Saturday, 29 September 2007 15:45
Most everybody is familiar with the Memory Man series of pedals made by EH, but just as many may be less informed about other delay units that EH made in their heyday. Some of these are fairly scarce but they’re all great sounding delays and very useful to the average guitarist. Most of them also take up less space on a pedalboard.
Let’s start with the Slap-back Echo. This was EH’s first foray into the smaller delay unit. It was designed to give 80ms of delay and featured a BLEND control for mixing with the straight signal as well as a FILTER switch for cutting out high end noise. It was available in 2 versions: the standard unit and the rare Stereo Slap-back Echo, which also featured a DIRECT OUT output jack and a power indicator LED, one of only 2 small EH pedals with LEDs. Any guesses as to the other one? (answer at the bottom) Both units used the Reticon SAD1024 delay IC.
Just a short time later, EH redesigned the Slap-back Echo and reintroduced it as the Full Double Tracking Effect. Same case, but now the delay was switchable between 50 and 100ms. The BLEND control was retained and the FILTER switch was replaced by the MS DELAY switch. It was produced around 1979 and used the Panasonic MN3005 delay IC, which EH had replaced the Reticon chip with in nearly all of their effects. The Panasonic chip was capable of doing the same delay effects, but with better bandwidth and less noise.
(The other small EH pedal to feature an LED was the Small Clone. Unlike the Stereo Slapback Echo, it was used to indicate the on/off state of the effect.)