WHAT LES PAUL SPAWNED

WHAT LES PAUL SPAWNED

EXTENSION CHORDS

Allen Hester

Back in the Stone Age of rock ’n’ roll, the 1950’s, there was a guitar player by the name of Les Paul who, along with his wife Mary Ford, had already established himself as one of the most innovative electric guitar stylists ever to play the instrument No, Les Paul wasn’t a “rock ’n’ roll” guitar player himself, although his unique style has influenced many of rock’s great players.

Les Paul was, and probably still is, a tireless tinkerer. His inventions, such as low-impedance pickups, multi-track tape recorders and tape echounits, became his“gimmicks,” the earmarks of a style that has yet to be duplicated.

Of these many contributions, probably the one that stirred up the most interest among guitar players was the echo sound. It was rich and full, and it sometimes made Les’ guitar sound like several guitars playing at once. Reverb was one thing, but that echo effect was something else again-. Funny thing, though. Les kept his gadgets to himself, and guitar players were^baffled by his sound.

Also in the 50’s, a recording engineer named Sam Phillips, who owned a little studio in Memphis called Sun Records, discovered quite by accident (he was a tinkerer, too) that by using two tape recorders, slightly out of sync, he could create a doubling effect, which sounded as if the singer was singing in a stairwellThis effect has since been called “slapback echo” and it is one of the trademark of rockabilly, both old and new wave. Just give a listen to Freddie Mercury’s vocal track on “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” by Queen. That’s slapback echo, still alive and well in the 80’s.

For almost all of the twenty-odd years or so that egho sounds have been a'part of popular music, the tape-loop echo was in the industry standard. This type of unit employed an endless piece of tape which passed over a Record head and then a Playback head, both of which were engaged. Thus, the incoming guitar signal was recorded, held for a split second on the tape, then played back through the amplifier. The user .could adjust, within limits, the amount of elapsed time between Record and Playback, thereby creating a variety of echo lengths.

As is often the case in the music industry, a product comes on the market with a particular brand name that becomes a sort of catchall phrase for other such products which are later manufactured by other companies. The Dobro guitar is an excellent example of this. Even today, any resonator guitar with a raised action for slide playing is called a “dobro,” although Dobro is a brand name owned by the Dopera brothers, and does not really apply to all such guitars.

Such is the case with the “grandaddy” of echo units, the Maestro Echoplex. For many years, any kind of tape echo was called an “echoplex” and everyone understood what the customer was looking for. The Maestro Echoplex unit is a tape-loop affair that has weathered the storm of fierce competition in recent years, and has even spawned a less complicated version, the Sireko. Both these units are still on the market, but as one would expect, the older Echoplex units are in great demand among rock players. It’s the same sort of sentiment that draws players to oJ.d tweed-covered amps, old guitars, and everything else that’s considered “cool” to collect from thesq days of yore.

One of the most popular tape echo units to cdmq on the market in recent years is the Roland Spate Echo. Actually there are several models of the Space Echo available, but in the interest of conserving space (ouch!), let’s take the Model 201 as an example.

This unit has a bundle of features that enable the user to apply echo and/or reverb directly' to microphones and instruments or to an entire sound system. The latter application seems to be the most popular one these days, although many guitarists use a direct echo and virtually every keyboard player in the business has some kind of echo unit. ^

In either mode, the RE-201 offers 12 different selections of echo and/or reverb. Independent echo and reverb volume controls, indepdendent mic and instrument controls, and echo tone controls give the user the flexibility necessary, and the little extras such as a VU meter, peak level indicator, and a footswitch that cancels the echo signal make the RE-201 easy to control. Nonetheless, for all its good points, the RE-201 remains a tape echo unit, and anyone who has ever been around recording tape knows that the stuff wears out, eventually breaks, and has to be replaced. And likewise we all know that recording heads get dirty, slip out of adjustment, and have to be serviced from time to time. This is not to suggest that the Roland Space Echo or the Maestro Echoplex are unreliable, but just to point out the fallability of tape in general.

