We won't be putting the Roland RE-201's up on this site nor Ebay, since people do not seem to know a good deal when they see one. Once we get them working as best as possible for NM- condition (they're definitely not mint) we'll sell them locally as fortunately Portland has enough bands that have "made it big" (aka signed to major labels) that they'll pay top $$$ for one they see in a local shop and can play with.

But the Electra EP 350, which we want to talk about here, the local shop won't even carry. Turns out that a decade or more ago (we haven't pinned down an exact year yet) the Electra company was bought out by "Krate" (spelling?) who makes cheap, rip-off junk and has a bad reputation even amongst bad musicians (of which we count ourselves, so no insult intended.)

That said, we have no less than 10 people who're interested in buying the EP 350 tape echoes once one of us can get the time or energy to finish fixing them up. Minimum offer so far has been $600 for a fully-restored one. We noted one up for auction on Ebay that quoted from a piece we wrote about them, comparing them to the Roland RE-301 and RE-501 tape echoes, and we wanted to instead do a comparison, since we believe that if you're into tape echoes for more than the RE-201 "Stray Cats / Brian Setzer / Scotty Moore" slapback echo sound, all three have their own unique reasons for being amazing, and our hope is to sell off our extras but still have one of each (EP 350, RE-301, and RE-501) in our studio when we're done.

[More to come...]

Sadly, he's not been well, and is under diagnosis for a weird blood disease. As such, we've been sitting on some simple cleaning and adjustments for two NM- Roland RE-201 tape echoes and two Electra EP 350 echoes.

We've some good news in that we've got a (hopefully) mint NOS Roland RE-301 / RE-501 / SRE-555 replacement motor coming in, although it's not by Samyana / Pioneer which makes us suspicious of the manufacture, as well as possibly another Electra EP 350, which we'll discuss in a later posting. The problem is that the studio has one fairly sick (and potential fatally ill) person manning it at this time. Not great news, but at least an update.

But his most recent CD "The Information", from 2007, with accompanying DVD... for $2 cash. Honestly, Wayne bought it figuring he could sell it for $10. Ha! Life loves to throw curve balls.

All three of us think this is the best CD we've heard in the last year. Really, it's that good. It's like he learned everything that was good on all his earlier CDs that other musicians made happen, and did it himself. This is his "Pet Sounds" or even the Beach Boys album that never was (Brian Wilson finally released it in 2005, but please.)

Great tunes, great lyrics, breaks into choruses or orchestra parts, a complete but seamless pastiche of hip-hop, love songs, Motown, 60's Summer of Love, samplicious funk, electronica, hints of trip-hop, glitch/IDM/whatever, electro, bad indie rock, crappy punk... the list is endless. Everything but ethnic musics, which right now are being so overly-used and mined and such that they suck. The one thing he passes on is the one thing that needs a pass.

And each song is basically part of each style with mostly abrupt switches to other styles that somehow never, ever fail, but make perfect sense. His hip-hop stuff makes Eminem and Puff Doody look bad, his rapping and singing and seriously...crooning, all work. And as said, he just suddenly shifts from one to the other and IT WORKS. In fact, IT KILLS.

If someone said a month ago "you will hear a Beck album and like it" - not even love it, like it, we'd have put $1000 each down on that bet. And lost. And wouldn't have cared. Yeah, it's that good. In a time when we feel like the end of music has finally come... Autechre took the electronic stuff as far as you could go, the two Hallucinogen albums are both the two most psychedelic and best produced CDs you'll ever hear, most sales are reissues and old turns who keep pushing on (Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen being two exceptions) - and Beck does the one thing left: he does nothing new, but somehow blends just about every type of music into songs that make up this album and it's just awesome.

Our guess is that this will fail badly, like all true masterpieces. His old fans will hate it because it's not the same old stuff they liked, and this is so far all over the map there's no way it'll gain new fans.

