Shin-Ei/Companion RT-18 Resly-Tone

No manual, but easy to operate. Quite a large pedal, about the size of two wah pedals. This unit was in excellent condition for it's age.

I don't know about the review below saying there is hiss, the unit appears very quiet to me. Effect level can actually can be have slightly high gain by cranking the volume knob to 10. The tremolo effect is quite warm & smooth, not choppy. Vibrato is sweet and toppy, but the resly tone (univibe) is wayyy cool - reminescent of powderfinger (aussie band) and you can those really cool hendrix effects.

Very solidly built in a metal chassis , couldn't have backup as these are super rare and be almost impossible to fins another!!!

Do know if this company still exists since this unit was mad ein the 60's.

a realy great effects unit, very rare and hence market value for these things are pretty high but if you are a pedal collector and connisseur, it's a must have. An investment

This is an AC-powered Phaser , a relative of the Univibe. Controls are Volume, Variation (Tremolo,Vibrato,Resly), Intensity and Repeat Time (6 Speeds from 1 to 1/12), Power and Cancel. No manual, but a very small schematic was inside the unit. The 'on' bulb flashes in sync with the modulation if the effect is on ! Probably called RT-18 because it uses 18 transistors. They put the output plug one inch next to the cancel switch on the top, so use an angled plug or relocate it.

Setup : ESP Strat, Gibson LP, Peavey Classic 30 and several pedals, including a RM Classic Fuzz. The tremolo and vibrato are rather useless, but the resly has the univibe sound. But you can't fine-tune the speed because the oscilator used is different than the vibes. The signal path is basicly the same. Has some hum wich I fixed by putting the transformer in an external housing. There is some signal degradation, but you can convert it to true bypass with stock parts if you nuke the flashing 'on' feature. There is also some hiss,espacially if the tone goes bright, you may fix my replacing some transistors, by this could change the tone.
You can get some Hendrix tones with it, but it's closer to the landau tone on the burning water CD 'live and lit'.

Solid metal hosing, but if you drop it the bulb could break.

N/A

I know that shin-ei invented the univibe circuit in 68 and that they manufactured at least some of the univibes for univox. They probably made some on their own name for japan and europe like maxon did with the ibanez pedals. There is no date code anywhere on this unit, but it looks late 60's /early 70's .
It is probably rare, as I didn't found one or someone who knows something about it in 2 1/2 years surfing the net. But now Pedalman has one for $ 1200.