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Re: Leeds echo
__Jon,
>were echo and delay devices around in 1970?
>From this question I'm guessing that you're at most 16-18 years old. It's an
interesting question based on how digital technology has replaced a lot of old
analogue equipment.
Before digital delays and reverb, there were analogue devices. Some of the
expensive studio reverbs were called "plate" reverbs. They were big sheets of
metal, usually built into a wall or something for isolation that the sound was
run through. Cheaper versions of this were "spring" reverbs, which consists of
a box with a few springs running through it. If you pick up an old guitar amp
with spring reverb, turn it on and then drop it a little bit, you'll hear a big
reverberated crash. It's the springs bouncing around inside the reverb case.
Delays were usually "tape delays". A piece of recording tape was made into a
loop and run through a machine that had separate record and playback heads.
You could slide the playback head back and forth, increasing the distance
between the two heads. This determined the time of the delay. You could also
take the output from the playback head and feed it back into the record head,
causing a fading echo-like delay.
-John