The only flaw is his need to give himself lots of "musical credit" - yeah, if he played sitar it's not like he knew what he was doing or you'll notice it, and "scratching"? Please. And listing "percussion" and "drums" and "drum effects" is stupid, as is "programming" and "programming effects" and "effects" and "drum effects". If there was a joke in there, anywhere, like Robert Rich's "glurp", it'd be funny, but it's not. So he's still way to serious to live, so someone please shoot him, esp. now that he's finally put out not only an album worth owning, but one that anyone who really appreciates music (read: Music Sluts) must own. Go get it, and get a rifle too while you're at it, and kill him before he Jumps The Shark.

"Could you please tell me how to properly align the heads?"

Here's our answer:

Do you have a tape loop with test tones (sine wave at various frequencies) and the ability to measure the output? That's the only way to do it correctly.

That said, the better answer is "Don't Panic!" Tape head alignment is highly over-rated on tape echoes.

On reel-to-reel and tape cassette recorders, it was important, since you wanted to make sure that what you recorded, say, four years ago, would play back and sound the same.

But since the tape loop is being written to over and over, if they're slightly off, it doesn't matter, since it's playing back what it just wrote < 1 minute ago. Make sense?

It takes about 15-20% variation off alignment before you start losing certain freq. ranges. And even then, given the units, there's already so much freq. loss which acts like compression and they have to get really bad before you'd notice the loss. We've had heads that were very out of alignment and they still passed the tests with the test tape loop.

If you still want to try, there's a trick using a laser level that you can at least make sure all the heads are aligned the same by lighting it across the heads. But if the one you chose to align the rest to and it's off, they'll all be off. That said, having them all identically mis-aligned will sound better than having them randomly misaligned. Not optimal, but close.

Really honest, we are not mean people, but none of us at The Sound-O-Mat of us is rich, far from it, we're all just getting by. We promise if any of us every gets rich, we'll be happy to answer questions all day for free. Scouts honor.

So here is the question we got, reworded a bit since the writer probably doesn't speak English as a first language:

"I have a Roland SRE-555 and if it has been off for a couple of hours and I start it up after its been running a couple of minutes it slows down the tape speed.

If I direct restart it it speeds up again but slows down after a minute it gets worse as longer it runs. If I pull out the pinch roller so it not in contact with the capstan, the motor speeds up. I can also pull out the roller a bit so its still in contact with the tape and capstan (lighter tension) then it also speeds up.

I checked the pinch roller tension and it's approx 1 kg. I have been cleaning everything,of course changed tape loop etc. Do you know what can be wrong?
Has the motor lost it's power or could it be the pinch roller that is bad?"

Without having the Roland here, there's really no way for us to tell. In general, it's good advice to make sure the tape heads are cleaned and demagnetized, and the tape is new or in good condition to start with, which it sounds like this guy did.

He probably answered the question himself, which is that it works fine when he pulls back the pinch roller so it's probably too tight and needs to be loosened. Here's the list of suggestions made as to how to fix it or what might be wrong, in the order that is most likely the cause of his problem:

1. Pinch roller tension needs to be decreased.
2. Motor is dying and needs to be repaired (if possible) or replaced.
3. Bad capacitor supplying power to motor can't hold enough charge.
4. Capstan from motor needs to be cleaned and perhaps "etched" (unsmoothed)
5. Pinch roller needs to cleaned and perhaps "roughed" (unsmoothed)

Please note: We do not have any replacement parts, but if a motor can be removed, the later Sayama/Pioneer motors used in the Roland tape echoes can some times be repaired, so if you can pull out your motor and mail it to us, we might be able to fix it.

We have repaired 2 out of 3 to date but cannot refund money if we cannot fix it (we spend time which we need to be paid for whether or not it can be fixed.) So if you have a broken motor you want us to try to fix or want to sell to us, please contact us.

"Are you parting out a Roland re-301?"

Reply: Nope. Can we ask where you saw that? We're trying to write up everywhere that we no longer have any Roland parts nor will we be getting any.

Our main site and on the blog says that we are not selling Roland parts, but we're still finding places we need to add that info.

So for the record, we do NOT have any Roland parts, we are NOT parting out a Roland Tape Echo and we are NOT likely to be buying any parts. Sadly, it's far too much work for the prices people want to pay, not to mention all the requests for free advice. If we were wealthy and didn't have to struggle to get by, we'd be happy to, but we're barely getting by. Sorry.

