i got an ECHO PARK!!!!!

[Peter Snowberg]

Any schematic for the Echo Park?

    :icon_lol:  Wouldn't do you any good at either cloning one, understanding one, or modding one.

I have to disagree.

Understanding one? I do think the schematic would be rather insightful in that department. 

[Doug_H]

It would be helpful but you would also need the source code.

The clips of that thing sound real nice, BTW. That and the Liqui Flange and Roto simulator have me drooling.

Doug

[SeanCostello]

I still want to know what sort of DSP is used in there. I know that Line 6 uses both Analog Devices DSPs and Motorola.

From the description of the math being done in 32 bits, it would seem to rule out a Motorola 56K, which would have either 24 or 48 bits of precision (the 56 bit accumulator makes double precision pretty easy on the 56k). However, I doubt that a SHARC would be in the stompboxes, for cost and power reasons. Is it a 16-bit DSP being run in double precision mode? 218x? Blackfin? Another manufacturer?

Sean Costello

[Mark Hammer]

I have to disagree.  Understanding one? I do think the schematic would be rather insightful in that department. 

I think one needs to distinguish between what such a schematic would mean to YOU, and would mean to 98% of the other folks who frequent here.  This ain't no Fuzz Face, and you ain't no newbie.

Doug,

One of the features of the Liqui-Flange that is, to my mind, NOT adequately flaunted by the posted sound-clips is the envelope-controlled flange.  It is an extremely soulful tone, and quite frankly I'd want one of these pedals just because of my love of envelope-controlled filtering.  I predicted to Jeorge that the step function would likely show up as part of the opening riff of 50 songs, the way that Cher "robot voice" thing did for a little while.  The fact that one can dial in step rate, width (think of it as the "contrast amount" control when in step mode) and resonance, and twiddle the filter switch to get different things is nice, and the fact that it all comes in a stompbox, rather than some post-production trick, means your average minor band can duplicate the sound easily live.  We'll see how right I am. 

Between one of these and a Flanger Hoax, you can pretty much lock yourself away with some patch cords and pemican and never show up for work or sex for a few years.  I haven't seen a Flanger Hoax yet in town, so I haven't tried one, but my sense is that the Liqui-Flange tends to specialize in "punctate" (discrete on-off) sound events, where the Flanger Hoax tends to specialize in longer sweeps and ambiences.  I may be wrong there but the assorted modes for short-term, aperiodic sweeps in the Liqui-Flange, and the absence of such controls in the Flanger Hoax tends to suggest that to me. 

The bad news this Xmas gift season is that you're going to see a couple of hundred of your dollars trot into the hands of music stores.  The good news is that there is enough non-overlapping territory between these two pedals that one can safely treat them as both worth buying for their special qualities, with neither being better than the other.  The person I feel most sorry for here is Dave Fox.  For a short while, the Paradox Flanger ruled the roost as the only through-zero flanger in production.  Not any more.  While the Paradox has a nice feature set and also includes envelope sensitivity, the Liqui-Flange and Flanger Hoax clearly outdistance it in terms of overall feature set.  Once again, not having compared the three directly, I can't say anything about tone quality, noise, etc., but in terms of what they can DO, the Paradox is lagging behind.  Of course, to its credit, it will still kick the ass of just about any flanger produce between 1985 and this Fall.  But there are two new sheriffs in town.

[analogmike]

I sell both the EH HOAX and the Foxrox tfz. I don't see much overlap, the Hoax is not great for normal musical sounds and the TZF not great for crazy sounds. If you want to recreate Hendrix/Kravitz etc the TZF is the way to go. If you want to make crazy spounds get the Hoax. Not yet tried the 3rd one.

have fun with all these choices!

[SeanCostello]

Between one of these and a Flanger Hoax, you can pretty much lock yourself away with some patch cords and pemican and never show up for work or sex for a few years. 

Yeah, tried that once. Wouldn't recommend it.

[EdJ]

I just wanted to say that is nice for you Tom
Have fun,greetings,Ed

[vanessa]

I have a question about the echo park. It sounds like the forum is not concerned that there is an issue with the design of the pedal (my prior post). Is there some sort of easy repair or work around that I don't know about?

