Roland Space Echo

The Roland RE-201, commonly known as the Space Echo, is an audio analog delay effects unit produced by the Roland Corporation. Produced from 1974 to 1990, the unit was widely used and continues to be preferred over digital delay units by a number of guitarists, who praise its sound and reliability.

A tape echo device records incoming audio to a loop of magnetic tape, then replays the audio over a series of several playback heads before it is erased again by new incoming audio. Early echo units such as the Echoplex (which had its tape in a cartridge) and the effects unit in the EchoSonic were notoriously unreliable and needed frequent attention. In the late 1960s Ikutaro Kakehashi, later the founder of the Roland Corporation, built a tape echo using a short tape loop based on the design of the Echoplex and the Ecco-Fonic; his Ace Tone EC-1 Echo Chamber was the first of a number of models. In 1973, then operating under the Roland brand, Kakehashi introduced the Roland Echo Chamber RE-100 and RE-200, the latter with an added spring reverb.

Kakehashi's breakthrough development came in 1974 with the RE-101 and RE-201 Space Echo units, which used the standard 1/4" tape of the open-reel variety, but made as one, continuous loop. It uses no reels of any kind; the tape is transported via a capstan drive. The tape loop is contained in a loose, constantly moving jumble in the tape chamber (also known as the tape tank) under a plastic panel which protects the tape and keeps it from getting tangled. The design resulted in lower levels of noise, wow, and flutter, and cut down on tape wear. Replacement tapes were sold as well, named RT-1L.

There are several control dials on the device that alter such aspects as tape speed, repeat pattern (an 11-position rotary switch), one instrument and two microphone inputs, a single analog backlit VU meter for all three inputs, wet/dry mix for both echo and reverb, and intensity (number of repeats, in a sense; it actually reduces how much the erase/record head erases the tape), that can be adjusted to a user's liking; and bass/treble controls to EQ the sound of the repeats (not the dry signal), as well as dry and effected "Echo" output jacks with a switch for output setting (-10, -20, -35db levels.)

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