"also... did the Re-301 have "feet" on the side like the re-201?"

Reply: Early model RE-201's did not have feet on the side, but they were added in one of the later models, as it was "revised", we're learning, in minor ways, probably a dozen times. The later RE-301 and -501 units all had the "side feet" from the start.

It's actually better to set them set up on their side, as it helps keep the tension of the tape against the tape heads, rather than laying them parallel. Depends if you like the pseudo-chorusing effect caused by mild tape slippage or if you just want clean echoes. You'd be surprised how much of a difference it makes on some units.

Cheers!

--
The Sound-O-Mat
http://www.sound-o-mat.com

We're listing an early model Roland RE-201 Space Echo analog tape echo unit for sale here at a discounted price of $599. SERIOUS BUYERS ONLY. If you want to pick this up locally, expect to come with money in hand - we will no longer entertain people who just want to play around with it and "aren't sure", etc. etc. when they simply don't have the money. Go to a music shop and play with one if you're not positive you're ready to buy.

It's in perfect working condition, having been thoroughly cleaned, all electronics tested and fixed, with a new tape. We prefer local pickup, but if you're willing to pay for UPS packing, shipping and insurance, and will make an insurance claim should anything not work, we'll be happy to ship it, but we advise the expense of 2nd Day Air as UPS Ground seems to break these old tape units more often than not.

If it doesn't sell, we'll list it on Craigslist for awhile, and then it will be off to the consignment shop, which already has several buyers lined up starting at $700. We already has it there but it needed adjustments, so it's back in the studio for now.

Overall the case is in decent but obviously "used" conditions, and the black vinyl is dinged on almost every corner. If you're looking for "pretty" / mint looking unit, this isn't it. But the insides are what matter, and once you open the case, there's the original operating instruction sheet, and everything is spotless, having been cleaned and tested thoroughly. The heads show almost no wear and it sounds great.

How can you tell this is an early model? Well, the serial no. tag helps, as it says "Roland Echo System" and has a low serial number, 290535. The plug is also two prong with no ground, although the system is properly grounded to the metal grill on the bottom that provides air flow to keep it cool (later models reduced the size or moved it to the side/back.)

The lid is held down by latches, which is seen as good or bad, depending on your point-of-view - it's a lot easier to get inside the unit than with later models which have ridged bolts you can turn by hand, but on the other side, latches are far more prone to pop open if you're moving the unit a lot, which is why they switched to the bolts in later units, after complaints about it opening while gigging with it. And really, how often do you need to get inside the unit? The controls are all on the front, and aside from changing tapes 2-3 times a year, there's no reason to open it up unless you need to read the instructions.

In the front, the echo of/off switch is the small, white knob style, which was so prone to breaking that Roland included an extra in the pouch with the spare tape, cleaning kit, and instructions, which is the only thing missing from this unit.

The Electra EP 350 "Flat Response" Tape Echo

We'll start out with a controversial assertion that we base on our own 10+ years of experience owning up to two dozen tape echoes at the peak: the Electra EP 350 (no dash) is far better than the Roland RE-301/501 Space Echo. Period. There, we've said it. It doesn't do "sound-on-sound" nor does it have a chorus effect from what we can tell, but aside from that, it's perfect.

This is an article we started awhile back and really should have finished. You see, we've since learned that Electra "turned into" Crate - or so the average musician in Portland would say, it turns out. Actually, it was another company that bought out Electra, then turned into Crate, who makes crap. Nonetheless, he and he's convinced that his clientele feels the same (I think only because they listen to him) that people see "Electra" and they think "Crate" and then "Junk." He wouldn't even listen to my "play it, dude, you'll be blown away, it might be the only tape echo better than a Roland RE-501/SRE-555!" Hence this article. Sorry if it's a bit rushed, but being over a month old, want to get it out and can always revise it. Although good luck finding out anything about Electra products, esp. the tape echoes.

Electra was primarily known back in the '60's and '70's for making a number of "knock-off" guitars, perhaps even some of the Sears "Silvertone" ones (still researching that) but it also made a number of effects units during a brief period - they weren't well-marketed and being known as a maker of guitar style copies, they didn't sell well at all, so they weren't make for long nor were there a lot of them made.