If there is not, what would be the forums speculation about why this pedal would have a bad hiss problem after a period of time?

[Doug_H]

Between one of these and a Flanger Hoax, you can pretty much lock yourself away with some patch cords and pemican and never show up for work or sex for a few years.

You have no idea how close to reality that is- and it's a scary thought... Especially with 2 amplifiers running it in stereo...

I wanted to buy a tzf so bad when it came out, but it is unaffordable for me right now. I feel kind of bad for Dave Fox. He was the first to implement and produce this on a wide scale- now the dsp folks will come in at a lower price and steal his thunder, in a way. But that's reality in this biz...

I'm still a little edgy about dsp for distortion sounds, amp sounds, etc. I'm probably still a Luddite to some degree there. But for time-based stuff I have no qualms with it, and in some ways I think it may be preferable due to the abundance of features that can be made available. I am amazed by the sounds of the "new reissue" Korg CX-3 that came out in 2000. The drawbar/rotary sounds are scary good and it's all dsp.

I took a class on a TI dsp chip a month ago and I'm convinced dsp is the future in this industry. It's good to see relatively new sounds & features in some of these products now, as opposed to "yet another emulation attempt of a tweed amp". This is the direction this industry needs to go.

Doug

[cd]

I have a question about the echo park. It sounds like the forum is not concerned that there is an issue with the design of the pedal (my prior post). Is there some sort of easy repair or work around that I don't know about?

If there is not, what would be the forums speculation about why this pedal would have a bad hiss problem after a period of time?

AFAIK it's random, hit and miss.  Depends on the amp, the power supply, the time of day.  I plugged an Echo Park (powered by Line6's own adapter) into a RI Twin Reverb (same as my main amp) and was greeted with a nice PSSSSSSSHHH noise.  Plugged it into a Trem-O-Verb and nothing.  Went in another day and plugged a different Echo Park (or so the salesman told me) into the same RI Twin Reverb and PSSSSHHH noise.  I'm taking other routes to tape style, digital delay....!

[vanessa]

I have a question about the echo park. It sounds like the forum is not concerned that there is an issue with the design of the pedal (my prior post). Is there some sort of easy repair or work around that I don't know about?

If there is not, what would be the forums speculation about why this pedal would have a bad hiss problem after a period of time?

AFAIK it's random, hit and miss.  Depends on the amp, the power supply, the time of day.  I plugged an Echo Park (powered by Line6's own adapter) into a RI Twin Reverb (same as my main amp) and was greeted with a nice PSSSSSSSHHH noise.  Plugged it into a Trem-O-Verb and nothing.  Went in another day and plugged a different Echo Park (or so the salesman told me) into the same RI Twin Reverb and PSSSSHHH noise.  I'm taking other routes to tape style, digital delay....!

Strange, maybe an impedance issue with the different amps? One thing I have read is people claim that in most cases this hiss (or PSSSSSSSHHH noise) developed over a period of time. What most reported was it just happened suddenly. That they had the unit for a few weeks or months and one day it started to hiss. Or it just hissed right out of the box. My thoughts that maybe they were using the wrong power supply or maybe during gigging etc. static electricity destroyed a component.

CD, I would try out that Ibanez DE-7. I've seen them for around $60. Like I said earlier the delay freaks in a number of forums put it at the top of their list for the tape emulation. I’ve seen these people’s posts in the past and know that they are tone connoisseurs, and are over the top into delays. I've also read these same people discuss in detail their own vintage tape units. It would seem a reliable source of information.

[Mark Hammer]

I'll repeat once more something I've had to say too many times.  The FIRST issue of the pedal apparently did not do enough to keep noise at bay  Personally, I never really noticed it, but I received a request to return my module for the upgrade and did so.  The software was upgraded and an improved noise gating function was part of that.  Since I haven't received my upgrade yet, I can't comment on the extent of that improvement, but I *CAN* say that unless you know for absolute sure you're trying out the V1.1 software release, it might be wise to reserve judgment abut the noise properties.  I'm not saying it's perfect as a product, or that the 2nd stab at the software solves everything, or nthat there isn't any sort of undetected "achilles heel" with respect to noise over the long term, but since Line 6 didn't exactly publicize the improvements, it can easily be the case that some on-line criticism in other places is, in fact, critiquing a product which is no longer on the market in that particular form.

