Non-stompbox vintage effects

[tboy]

Gretsch Reverb Unit:

[tboy]

Binson Echorec:

[tboy]

Airline "Echo"

[tboy]

Mu-Tron Bi-Phase:

[tboy]

Marlboro QSB-II Quadra-Sound Blender

[Enzo]

I encountered a couple Wurlitzer Sideman units. It was a drum machine you could use while playing organ. It was a large thing, and was in nice wood so you could use it as an end table.

https://encyclotronic.com/drum-machi...-sideman-r110/

It had a rotating contact arm sliding around a circuit board disc with contacts in it. As it swept, the contacts made to enable some sound. There was a white noise generator and a couple filters to yield snare drums, and a pulse circuit for kick drum and others. A motor drove the sweep arm at various speeds to adjust tempo. There were concentric rings of contacts, and they were arranged in patterns, so it could have a straight one-two or a tango or whatever.

[Mark Hammer]

Along with the Synthi Hi-Fli one must also include the Ludwig Phase II.

I have a gadget made by Guild around 1970 that has a floor foot-switch unit but the effect unit itself is table-top. It's the Guild Tri-Oct, the first polyphonic octave-divider. It came with a proprietary hexaphonic divided pickup that fed six independent octave dividers, all discrete (not an op-amp anywhere), which were mixed into a mono output along with clean signal and a mono fuzz. Tracking was terrible, largely, I suspect, because the pickup itself was about the size of a P90, which meant you couldn't stick it near the bridge, unless the guitar itself lacked a bridge pickup. Although I suspect that tracking at the time might have been acceptable given the more common use of heavy gauge flatwound strings.

I like to consider it the missing link between fuzzboxes and early guitar synths.

[shortcircuit]

Does a pencil eraser on tape reels count??

[nickb]

Don't forget plate reverb and the reverb chamber.

https://theproaudiofiles.com/plate-reverb/

https://reverb.com/news/6-echo-chamb...-popular-music

[mozz]

I have one of those necklace reverbs here in a box, don't know what it was out of and don't know what i'll ever do with it.

[Mick Bailey]

Many of the 80s Rockman effects were in a small plastic case. I have a Chorus right now - an amp-top unit with a remote footswitch connection for bypass.

[vintagekiki]

http://www.voxshowroom.com/uk/misc/boosters.html
Jmi Vox distortion, treble, bass and mic boosters

http://www.voxshowroom.com/us/misc/v809.html
Vox V809 "repeat percussion" module

[Dave H]

Dallas Rangemaster

[vintagekiki]

Musical Tesla Coils

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5PHv6WJHPc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJGLSM-8o1Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A6EYnrxMQk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1yFQTHNtfk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Yxurc5nw0

http://onetesla.com/

1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snibt3CNqBA
_{Iron Man with Musical Tesla Coils, a Robot and MIDI Guitar}
2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH-YmzZgZ-Q
_{"House Of the Rising Sun" - Musical Tesla Coils + Randomness}

[Mick Bailey]

Then there was the Watkins Copicat tape echo - really popular in the UK and I still get them in for repair.

The fist flangers here were rackmount units built by Bel Electrolabs. Superb in every way but really difficult to repair - I have one now that's been with me for about 4 years without getting it 100%.

Vox made a standalone spring reverb that used piezo gramophone cartridges as transducers. I still have the guts from one of these.

Quite a few 'your-name-here' generic tape echo units came out of Japan in the 70s that used an 8-track cartridge. Nicely made and intended originally for karaoke but many amateur guitarists used them.

The EMS Synthi Hi-Fli was a nice standalone FX console and recently re-released. It pre-dates some of the EH synth pedals and is now super-expensive for an original 'toilet seat' unit.