During the 60's & 70's Electra put out a small selection of effects, starting with analog delay units, and later digital ones, with the tape echo being one of the last pieces of gear before they got bought out. The delays are very rare and sought-after as well; like this tape echo, they're "secret weapons" that rarely go up for sale because people who have them would never part with them. We've been looking for Electra delays since we read about them five years ago and have never seen one for sale.

We were lucky to be able to get our hands on an Electra EP 350 (no dash) "Flat Response" Tape Echo" in the summer of 2007. Although the design and tape loop chamber is a rip-off of the Roland RE-series, it was not made by Roland at all, just like the Korg Stage Echo - the design is certainly "borrowed" but that's all.

Like the Roland, this is a combination unit (the Electra carries a reverb along with the tape delay, but no chorus). Unlike say, an Echoplex, the Electra doesn't use a tape cartridge - but rather has a loop of tape running free on one side, then it gets fed over six heads as it travels around a semi-opaque (see-though) top, which is just too cool.

When it comes to analog tape echoes, it's the cream de la cream, an RE-301 with better features and a fantastic reverb that has "Cathedral" setting / sound that will blow you away. There was one up on Ebay we were bidding on but the selling got offered $700 cash so he took the auction down (Feb 2007.)

[much more to come, with pics!]

We have a Watkins, an Electra, which we'll prolly keep, since the reverb is amazing, but everyone wants the Roland RE-201 sound right now.

So if we can get both our RE-201's working, we'd rather sell those for $600-700 and keep the Electra EP-350, since it's not well-known (it's very rare) and the few who have heard of Electra know they turned into the company "Crate" that makes cheap repro crap junk. But this is an old Electra built in Italy back in the 1970's and is pure quality, so like the Ace-Tones, we'll let people pay us way too much for tape echoes that don't sound nearly as good.

Anyway, again, the main point is that right now:

All we have for sale is replacement tapes and manuals at this time. You can purchase what we do have available at The Sound-O-Mat using PayPal. Please contact us if you would like to pay any other way, but PayPal is the only way we can accept credit cards, although we hope to add Google Checkout soon.

We're sincerely sorry, esp. when we write grumpy email replies. We're not happy about it either, trust us. We will post something if and when this changes.

1. Do not ask us questions about how to fix your tape echo. Just don't. We have lives and jobs and are barely scraping by these days, and the last thing we need to do is spend 4+ hours, 7 days a week answering and replying to email questions about your tape echo. We're glad you love yours, we love ours, but unless you're willing to fork out some $$$ for our time AND vast expertise, we can't afford to waste all day answering all the email we get. Sorry. In a better world, we'd be rich, idle, and would be happy to do it for free. Honest.

2. Regarding repairs: yes, we still repair almost every type of tape echo and have replacement tapes for most, but at the very least, understand this:

a. It will cost you USD $25-30 at least to ship it to us each way, so that's $60. We require $50 to go over your machine, do a basic cleaning, and write up an estimate on the rest of the work. In the end, to restore a machine will cost $150 min. - usually at least $200-300 - some times as much as $500 with parts - to fix it. If you're a typical musician - meaning like us, you have no money - please don't waste your and our time asking, OK?

b. Shipping has been a huge problem. Costs have gone through the roof, and we're pretty sure that shipping a 20-30 year old tape echo unit via UPS Ground both ways will almost always result in it being in worse shape than when you sent it. Three clients of ours in the last year have opt'ed for UPS 2nd Day Air and between that and excellent packaging (double-boxing at least) we've had good luck, but then the shipping costs go up to $100-150 back-n-forth.

3. No, right now we don't have parts. We're trying to sell what units we have and be done with it. If we can't, we'll have parts, and when we do, we'll advertise them with prices. Meanwhile, don't ask. We'd rather sell working units and get out of this business, because we'd make 3x more money pumping gas down the street at the gas station. Seriously.