Rumours start so easy in this biz.  I like to try and quash them when the opportunity arises.

[vanessa]

I'll repeat once more something I've had to say too many times.  The FIRST issue of the pedal apparently did not do enough to keep noise at bay  Personally, I never really noticed it, but I received a request to return my module for the upgrade and did so.  The software was upgraded and an improved noise gating function was part of that.  Since I haven't received my upgrade yet, I can't comment on the extent of that improvement, but I *CAN* say that unless you know for absolute sure you're trying out the V1.1 software release, it might be wise to reserve judgment abut the noise properties.  I'm not saying it's perfect as a product, or that the 2nd stab at the software solves everything, or nthat there isn't any sort of undetected "achilles heel" with respect to noise over the long term, but since Line 6 didn't exactly publicize the improvements, it can easily be the case that some on-line criticism in other places is, in fact, critiquing a product which is no longer on the market in that particular form.

Rumours start so easy in this biz.  I like to try and quash them when the opportunity arises.

Mark of all people I respect your opinion. My thoughts on this noise issue as described are that this sounds like a hardware issue over a software issue. For one software does not degrade over time (not counting Microsoft of course, LOL) it just becomes obsolete. Now it could be that an addition of a software noise gate may help remove inherent hardware noise and that would be cool so long as it did not involve tone sucking.

The problem that CD describes and the one that others describe may be due to an engineering issue with the pedal i.e. choices of chips, lack of anti-static measures, power regulation etc. I don't know. From what I've read Line 6 support does not know or just wants to shuffle it under the table.

I don't want to burst anyone's bubble here. I know when you pay good money for something the last thing you want to hear is that there could be something wrong with it. But this is an engineering forum of sorts and engineering issues should be addressed, and maybe even solved. I'm sure that a few of the Line 6 crew frequent on this site. Maybe (and this is a big maybe) two heads are better than one?

[Mark Hammer]

Yeah, sorry if that came off like a smack on the wrists.  Wasn't meant to.  I'll certainly direct Jeorge's attention to your comments and this thread when I next corrspond with him.  There may be something to look into on the design, or it may be one of those things like software bugs where you just can't play this game with that video card on that OS, even though everything else runs glitch-free.

I hope to look into this more when I get the updated module, which I hope will be soon.  I respect your forthrightness, V.  For now, hopefully we can separate what truly happens under some particular set of circumstances from "I think I heard what I heard someone say they heard someone else heard...on Harmony Central"   Not disputing what you hear with your own ears.  Just trying to keep different sources of potential noise separated for those who may have NOT heard with their own ears.

[sir_modulus]

You know... I do wonder...in 50 years from now, will or grandkids be talking about how "ya, there was SO much mojo in those old XXXXX DSP chips back in 2005 in them tonecores...I saw one for $500 the other day on e-microsoft-shell-mcdonalds-bay (by circuit city)"

I don't know what to think....

[Garrett]

I had the local music store guy order the EP so i could test drive it. I got to see what the hype is about.   I would probably use a true  bypass looper with it and for sure an isolated power supply souly for itself.

I have seen reviews for the hughes and ketter replex.  It seems to be a more promising tape delay modeler.  One thing that strikes me is that it cost around 5 to 6 hundred dollars.  I have been on the hunt for a tape modeler for sometime which is affordable.

On the Smashing Pumpkins album meloncollie and the infanit saddness disc 2 there is a song called "Thru The Eyes of Ruby". At the very end of the track they do this little lead part using some sort of echo unit. THAT IS WHAT I LONG FOR!

Also on Zepplin III the track "That's the Way". I know ol Jim Page is using a slide but there is something there that seems much more. I figure that is definately a tape echo unit.

   ECHO RULES, Garrock