimey delay for clean parts and occasionally with alot of gain behind it for crazy squalls and squawks. I've also used it with my fourtrack to put whole bits of tracks through for dub effects and got a really cool neil young effect by feeding a really feedbacking guitar track through it on a mix down. Last time i was in the studio we did one really noisy guitar track that i used a supa tonebender an old small stone and this into a vox ac30 with the trem on and it sounded excellent.. especially as i lucked out and hit the exact spot on the dial for max' repeats just at the end of the noisy part so it all died off gradually!

Hmm it's very old and it'd been battered before i picked it up. It has stopped working a couple of times and been repaired also the LED's (one to tell you it's plugged in and one to tell you the effect is on) only work occasionally. But then I think they made these in the 70's! The casing itself is very solid metal but the jacks are plastic and the flex that connects it to the power is poorly done. I had to get the transformer on mine replaced and the guy that did it housed it externally (it's now in a box in the power cable line). As he thought that might make it less noisy which it does seem to have done. Still these are old and probably if you find one it will need some loving care!

na carlsbro probably have 0 employees from this era left!

When I bought it, it was pretty much spur of the moment because I had some money and the guy at the rehearsal studios had it on the shelf. I thought I'd never use it, but it's actually quite ubiquitous for me now. I play indie rock, I switched to guitar (after 8 years of bass) 4 years ago and have built up some reasonably nice stuff. (tele/ hagstrom, bunch of pedals, my selmer amp (a great thing of beauty!). For the noisy MBV wigouts I'm down on my knees fiddling with it's nobs and for the chimey clean parts it does add a nice touch. It can do that almost Neil Young Crazy horse sound with compressor and distortion laying on thick before it as well. A good pedal, I think a decent analogue delay is indeed a wonderful thing. I've occasionally used an AKAI headrush looper/ tape echo simulator and that was much more generally useful for chimey delay sounds (and of course does the whole loop thing) but couldn't get the same crazy noises. I also used the boss DM 2 (i think, anyway it was an old analogue delay) for a few gigs, which was also nice. But would also cost me a fortune to buy and wasn't that much better. I also fiddled with my bandmates Dod and Boss digital delays but couldn't get much use out of them.. the boss on it particular had too many presets (it was the green one) and none of them sounded very nice, not like my monstrosity!

Pretty strightforward really, the usual delay controls; delay, swell and mix. You don't even need batteries it runs straight off mains power (UK 240V).

I found this pedal best with bass, great for dub bass sounds, very warm. My only critisism would be that there is a level drop when you turn on the delay.

Like all Carlsbro pedals, it's built like a tank, all metal casing, it over twenty years old and it's still going strong.

N/A

I play a variety of styles, I must stay I love the sound of this pedal, as I've said, I've mostly used it on bass, it just suits the bass so well. The swell effect is amazing, you can make the repeats come out at a higher level than the original sound, the result sounds like a tractor, great! If it where lost or stolen I'd scour ebay for a new one.