New, long time reader finaly decided to register and post question about echo?

Hey all, my name is Mike, been browsing these forums since way back in the day. I was wondering some of your opinions in regards to this echo question.

I have a 301 space echo. It' great but old, clunky, fragile, and sometimes a little unreliable. To be honest I'm not one of those fans that try to copy setzer's sound exactly. yes I own gretsch guitars and a blonde amp from the 60's with as mentioned using a 301, however my tone is a bit heavier, as I like to use overdrive pedals rather than the signal clip from the 301's pre amp. That being said, i was tempted to possibly purchase a fulltone tape echo. For starters they are new so I'm assuming less problems, plus the tapes are much easier to get and install. So my question is for people who have used both the rolands and the fulltones, if you you were me and didn't need the 301 for the pre amp clip, do you think i'd enjoy the fulltone much better? Problem is, in order to afford one of those fulltones I can't justify owning two tape echo units, so I would dump the 301. Anyone know what a working 301 is going for these days on the used market? I purchased mine about 10/12 years ago on ebay and I want to say I paid around $400 to $450 somewhere around there. from what I can recall back that many years ago there always seemed to be 2 or 3 301's for sale up there just about anytime you did a search. These days it seems like they are harder to find online? Not sure if they are just becoming more rare the older they get or perhaps with other online buy/sell/trade sites like craigslist, you just don't see them on the bay as much? Once in awhile I'll see a 201 and they seem to be averaging what I paid 10 years ago for my 301. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

paging Tavo.... Tavo Vega to the white courtesy phone please...

"Captain Oveur, white courtesy phone. Captain Clarence Oveur, white courtesy phone.
[Oveur picks up the red phone] No, the white phone." ..name that movie!

A TTE by Fulltone isnt the answer if you dont want something between your guitar and amp that doesnt have has a big fat tube preamp in it. dont get me wrong its wonderful
but it competes with the bassman or I should say its a whole lot of Fatness. Warbly good
with a lot of gain on tap but for me something about it didnt jive with my pedals.
anyway just my experience..
it'd be cool if Fulltone finally moves forward with the EP-2 as its a solid state unit and probably just sings.

regarding resale on the 301.. you could have
it serviced to tip top shape including caps you could in time fetch over a grand..
(some guys in japan have placed mint ones on ebay for $1500 )
but if its just "as is" in running condition and the heads are worn and motor keeps
laggin, caps arent changed,etc.. $500-700

[quote="tvthewiredturtle"]"Captain Oveur, white courtesy phone. Captain Clarence Oveur, white courtesy phone.
[Oveur picks up the red phone] No, the white phone." ..name that movie!

Billy, Do you like gladiator movies?

"have you ever been in a turkish prison?"

"I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue."

in 05 I heard setzer play with the fulltone in a tiny bar on the santa monica pier. Didnt like the sound at all.

mjcodina wrote:

in 05 I heard setzer play with the fulltone in a tiny bar on the santa monica pier. Didnt like the sound at all.

Mike: I use a TTE in combination with a fender 65 deluxe RI and the Nocturne (+ the DL Gretsch with Ptrons): Gigging on a regularly basis helped me finding my sound in nearly every situation. Obviously sometimes i wish i had a Blonde with maybe just 20 watts, but for now the setup works. What the TTE really does: it mellows your sound, it darkens the overall sound, it "tube preamps" your sound, you can get a really nice overdrive too , so with the nocturne i am able to get back the right frequences and to preamp the signal, so i can have a decent gigging sound.

Thanks for everone's input. Like anything really I'll have to try one with my setup. I really didn't factor in the tubes on the fulltone. T.V. waht your saying is it would almost be like running two tube pre amps together, which could conflict with the great tone of the vintage amp? And let's face it why have a blonde 60's amp if we aren't going to take advantage of the pure tone.

