eko

[stefan]

hello its thy anybody ho has seen one of this eko befor http://www.vintagehofner.co.uk/gallery/ ... /swis.html
sorry for my bad eng =)

[JimN]

Yes.

They were around, in the sixties.

In the second half of that decade, s/h echo (not "eko") units were totally out of fashion and a relative a drug on the market.

For between £20 and £65, you could get your pick of anything from a Watkins to a Binson, taking in Meazzi, Klempt, Selmer and Swissecho along the way.

JN

PS: I know Dave Jeffreys; he has been a visitor to my house. He managed to get some of that legendary Spanish warehouse-full of classic equipment which had been sealed since the mid-sixties. That echo unit (he specialises in echo units) looks like part of the haul.

[cockroach]

Jim,

Yes- to be caught plugging your guitar into an echo box after about 1964 was seen as totally uncool and unforgivable! Especially if you were using a red solid body guitar too.....

I even heard one guy denigrate a lovely old Fender Showman amp (which would now be a high priced classic) by saying that it was useless for getting trendy contemporary guitar sounds - because it sounded "too Shadowy"....not like Eric's Marshall etc

A fuzz box was pretty much obligatory back then though....

[Alan Prudhoe]

I had a Swissecho in the Sixties - paid around £100 for it IIRC, when the Copicat was about £30.
Beautiful when it worked properly - which was very rare, as the tape used to stick and slip badly most of the time.
In the end we discarded the tape cassette altogether and converted it to use a normal loop - a la Copicat - and jammed the pinch wheel against the pillar with a bit of stick (with the tape between). Not much improvement.
One of the lads still has it in the loft as far as I know.

[rogera]

I had a Swissecho - exactly the same model as the one shown in Stefan's link.

It had a tape loop rather than the cassette and was unusual in so far as it had three record heads and two playback heads (one of which was adjustable by moving it along a slot in the chassis)

I found the quality and reliability to be excellent but the echo patterns available were not good for Shads tunes and the tone of the echo signal was rather bass heavy.

I think that is was ideal for a singer (as were the German Klemt units).

[stefan]

ok tanks for the help i talk whit the gay too day i am not going too by it
but its loks nice
stefan

[StuartD]

I Had one of those, with a tape loop. No one wanted Echo's then. I remember a friend of mine got me a Binson, like Hank,s - green one, not the Baby - for £20.00. I haven't got it now but I know who has!!

Regards

Stuart