4. We do have tapes. Just ask or order. But not many left.

5. We will work on a unit, if you have the dosh ($$$) to spend shipping it, paying for parts, and insuring it, and if it gets messed up, you go after UPS/FedEx/USPS, not us. Let them pay both of us for breaking it, OK? But good luck collecting.

6. NO, WE DO NOT AND HAVE NOT HAD A REPLACEMENT MOTOR SINCE JULY 2007. And Roland hasn't made one since end of 2004. Basically, unless we can find broken units to part out, we will likely not have any replacement motors in the future, and if we do, they'll be $200-300 depending on condition, maybe more. FullTone is making a tape echo now, and although we think it sucks compared to any of the Roland models - although the current Roland digital version, the RC-20, totally sucks compared to the FullTone... anyway, you can spend a lot of money buying one of those and replacement tapes from them if you want.

Lastly, if we can't fix your tape echo, what do we recommend?

a. Sell us your broken one. No, you won't get a lot of $$$, but some $$$ is better than it collecting dust, yeah?

b. The FullTone Tape Echo uses real tape, but it blows. Granted, it's so much better than the Line 6 DL-4 and Roland RC-20 it's not worth comparing, but it still sucks - the worst AceTone we've owned still blows away the FullTone piece of crap - not to mention the VERY expensive replacement tape carts they need.

c. We recommend, if you can't afford a real Tape Echo, the DanElectro DTE. Out of all of the digital effects, we thinks it's the closest. And we've owned and own dozens of tape echoes and all the current ones. We stick with our RE-301, RE-501, our AceTone Pro 20, and the DanElectro. The rest are shite. Avoid Univox and FullTone because cart-based effects suck (why buy replacement carts unless you're made of money?)

Over-Rated Current Models:

• FullTone Tape Echo
• Roland RE-201 - we've been getting $600-700 for these, and you know what? They're not that great. Any AceTone model will be $300-400, sound as good, and require much less work. And any later Roland mode, except the SRE-555.
• Roland SRE-555 - we see RE-501's sell for $450-600 on Ebay, and an SRE-555 for $900-$1000. They're the same fookin' unit except the 555 is in a rack-mount box but the 501 has rack-mount brackets on the back, so you can rack either one. Otherwise they're the same exact unit. People who buy an SRE-555 are morons.

Under-Rated Older Models:

• The AceTone lineup, which is just a Roland name-brand, and while not as complex as an RE-201 or later, is also more simple and has a great slapback and analog sound. The EP 10 or the EP 20 Pro are just great. We love our EP 20 Pro and frankly we're in the process of selling off all our RE-201's (three total) because we think the AceTone EP 20 Pro sounds better and is so much less work to maintain.
• DanElectro's DTE digital pedal - it's digital, it doesn't sound the same, but it's the best of the bunch. If you don't want to deal with tapes, go with this one.

"Many years ago when Roland was still supplying replacement heads I ordered a set and at that time removed the playback heads (record head was no longer available at that time). I still have the playback heads that were about 5 yeas old then. The replacements have been in the unit for about 22 years. So I have been planning on reinstalling the orginal playback heads given that they have substantially less hours on them."

So parts from a used system is about the only thing one will find for repairs, sad to say.

DO NOT CONTACT US HOPING TO BUY PARTS.

Since Roland first started making its RE-series Space / Chorus Echo analog tape units, they used DC Brushless Motors. It's worth reading about them because it explains why the motors in these (and many) tape echoes tend to work or not work, and little in-between. We recommend reading the whole article, but some key points:

• Tape echo motors are Reluctance Motors.
• An electronically controlled commutation system, instead of a mechanical commutation system.
• The controller performs the same power distribution found in a brushed DC motor, but using a solid-state circuit.
• Several advantages over brushed DC motors, including higher efficiency and reliability, longer lifetime (no brush erosion), elimination of ionizing sparks from the commutator, and overall reduction of noise and electromagnetic interference (EMI).
• The maximum power that can be applied to a BLDC motor is exceptionally high, limited almost exclusively by heat.
• BLDC motors require complex electronic speed controllers to run.
• Sayama/Pioneer motors used by Roland are "inrunner" types, although these means less torque, but pulling tape doesn't require a lot of torque.

