Catalinbread Echorec

I am great fan of Echorec replicas. I own vst plugins which do "Echorec" from which the best is Audiority Echoes. I never owned the real thing (I gues noone does theese days) but from what I can see on YouTube Catalinbread is very, very close to the original. Espesially the "swell" funcion which is not exactly feedback is recreated very faithfuly. It does to the sound what does rubber to the pencil: it "smears" the sounds so they sound like reverb a little bit. This differenciates Echorec from tape echoes. All in all very good pedal. It just could be a little bit prettier. The original Echorec was very sexy with classy enclosure and vintage knobs plus flashing green tube-light. The Catalinbreaed is nothing like this; it could use a flashing green led indicating the tempo but it's constant flash. So are the knobs and the chassis; rather cheap looking and it's a big pitty.

I recommend doing some reading on Echorec before buying, just to be sure you know what you are in for. The Echorec is not a tape delay; it is a magnetic drum delay, and quite responsive to playing dyanmics in terms of tone and nature of the repeats. It also has some interesting, but not tape-like, responses for example once repeats have cycled a bunch and drums start whirling.

This pedal surprised me - it can do nice echoes, rhythmic dancing backgrounds due to the multiple heads, and subtle near-reverb that thickens the tone and makes it more interesting.

It is almost a partner in your playing - you might wish it had presets because it has so many different uses, but... have fun dialing in your favorites. Take pictures to remember the settings!

I just give it 4 stars for features because, it does its thing but that thing is quite special.