That does make sense. Getting away from Gretsches for a moment, I have owned all the "famous"/"legendary" overdrives out there. In my experience, putting a tube overdrive in front of a tube amp is too much. Everything just gets squishy and soft & it's not a good combination. However, a solid state overdrive in from of a tube amp is bliss. So I could see the TTE being ok as long as you don't get your drive FROM THE TTE... but if that's the case, why bother? Several awesome tape machine out there now, altho they are more expensive than the TTE, don't have tubes:

Blue Coconut EchoVerb (my latest GAS attack)
Echomatic ($$$)
Hiwatt Tape Echo (discontinued, but they are out there used, some people love them)

Ya, I was always wondering how those hiwatts were. I recall the time around when they first came out in the early 2000's. Durring either xmas tour 1,2 or 3 there was a t.v. appearance that the bso did and Brian was trying one of those out. I specificlly recal the pics but not the audio. They were rather thin units. Almost cigar box like but longer.

Just checked put the other's/ It looks like the echomatics are also discontinues. Anyone know if the blue cocos are true bypass?

No idea if they are T/B or not... don't know how much it matters, usually when using the big tape echo (instead of a pedal) it's "on all the time". Did you see the demo video on youtube? It might say if it's T/B or not.

I agree about the tube preamp pedals that make everything kind of soft n squishy.. I was one of the crazies using the Matchless,budda,tubester,chandler,etc.. blaaaa.. made things bloated.
Although that wasnt the case with the TTE.. it was just too big n wooly for the already big sonic footprint of a gretsch and blonde fender..

btw..
brian used the Hiwatt on a couple of televised Xmas shows, right side
of amp head.. something was said around here that he was having all his re-301s serviced so you saw him sporting this and the fulltone on and off

Can't really tell what the Hiwatt sounds like in THAT tune... not the best tune to showcase slapback unfortunately.

I just wonder... if you put a Nocturne in front of a TTE, but don't use the preamp tube drive from the TTE... Tavo? How was the Noc pushing the VMSD? Was it as close to the real thing as you think can be gotten?

ruger9 wrote:

Can't really tell what the Hiwatt sounds like in THAT tune... not the best tune to showcase slapback unfortunately.

I just wonder... if you put a Nocturne in front of a TTE, but don't use the preamp tube drive from the TTE... Tavo? How was the Noc pushing the VMSD? Was it as close to the real thing as you think can be gotten?

I experimented with both signal chains:
A) Gretsch - Noc - TTE - Amp
B) Gretsch - TTE - Noc - Amp

Big Difference!!

A) Sound i found manageable and still use it. Can vary the TTE preamp so i can go from Crispy Clean to Fat Clean.
B) had a really strange effect: the nocturne somehow compresses the TTE. I can't actually describe it, but the sound coming from the TTE when the noc was off, was fat, when i turned the noc on it wasn't fat anymore just really sparkly and with less drive.. strange a little bit. didn't continue the experiment, but am seeing to put up some sound asap.

roland wrote:

ruger9 wrote:

Can't really tell what the Hiwatt sounds like in THAT tune... not the best tune to showcase slapback unfortunately.

I just wonder... if you put a Nocturne in front of a TTE, but don't use the preamp tube drive from the TTE... Tavo? How was the Noc pushing the VMSD? Was it as close to the real thing as you think can be gotten?

I experimented with both signal chains:
A) Gretsch - Noc - TTE - Amp
B) Gretsch - TTE - Noc - Amp

Big Difference!!

A) Sound i found manageable and still use it. Can vary the TTE preamp so i can go from Crispy Clean to Fat Clean.
B) had a really strange effect: the nocturne somehow compresses the TTE. I can't actually describe it, but the sound coming from the TTE when the noc was off, was fat, when i turned the noc on it wasn't fat anymore just really sparkly and with less drive.. strange a little bit. didn't continue the experiment, but am seeing to put up some sound asap.

cool, love that youre doing this.. and yes if you put the nocturne ontop of that TTW preamp its gonna compress/saturate the tubes.. You can experiment with the preamp tube in the TTE..
or I should carefully say you may swap out one of the 3 tubes in the
TTE but dont mess with V3 (12au7)..
V2 in that unit is responsible for the guitar preamp and while its a 12AX7.. you could put in a NOS 5751 (same preamp tube with a tad less gain) or even a 12AT7 a common tube swapped into V1 on small fender amps for cleaner signal.

Placing the Nocturne after the TTE means the Nocturne preamp is amplifying everything that TTE is putting out including tape hiss, motor noise,etc..

keep sharing..

roland, nice test! Fat clean sounds perfect to me... and it makes sense to put the Noc preamp in front of the TTE... seems natural to me.