The ShadowMusic Web Community

There is nothing that needs explanation Dave, your enthusiasm and enjoyment of doing these things is often extremely helpful to others, you have also been honest enough to admit it when you feel you’ve got things wrong in the past. I think we both know that life can throw up a few nasty surprises along the way, my view is max it out and enjoy it while you still can!

I pretty sure the arrival of a new drum echo unit has got us all drooling, I would imagine someone could adapt these to give some shad timings and levels, after all some Longtoms and Meazzis have been adapted.

The Volante is fab and cheaper and probably close enough with its extra level of control, but I suspect this will be very tempting for some. I would like one !

One thing that Is certainly missing from the Volante and this new Binson clone, is the pre amp sound, which could be compensated for using EQ.

Certainly a very interesting unit !

I've been having serious thoughts about this new machine and it bothers me that it has maybe come too late to have an impact on Shadows music as enjoyed for the past twenty odd years since the start of our community website that brought all the discussion and sharing of knowledge together and helped us all. Even if the new Echorec drum echo can sound close to the original sound, who will take it forward and benefit from it other than maybe Justin Daish and similar young lads who are keeping it going.
I'm in a group of guitarists from back then who are fast dwindling in numbers, I lost two friends this week, Cliff Fish who was bassist for Paper Lace and Ray Ashton, the lead guitarist of Bitter Suite. We all started together as kids in 1960 when we heard Apache and they were magical times.
All of that considered, I'm happy to own an original Meazzi Echomatic which can be temperamental, as well as the superb TVS3, each of which deliver the sound in spades. Even my Zoom G5n does a stirling job, directly through the PA, if you know how to set it up for the tone. It's that good that I ditched the very expensive Kemper Profiler last year after being delighted with it at first, but finding out that the Zoom could equal it in sound for my needs. I've bought and tried a plethora of pedals that do a great job, only to realise that Hank didn't have all of this stuff and his sound was the Strat, the Meazzi and his Vox amp. A bit of tweaking the EQ in the studio granted, but when I stripped it back and tried the old way myself, I found that it worked for me too. All it took was understanding what tones were tweaked and how - and it isn't necessarily turning up the controls, it's more about taking away to achieve the goal. So . . . . Do I need to spend £1500 + on a new version of an old machine to satisfy my curiosity ? Probably not.

Following the first YT video B’s Music Shop went back to hear more of the T-Rex Binson, the comments are quite interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs_w4XQE6yM

The link in the first post caught my attention, if you click the reply under the second post on that YT video it states it’s a unit built by Marcello Patruno from NOS Binson parts when the factory closed, apparently these sell for 5-6k (doesn’t say what currency)!

I also came across this YT video which is a very interesting history of the Binson that I had not seen before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWxirGNeBvc

This is yet another video comparing pedals against the real deal, at one point they play a few notes of “Wonderful Land” (don’t blink though):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzgllPfulP4

There is certainly something very special about a vintage Binson if you have the budget!

As for a lesser mortal like myself, I’m still extremely happy and enjoying my recent purchase of a Strymon Volante, but have still kept my little Catlinbread Echorec!

Garystrat wrote:This is yet another video comparing pedals against the real deal, at one point they play a few notes of “Wonderful Land” (don’t blink though):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzgllPfulP4

These two guys from "the pedal show" didn't realize that with the Boonar, the differences between the various head switch states are only audible when the left footswitch is off. The left footswitch activates a kind of reverb even when all 4 head selector switches are off.