Binson Echorec

The Binson Echorec is a vintage Italian echo machine that creates its repeats with a rotating magnetic drum rather than a tape loop. Made in Milan by the Binson Amplifier Hi-Fi company from the 1950s onward, it records the guitar signal onto the spinning drum with a record head and plays it back through several playback heads spaced around the drum, giving single or multi-tap delays with a distinctive rhythmic character¹². It is one of the classic delay designs, and its sound has been chased by pedal makers ever since.

The Echorec is most closely associated with Pink Floyd, thanks to Syd Barrett's and David Gilmour's use of the units, and T-Rex also names Hank Marvin among its famous users³⁴. Its most famous single appearance is probably the drum sound on Led Zeppelin's "When The Levee Breaks", which was the Echorec and not the sound of the room at Headley Grange⁵.

A drum echo built on a rotating magnetic drum

Where a tape echo like the Echoplex records onto a loop of tape, the Echorec writes the signal onto a metal drum coated with magnetic material, which spins at a fixed speed. A record head writes, and playback heads positioned around the drum read the signal back at different times depending on their distance from the record head⁶. Because the drum speed is fixed, the delay time is fixed too: the original Echorec tops out at 300ms on the fourth playback head¹⁰.

The spacing of the heads is what gives the Echorec its musical character. Strymon's history of the drum echo explains that head one gives a 16th note delay, head two an 8th note, the third head a dotted 8th note, and the fourth head a quarter note, so selecting combinations of heads produces rhythmic multi-tap patterns rather than a single plain repeat³.

The sound is shaped by the electronics around the drum. Magnetic drum echoes are famous for their warmth and harmonically rich, saturated sounds, and on the most sought-after Echorec units there were tubes in the input buffer, the signal mixer, the record and playback amplifiers, the tone shaping circuit, and the output mixing circuit³. The version 2 Echorec ran on six 12AX7 tubes¹.

Because the machine has moving mechanical parts, no two vintage units sound quite alike. T-Rex, which studied the originals for its own reproduction, notes that each unit had its own voice, its own flutter, warmth, and feedback behavior⁴.

The controls and playback heads

The heart of the Echorec's control surface is a twelve-position switch on the front panel that selects different combinations of active and inactive playback heads³. The original had a 12-position rotational switch used to select different playback heads and combinations for single and multi-tap delay¹².

The version 2 machines also carried a "Selector" knob that delivered three different effects¹:

• Echo: slapback delay
• Repeat: regular delay mode
• Swell: delays with overlaps, which behaves like feedback, and its length is adjustable¹³

On the T-Rex reproduction, which follows the original's layout, the full control set runs to Echo Volume, a switch for Record Head 1 or Record Head 2, Drum Speed, Record Level, Playback Heads 1 to 4, Repeat, a switch for Repeats and Swell, Echo Tone, and a Bypass switch with indicator⁴. MusicRadar's news coverage of that pedal describes the same idea from a player's angle: four selectable playback heads, a tone dial for EQing the repeats, and an input stage where you choose between two recording heads, one short like the original and one long¹⁴.

Versions from the 1950s onward

Version one of the Echorec was released in 1953, and Binson followed it almost immediately after 1958 with the Echorec 2, which was also sold under other names including the Sound City Echo². The most popular version was probably the second one, released in 1960¹. Binson produced several iterations over the years, including the Echorec 2, the Echorec Baby, and eventually six-head solid state models³. There were a number of very different models from the 1950s, '60s and '70s¹⁵.

The Echorec today

Original Echorecs are expensive and demanding. Guitar World reported prices ranging from $3,000 to $7,000 for the originals in 2023, depending on condition and model¹¹, and Tone Island's 2026 guide notes that original units can set you back over $2,000 and require significant maintenance⁹.

That has made the Echorec a favorite for modern makers to revisit. Modern options include the T-Rex Binson Echorec, a reproduction of the original circuit complete with spinning drum¹¹; the Catalinbread Echorec, a digital pedal take on the drum echo sound¹¹¹⁶¹⁷; the Gurus Echosex 2° T7E, which carries all the features and controls of the old Echorec 2° T7E model; and the Dawner Prince Boonar, another pedal built around the Echorec's magnetic drum echo design¹¹¹⁶¹⁷.

On That Pedal Show, a 2023 episode demoed the new T-Rex unit, which the presenters described as "a genuine multi-head magnetic drum echo made by the laudable people at T-Rex in Denmark", alongside a vintage mid-60s Echorec Baby¹³. A later episode compared the Echorec-style pedals against each other, including both Boonar versions, the T-Rex, the Catalinbread and the Strymon Volante¹⁸.

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Rhett Shull's video on the Echorec covers the machine's history and its famous uses, including the "When The Levee Breaks" drum sound⁵.

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