The BST echo chamber was produced in the mid 70s (mine is from 1976), it was made in japan, and released under different brands: univox/melos/bst and maybe more.. It used Apollon tapes, which appear to be a pain to find.. It’s not the rarest piece of equipment, nor the most expensive, but it seems to be pretty tough to find a properly working one. I was lucky, mine was brand new almost, which made it a good candidate for making impulses of it and thus archiving its sound for the internet (for the future, guys!!! lol). This was an interesting capture to do, because it’s one of these where you can take it beyond the limitations of the hardware. (i included photos of everything, including the inside circuit, so you can see what it’s like)
As you can see on the picture, i’ve modded mine, i just swapped the delay time pot, the original was a 5k, which i changed for a 500k, making it a lot more psychedelic, you can achieve very long delays and you can push the repeats further without it going into feedback.. which is nice :) And the greatest thing of all: it slows down the tape motor so much, that you won’t hear its noise anymore! We’ve done a few sessions with it, and as much as i love old school stuff, i have to say that we were always happy to switch it off due to the freaking mechanical noise it did!
The main demo track is interesting because you can hear both the real thing and the impulse (long delay repeat 7 stereo preset) at the same time. My good friend Mael Nesti came by yesterday evening, and we just had a lil improv together to try it out! He’s on the 8 string and i’m on the rhodes, i exported it as it was, no plugins, nothing on the master etc…
Original scarbee kontakt rhodes + ableton phaser to make it swirl just a tiny bit, and the impulse in //
Basically listen to the guitar to hear the real delay and the rhodes to hear my impulse of it!
I don’t know the total amount of impulses that are in the set, i’d say +- 50 (110 mo), i sorted everything as follows:
Short / Medium / Long folders, each with 1 delay position, and repeat from 1 to where i could go without it sounding like crap. Stereo impulses for some of the settings, and i also added an EQ folder where i added back a lil bit of high frequencies with the SSL eq.
You guys have been downloading like crazy this summer haha! I added 5000 free downloads in early june, and we’re only left with 15 free download slots until early september, please consider making a donation, so everything remains @name your price! 5000 dl slots = 75$!
I’ll catch you all later, i’ve got a lot of new stuff to put out! And also release the remaining Eventide Space sets… but i was bored with it, bear with me!
My philosophy in life, and in sound has always been that i wanna be free. Knowing how to do things myself, at least understanding intellectually the principle of something that i can then turn into a know how, and make my own.
Gnarly punk rock from the Philadelphia duo is unhinged in the best way, an in-the-red sonic assault a la Motorhead/Stooges. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 9, 2024
