Echoes are discrete reflections / repetitions of a sound – like yelling “Hello!” into a canyon and hearing it bounce back to you. In the mid-1900s, recording engineers devised a way to create an echo effect by using analog tape recorders to record and delay sound, then mixing the reproduced sound with the original. It was commonly used on electric guitars and vocals in the 1950s – think Elvis and Carl Perkins. By the early 1960s, commercial tape echo machines were commercially available and gained wide popularity. ECHO is a faithful emulation of this type of early tape echo unit.
The Patch, “Electric Grand CP70 – Amp” presents a number of controls in the ECHO section.
Amount controls how much of the effect is mixed with the original signal.
When the recording is “fed back” into the machine, more repeats are generated. Feedback controls how many times the echo repeats.
With the knob all the way to the left, there is only one repeat and turning it fully-clockwise produces an infinite repeat.
In the original units, varying the speed of the motor changed the delay time – affecting the time between each repetition. Vari-Speed controls the speed of the virtual “motor.” With the knob turned all the way to the left, you’ll get the shortest delay times and fully-clockwise produces the longest delays. You can vary this knob in real time for some interesting pitch-bending effects!
Width lets you dial in the stereo imaging of the echo and Color controls the fidelity of the delayed signal. Lower values have less fidelity than higher ones.