At least one other company tried to circumvent the tape problem by substituting an electricallycharged metal disc for the tape loop. The Morley EDL (Electrostatic Delay Line) is aimed primarily at the instrumentalist, but it, too, can be applied to sound systems. The EDL is far less sophisticated than the RE-201, but works fine for guitars and such.

To briefly summarize then, tape echo units were and still are being used, and in fact the best examples of the tape echo are in demand today. However, since the echo solind was born, an entire new wave of electronic technology has entered the picture.

Several years ago, MXR introduced their Analog Delay unit, which achieved the echo effects through the magic of electronics. In short order, other companies began manufacturing analog delay lines to meet the demands of musicians who wanted more reliable echo units.

Yamaha, in fact, has just released a new analog delay, the E1005. This particular unithas two inputs, one for mics and one for either mics or instruments. The unit has a variable delay rate, variable feedback (a regenerative feature that creates multiple echoes), and a mixing’control. With the mixer, the user can balance the delayed signal with the dry output and one a direct out, so that guitarists or keyboard players who can afford to use two amps can really fil|_up a stage with sound. This is done by sending a dry signal to one amp and a slightly delayed signal to another amp across the stage. The result is a deep, fat sound that really surrounds the rest of the band. In addition to echo sounds, the E1005 is quite capable of producing a chorus sound (perhaps the most in-demand sound among guitarists today), a vibrato sound and a good flanging sound. Obviously this versatility is a big advantage over the earlier tape echo units, and is another reason why analog units have found favor in the market, although it’s only fair to point oiit that Roland has a Space Echo, the RE-301, with built-in chorus that, sounds great.

Anyway, several other good companies have an analog delay line on the market. Ibanez has a rack-mounted version of the analog delay that is noteworthy, and Roland has just come out with a *new product called a Dimension D, which is, a super chorus device (admittedly not an analog delay) that is sure to find its way into many a group’s sound system. However, as things stand right now, the king of all such signal processors is the digital delay line, and several companies offer a version of this device.

Analog circuitry is more reliable than the endless tape format, but even analog devices are more prone to make a lot of residual noise. Such is not the case with digital units, because of their highly advanced electronics. Basically what a digital does is encode the incoming signal into a numerical code. This set of numbers is then processed according to how the user has the unit programmed, then decoded before being presented at the output. The result is very little residual noise, if any. As one would expect, digital delay lines cost a substantial amount more than either tape or analog units, but if the group can afford it, digital is the only way to fly. Digital unlts offer a wider delay range, more precise control over the delay time, and preservation of the quality of the incoming signal.

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Digital delay lines deal in terfns of milliseconds (1 sec= 1000 milliseconds) . MXR’s digital delay, as it come from the factory, offers a delay range of from 0.08 ms to 320 ms. That’s not quite a third of a second, which doesn’t seem like much on paper, but can make all the difference in the world in actual use. In addition, MXR offers optional plug-in memdry boards (three in all) that care installed by the user in a matter of miputes. ThuS the delay range can be expanded to up to 1280 ms-., which is more than enough delay time to work wonders on a sound system. In addition to echoes, the digital delay is capable of vocal doubling, hard reverberation, flanging, pitch alteration, frequency modulation and infinite repeat-hold.

A digital delay line is something that any musician or group would benefit from; unfortunately, they are too expensive for a lot of musicians. (Costs hover around the thousanddollar mark.) In response to this, several companies offer some econo-models. MXR’s Flanger/Doubler costs about half what their Digital Delay does, yet it will do flanging and vocal doubling much better than analog or tape units. Another company, MuTron (now a subsidiary of Arp Instruments, the keyboard giant), offers a unit that cross-breeds analog and digital technology in an effort to offer quality signal-processing at a lower cost. As the 80’s roll by, we can expect to see more such products enter the picture as manufacturers vie for the lowly musician’s hard-earned (and too often ill-spent) equipment dollars.