Re: The new Echoplex and you...

[Matthias Grob <matthias@grob.org>]

>Dear all,
>
>     Well, got my Echoplex and footswitch from Alto Music a few weeks ago 
>and
>everything worked great straight out of their boxes.  I now understand the
>complaints about the manual and definitely see some room for improvement
>therein.  Several taped multi-coloured plastic tabs helped out with this 
>one.
>     Will get into a few ideas for updates later on...

I am like that, too: as soon as I get a unit, I start the update 
suggestions... what sign are you born under? ;-)

>Anywho, gave it a shot
>with a David King headless fretless 6 string bass, fretted Steinberger
>5-string bass, a doubleneck Carvin, Polycarb Stick, and finally a Roland
>JV-90 just to see what I could get out of this beastie.  First thing is 
>that
>I have 50.3 seconds of memory when this beastie ships, and man I now
>understand just how little this can be, quick!  Especially with the 
>multiply
>feature, trying to get activated...  Succeeded a few times with rather
>positive results for tiny loops.
>
>     Had a blast with it just playing back what I had done, and then 
>doing a
>little overdubbing, and finally sussed out how to get this thing to record
>separate loops and then play them sequentially, repeating loop a then 
>b... 
>Couldn't quite suss out the fade out feature, and could only 
>"accidentally"
>get the reverse feature to happen for me.

select REV at InsertMode or do Timing-Reverse (PARAM-UNDO)

>     Another thing which popped up from time to time was that the beastie 
>was
>overheating on me and shutting itself down, with all of the lights, but 
>that
>over the Record and the two decimal places on the LCD screen going off.

and then stopped doing anything? I dont believe...

>Cranked up the Air Conditioning and this problem disappeared rather 
>quickly,
>gave it a dedicated fan and it didn't occur for the few hours I toyed with
>it...

That is the state in Reset. Are you shure "overheating" was not just 
a long press on Record?

>     Man, getting this beastie to go into reverse mode is a bit of a 
>chore,
>and then I have a quick question, can you change the speed of the play 
>back,
>as you could with a tape echoplex?

no, the nex soft version can go to half speed and back.

>     Now, off-list, I've been asked a few times to do a comparison between
>both the Echoplex and the Boomerang.  This is again, just a statement of
>opinion and only that! 
>     I'd find myself working with the Boomerang more in a live context 
>than I
>would with the Echoplex.  Mostly because, I find that single buttons are a
>bit easier to work around in a live setting than menus.

forget it, you dont need to acess any menus while playing!

>     Oh, by the by, for the attackless drones, a sneaky way I've found of
>doing it, is to activate the note you want to drone, run it through a 
>volume
>pedal and then some form of digital delay on a slow setting

yes, thats how it started...

>  and then just
>after you get the sound you're looking for, timbre or rumbles then start
>recording with either unit, and found that they both (Boomerang and 
>Echoplex)
>handle this quite nicely.  Typically, I like to swell it a little more 
>about
>halfway through the loop to be.

I only have an Echoplex and no delay, but I think with RECORD-OVERDUB 
and around 3 seconds of loop, you fill a good drone without 
perceptible repetition.



          ---> http://Matthias.Grob.org