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T7E Echorec Overhaul

This article describes my experience of servicing and restoring an old Echorec model T7E. It took a couple of weeks in total to fully service and overhaul. You might question if it is worth all the time and effort, when there are plenty of compact effects pedals and VST plug-ins that claim to emulate tape echo or delay? My answer is a stoic, resounding, “Absolutely!”. I still remain to be convinced that it will ever be possible to digitally model all the nuances—the thick, velvet tube tone, rich textures, the involving, complex mixture of delay, reverb, phasing and magical tube distortion these devices create.

binson1_small — Rewired, serviced and cleaned – My restored Binson Echorec – Model T7E Serial No: 5594

The Echorec generates cascading echos and degrading repeats that swirl and ultimately melt into a lush multi-dimensional wall of sound. Also, these fantastic echo machines look amazing—with its spinning magnetic drum and green pulsating ‘magic-eye’ indicator the Echorec looks like something from another time and place—and it is! Magnetic delay is weird, wonderful and musically inspiring and the effect and was used to great extent in many 1950′s sci-fi movies such as ‘Forbidden Planet’ and Binson’s Echorec defined the sound of legendary bands like Pink Floyd in the 70’s. Read on to find out more about the care and feeding of this fabulous, vintage delay machines…

Disassembly

binson2_small — Inside the Binson Echorec II

These are not the easiest machines to work on, being much more difficult and complicated to diassemble than other echo machines such as the Watkins Copicat tape echo units or vintage guitar amps. If you’re not confident, qualified and experienced, I seriously recommend you get your Echorec serviced by a professional such as Eric Snowball of Binson, UK. These vintage machines are beautiful, collectable and deserve to be treated with respect. That said, this is not rocket science, so if you are good with a soldering iron and have some experience of working on tube gear, these webpages containing Echorec schematics, the Echorec user manual,and historical information on the Binson company may provide enough guidance for you or your local tech to confidently tackle the job.

The Echorec has to be fully disassembled to gain access to the circuit board for inspection and replacement of components and wiring. The bottom and back panels are removed first, which is straightforward. From here on things get a little more scary. I removed the knobs and the little self-tap cross-head screws so that could take off the illuminated plastic front-panel. The memory system (magnetic drum, head and idler wheel on the mounting plate) was removed by unsoldering the wires connecting the heads and then undoing the four securing nuts on each corner of the mounting plate. Be careful with this—it’s very expensive to replace and is not a renewable resource. I removed the remainder of the self-tap screws on the top panel and side panels. Unsolder the two wires connecting the motor and slide out the top panel. Now we are in.

Inspection, Cleanup and Rewiring

Looking inside this old Echorec unit I was relieved to see that a majority of old wiring had been replaced, leaving just a few inaccessible H.T. and heater wires to be replaced. It is essential to undertake this undesirable job as the original Echorec wiring is of very poor quality. I’m not sure why it is so bad on a high-end product like this, as other gear from that era, such as ’60′s Fender amps did not exhibit this problem. The Binson Echorec wire insulation breaks-down and “sweats” oozing a sticky resin that attacks copper and any other metal parts including the chassis and component leads causing unsightly damage and making a real mess of the internals.

binson_wire_small — The wire insulation disintegrates and “sweats” oozing a slimy resin that corrodes copper and other metal parts

Just touching one of those fragile wires with my tweezers would be enough to cause the crumbling insulation to flake off in fragments or wires weakened by corrosion to break—the copper in the wire oxidises turning green or black, ultimately disintegrating into dust. The only solution is to completely remove this ‘environmental disaster’ of old wiring and replace it with new to prevent any further corrosion damage being caused to the Echorec’s internals. I highly recommend PTFE wire where possible. It’s virtually immune to corrosion, tolerates much higher temperatures than PVC and has superior ageing properties.

On Resistors and Capacitors

binson_components_small — Older carbon composition resistors are noisy and have a tendancy to change value as they age. The mustard caps show cracking. I’m using precision metal-film resistors and polyester caps to replace them here

binson_electrolytic_small — These old electrolytics should certainly be replaced. Being between 40 and 50 years old they will have reduced capacity due to tendancy to dry out over time.

If you found this article interesting then you might want to read my Binson Blog explaining how I undertook a full Echorec restoration from the ground-up. The work included a complete rewire, repainting and even rebuilding the multi-section electrolytic power supply smoothing capacitors.

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T7E Echorec Overhaul