We still have a refurbished motor for sale, and if you read the above Wikipedia entry, you'll understand why we're confident it will work fine for many, many years to come. Please contact us at info@sound-o-mat.com if you're interested in buying it.

This was Roland's first real attempt to create a digital version of its earlier models of it famous RE-series tape echoes - the RE-101, RE-150, RE-201 Space Echoes. No attempt at the "Sound-on-Sound" effect, due to limited memory, nor built-in Chorus like the RE-301, RE-501 and SRE-555 Chorus Echoes. It fails dismally at creating a sound anything like an RE-201, which is what it was supposed to model, but while not succeeding at that, they instead created a very unique guitar-oriented echo/reverb effects unit that has a place of its very own, a sound unlike anything else, and is very much a compliment to one or more of the analog tape echoes, sounding very clean but lush, bright, and as thick and dense to as straight-forward as an echo unit as you could ever want.

Some of this has to do with the ability to turn off the "warmth" effect, and the fairly high digital fidelity for a late 1980's unit: 16 bit linear A/D conversion at 32KHz. The direct line input handles 10Hz-30KHz range, which is used for processing, although the effects limit the output to 20Hz-12Khz. 12Khz is fairly high and fine for vocals and guitar - most tape echoes are lucky if they can get output above 5-6Khz freq. range out. The 12Khz limit is from Low Pass Filters, perhaps because the effects algorithms create artifacts in the freq. range above that, but both output channels have a LPF set at 12Khz. The delay time is 10-300ms, decent enough for a delay, and the reverb time is quite impressive for a unit from this era: up to 5 seconds (5000 ms) which allows for long, slowly degrading tails of sound that can just be played out.

Most of the people who bought this most likely figured it would be nice to replace a big RE-201 or other analog tape echo with a single 1 RU (rack unit) effect box that would never require cleaning, tape replacement, etc. but none of the classic sounds the RE-201 and such were known for could be made with this box. It just didn't sound the same at all, not even close. Interesting, getting this to self-oscillate is much easier than the RE-201 and early tape echoes, and you can get some pretty weird spacey or just crazy noise sounds out of this if you turn things up too much, like the Repeat & Intensity for the echo.

So the unit was a complete flop, hated by most of the people looking for a version of the RE-201 that was smaller, better built, and required zero maintenance, vs. really a lot if a real tape echo is properly kept up. They ended up in pawn shops and music instrument stores gathering dust, until they were sold off for cheap to just get rid of them. Those who bought them at this point were mostly curious, and esp. the 5 second reverb was an amazing effect unto itself, not even considering the echo effects.

Slowly but surely, this became a "secret weapon" in many guitarists' rigs. It's probably the closest thing to "instant shoegaze" in one effects unit, and one of those units people never sell once they get one, and don't talk about because of its unique sound. People who had never owned a tape echo and took this unit as its own thing found they were able to really make some amazing sounds and it will never be known how much this effect box had on shaping the whole British 90's guitar sound that took over the synth-pop era from the early MTV days.

You can read more about it at Sonic State esp. about "those luscious Space Echo sounds" and truly infinite repeat that doesn't degrade, a major difference between the analog models that some disliked but many found could be very useful and musical. If they fix the database error, you can also read about it at http://www.effectsdatabase.com/reviews/1174/, and here's a great quote from a long-time owner from 2003 that I think sums it up well:

"I have both an RE-201 and an RE-3. The RE-3 is a great and weird box. It does not sound like the 201. It does not sound like anything else on the planet. The reverb setting is dark and warbly and strange. I bought it on ebay accidently 10 years ago (before I knew the difference) I still use it!"

You can read a bit about this unit (compared to the tape versions) at http://www.interruptor.ch/cgi-bin/discus/messages/1/395.html#POST1713. It is absolutely true this unit does NOT sound like any analog tape echo, but its failure to do that made it a magic device with its own extremely unique sound, esp. for 90's UK music, like shoegaze. Instant Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins), for example. Nothing on Harmony Central or GuitarGeek about it - it never shows up in rig listings, in part because of how rare it is, but also because it's one of those units that players will try to keep secret as part of their rig so people can't easily copy their sound.