Hello,
Today I received a photo of my Grandfather from November 1965 which I had never seen before. He is holding a Gibson ES-355 Stereo model with a Fender Bandmaster head and cab next to him. I'm not familiar with the small box on top of the amp head, however. It is labeled Fender. I thought the cats on this forum might know what it is.

Here's a link to the photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathanking ... 474732116/

Thanks for your help.

That is a Fender Echo Chamber Tape Delay.

I found a paragraph about it in the "Fender Outboard Effects" article:

Long after the last faint ring of the 1958-1959 Eccofonic tape echo unit died out—four years, to be exact—Fender introduced its own tape echo unit, the Electronic Echo Chamber, in 1963. The “EEC” bore the distinction of being Fender’s first transistorized signal processing device (the TR 105 remote unit of 1961, while transistorized, was a signal transmitting device rather than a signal processing device) and was much more sophisticated, with controls for delay time (0 to 400 milliseconds), regeneration (number of echoes) and intensity (echo volume). The tape loop cartridge was designed to exceed 1,000 hours of use, and easily installed replacement cartridges were readily available. The EEC was far more successful than its late-’50s predecessor, remaining in the Fender line into 1968.

http://www.fender.com/news/index.php?di ... rticle=579

If you search "Fender Echo Chamber" on Flickr you can find a couple of pictures of them.

Thank you so, so much for your help!

Happy to help! I didn't know much about these until recently myself. I was doing some research on the Fender Oil Can delay and came across the Echo Chamber. I had never seen one before then.

That's a great photo. A real family treasure!

Indeed it is!

Fender's Electronic Echo Chamber was still shown in their 65-66 catalog in the same photo used to illustrate the Showman 15 and Dual Showman amps. I believe it was discontinued shortly thereafter, replaced by the Dimension IV.

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

I like that picture,did he play professionally?

Very cool pict. I love old ones like this!



I think the guitar is a ES-335 TDSV has stereo output and 3-position/Vari-tone switch, and came in in Cherry, as that guitar might have been. They look like this:

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Xhefri's Guitars
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Awesome! When I looked at the picture yesterday I thought it might be an echoplex of some sort but I didn't know Fender made one.

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The 35 certainly has more of the features seen on the guitar in the photo. Were any 55's made with those same features?

Thank you for the very cool old photo.

Here's some information on that echo unit straight from the horse's mouth, the
1965 Fender catalog.

I'm a fan of tape echo units. I have a 1973 Echoplex MP3 which I bought used at the end of the '70s. I had to have one as that's what "everyone" used back in those days (Tom Scholz, Steve Miller, Van Halen, the list goes on). Okay, okay, I hear you saying, "O, some guys used the Roland." ....

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My other guitar is a Strat.

I remember back in, ummm, like 1970 when I was like 14 years old, my guitar buddy had an EchoPex. Wow, that was SOOOO COOL. Then later when 17, I worked at a radio/TV station we had a multi-head real to reel and you could track bounce, thus creating echo that way on a set of headphones and to the bounced track. It seemed so much cooler when you had to work hard to get the sound, but now, so many stomp boxes and even amp heads have these digital features built in to them, that it is all common. It is so easy the sounds are just not as much appreciated! Thanks for the cool memories!

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