can I make echoplex out of this reel to reel ?

[donald stringer]

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/donaldstringer/album?.dir=/4f8c                  I went yard sailing today and picked up this reel to reel for 16.00. I was wondering if I could make an echoplex type rev. out of this and where can I find a pictorial layout of someone elses finished . I can only see two heads but it has all the other bells and whistles. And it does work. Any help would be appreciated. It is an craig panorama 35 watts solid state reel to reel. I will take a picture of the heads if that would help.

[toneman]

the echoplex has a movable head.
tapedecks don't.
afn
tone

[petemoore]

We had one would do echo, an old SONY tube tape recorder.
 We made another one do echo...don't recall exactly but had regular signal mixed or separately amped, then also fed to the recorder in record mode and 'tricked' the playback head somehow into playing at the same time. This of course would depend on the record head being 'before' the playback head. And like above said the speed control is how far the tape head is from the record head, and how fast the tape is moving across them, accelerating the tape head will also raise the pitch of a tone while it's accelerating, deaccelerating the tape speed lowers the pitch while the tape speed deaccelerates.
 Feeding echoed, line level signal back into the playback [has to be attenuated or you'll get runaway feedback I think] ... I believe this is how you get repeats.
  Ahhh, what about...install a 'slacker' that 're-routes' or 'detours' the tape...[a bar that increases the distance of tape between the record and playback heads]...from between to tape thread posts, a third movable post pulls an extra length of tape from the thread loop, from between the R and Play heads !!!...this would cause pitch change but you could get real nice different length tape echoes from a machine wired to record and playback at the same time !!! and would be relatively easy to do...well compared to the moving head thing...but minimum echo time would still be determined by the length of tape between the R and P heads and the tape speed.
 Set at high tape speed might be pretty good, If the heads are clean, the drive is steady, everything is aligned and you have New Reel of tape...you could probably get to liking it...
 I think there's a switch that engages the playhead, if you can find and jam it where it stays on ... YMMV

[donald stringer]

Hey pete your a little more optomistic, I know this can be done. I have already started messing with it. For starters you can plug your guitar into the left mic. input/ take the signal from the left line out and you have a pretty dynamic tight fuzz unit[ not bad for its doing something its not supposed to do. That pre-amp circuit needs copied. Now to get some verb out of it and I will be up town.To get the pre-amp fuzz you have to push the left and right record buttons down and either push  the play or   pause mode. The fuzz sound is not your typical silicon over the top destroyer sound but its actually pretty warm and all this is through a solid state amp.

[Thomas P.]

If the tape has a playback head behind the record head (don't know how it's called) than you can use the echomatic at moosapotamus.com!!!