Believe it or not there are still folks out there vandalising vintage gear—even Echorecs—in an ill-considered attempt to improve it, somehow. Now, we’re all guilty of doing stupid things from time to time. In my younger days I’ve ‘hot-rodded’ one or two classic guitar amps to add additional tubes in the preamp stage. This involved cutting holes in the chassis to mount a couple of additional tube sockets—not clever and not cool. I soon learned to leave vintage stuff alone and build my own stuff instead.
Some of the worse Echorec hacks include gutting all the electronic components, such as mustard capacitors, and replacing them with new, stripping out the original wiring when it’s not necessary to do so, over-painting the original hammered gold finish black or blue, even fitting green LEDs where there were once filament lamps. But the worst hack of all is the current fad for swapping out the original Binson motor for a low torque DC motor, transforming the Echorec into little more than a lo-fi grunge machine, a.k.a. a tin of rusty old nails. And this is despite the fact there are numerous delay pedals out there that do a passing impression of a tired, beat-up old Binson. This mindset goes completely counter to the designer’s, Ing. Bini‘s, original vision for his Echorec delay-echo unit:
Binson designed the Echorec to be a hi-fidelity echo machine.
To that end Bini engineered a seamless, perfectly concentric magnetic disc recording media and took advantage of the latest innovations in AC tape bias to ensure exceptional audio quality. To repeat, for the hackers sat on the back row: exceptional audio quality. The delay and echo effects generated by a new Echorec, fresh out of the factory in 1963, were clear, rich and deep, in short, audio nirvana.
And keep in mind, each hack chips away at the historical integrity of the machine, gradually eroding its authenticity and value, until ultimately there comes a point at which the machine is no longer a Binson any more. Hackers, like the rodents in my mum’s backyard, cause a lot damage, which is expensive and in many cases impossible to put right again. Be assured, there’s a special place in hell for those who bastardize Binsons. Hackers take note:
Any work on vintage equipment should be done sympathetically.
To get an idea of what I’m talking about take a look this restoration of an early Hammond ‘Novachord’ tube synthesiser is a fabulous example of sympathetic restoration. This beautiful old synthesiser was painstakingly restored with minimal disruption to it’s vintage character and charm. Even the capacitors were rebuilt, rather then replaced, ensuring the internals retain their original appearance.
One last thing. Hacking an Echorec is a really, really expensive way of obtaining a lo-fi delay effect. If grunge is your thing then you might be better off with one the numerous ‘Echorec’ branded stompboxes out there—they’ll do the job more than adequately, and save you several thousand bucks and a whole world of trouble.
