Maestro EchoPlex echo-chamber floor unit. Mid-70's solid state circuitry tape-based echo machine with black box case complete with removable hinged top and carrying handle. Instructions on page glued to inside cover. Black chicken style knobs control echo sustain and echo volume. Toggle switch provides sound on sound option. Record level adjustable with tiny screw-driver to achieve correct balance (no distortion...unless desired!). Input, output and footswitch inputs for echo/off and playback plus way neat big red recording light to signal that recording is in use!! At settings of 0 to 5 along this awesome slider located on the face of the unit, easily moved (slid) with foot, a decidedly reverby effect is achieved. Playing with the sustain and volume will alter given sound. Moving the slider to the right from 5 to 35 yields the classic Echoplex tones. Superb echoes bouncing along cleanly and effortlessly, all day long on a reel to reel style tape) until the tape heads get dirty and or the tape itself wears out or breaks!).

A beautiful unit popular big time in the studio and live from the 60's to the present, tho giving some way to the rack mounted digital (yuck!) echoes so often heard in the 80's and now. Try playing a note or notes or even a chord, clean or with edge, and give it a long delay rate (25-35). Now with some "sustain" added (repeats), take the slider and move it left slowly. The echoes speed up like a plane taking off and then jam it far right and jack the sustain (repeats)... WOW! Jimmy Page on Led Zep I and II. Tommy Bolin and Jan Hammer on Spectrum. Joe Walsh with the James Gang baby... On an on.

Sound: clean and award-winning. A most classic echo unit producing a ton of great echoes plus extraordinary special effects.

Looks: Mad looks in a portable black box. Red record light is the balls.

Desirability: Most desirable, especially the tube-driven units of yesteryear.

Pros n cons: Could have more delay time...equates to less than a second for longest delay. Not bad for such a machine.

Over all: Used in movies and recording since the early 60's, allowing special effects paralleling the theramin (hear Page employ both on Whole Lotta Love and see him play with the Echoplex on Page and Plants video release "No Quarter" (1996). A masterful invention!)