Roland Chorus Echo RE-301
Have a soft spot for these. All nice and analogue. Had a few of these in over the last 10 years. Fetch a high price on ebay and so on. Well made. A hark back to Charley Watkin’s Copy Cat.
A few problems with this little girl. Some poor connections and a duff regulator which was unusual. Soon put that to bed. The reverb was not working, which has nothing to do with the tape echo side of the machine. A small reverb tank is fitted in the bottom of the machine. The reverb volume knob just rotated and was loose, so I hoped that was the problem. With the chassis out and the wires resoldered to the potentiometer, still had no reverb. Disconnecting the reverb tank and scoping around, proved that there was a healthy signal going into the sending side. Connecting the output back up and plucking the springs, made a racket. Very odd that the input sending transducer coil was totally short circuit. So, off to find a similar reverb tank.
Polished the 6 heads with Duraglit, cleaned and demagnetized. Mad a couple of 2 mtr spare tape loops up as the original had seen better years.
Reassembled and tested. All very nice too. Just waiting for a new tank to turn up.
