Roland RE-200

The Roland RE-200 was a tape delay and spring reverb unit released in 1973, and one of the first two machines to carry the Space Echo name. It arrived alongside the RE-100, a tape delay without reverb, and the RE-200 paired the same tape-based delay with a spring reverb in one unit¹.

What it does

The RE-200 is a rack-era machine rather than a pedal: it records the incoming signal to a loop of tape and plays it back after a short interval, producing delay, while a spring reverb adds ambience. BOSS's own history describes the first generation plainly: "In 1973, the RE-100 (tape delay) and RE-200 (tape delay and spring reverb) Space Echo units hit the market"¹.

Where it sits in the Space Echo family

The RE-200 belongs to the first Space Echo generation. BOSS describes the RE-200 as a reverb/delay unit, one of "the first Space Echo units" together with the RE-100 delay². The first generation was short-lived: MusicRadar's Ed Mitchell, writing in Total Guitar, notes that "The first models, the RE-100 and RE-200, were succeeded the following year by the RE-101 and the model that tone junkies"³ would come to prize, the RE-201 Space Echo.

That makes the RE-200 a starting point for the family that grew into the RE-101, the RE-301 Chorus Echo and the RE-501 Chorus Echo. For players tracing the lineage of tape delay, the RE-200 is the version of the idea that added spring reverb from the outset, a year before the RE-201 took the format forward¹³.

Videos

Click to load

Click to load

Questions