An Australian Company Has Just Announced A New Hardware Tape Echo Unit

The warm and gritty sounds of vintage style tape echo units like the classic Roland RE-201 Space Echo are loved fairly unanimously by guitarists, keys players and producers — it’s likely one of the most emulated effects around. But, the original units are notoriously fickle, unreliable and only getting more so as the years go by. Enter Echo Fix; an Australian tape echo spares and repair specialist who’ve just announced the launch of their very own take on a classic tape echo unit with some additional modern features dubbed the EF-X2.

From their press release:

We spent three years prototyping, rigorously testing, and meticulously designing in secret – while accounting for every possible application. We couldn’t find a new production motor good enough so we made our own and invested in the latest high tech machinery to custom balance them in house here at Echo Fix. We could not find tape heads that sounded good enough so we had custom tape heads manufactured to our exact specs.

What we have built is a warm sounding tape echo with a modern feature set that is at home in the professional recording studio, live guitar rig, bedroom production setup or in any other context you can dream up, we cannot wait for the EF-X2 to become an integral part of your creative process.

This is an incredible achievement from the Aussie small business and it sounds like Echo Fix haven’t cut a single corner. We certainly suspect that if there’s anyone around who’s going to know how to build a fantastic and reliable tape echo unit, it’s going to be the team who’s spent over 10 years repairing them.

Specs and video demo below. Pre-order is now up via Reverb here, grab more info via Echo Fix here

• Three core functions – tape echo, reverb, and pre-amp
• Independent inputs (and level controls) for Instrument-level and Line-level applications, plus balanced input and output at the rear
• Three echo playback heads, and a Sound On Sound Head giving 11 Head combination Settings in total
• Adjust the echo’s Time and Feedback with Control Voltages (CV 0-5 volts) and compatible Expression Pedals
• Bass and Treble control of the echo signal
• Motor ON/Switch for tape slow down effect – or to conserve tape when only using the EF-X2’s reverb or preamp
• State of the art DSP Reverb with independent controls
• Mute the reverb or echo signal with a dual footswitch pedal