Ampeg Echo Twin - Vintage Amp Blah

[phantasmagorovich]

Ok, so if amps go here,

can anyone tell me about the Ampeg Echo Twin? There is one for sale locally and I think that I have gathered all the info from the web. It's not much I can tell you. There are three youtube vids I found and some descriptions on sites.

It seems that we have two 15W 1x12" amps built into a 2x12" combo amp. There is the possibility to assign spring reverb to one or both of the channels. The channels can be run together for 30W amplification (not so sure about this). There is a Vibrato that uses the stereo for vibrating. Out of the two inputs per channel one distorts easily and the other does not. Some lesser known preamp tubes and I don't even know which power tubes.

In short it sounds like an awesome amp.

Has anyone used it and can give me a first-hand experience?

[skullservant]

That sounds incredible

[space6oy]

there's one on ebay right now but they don't have much info on it either and can't make out most of its controls, though it does have an echo/vibrato switch...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Ampeg-E ... 1e795c35eb

[benjuro]

From the Ampeg Bible (aka The Story Behind The Sound)...

In November 1961, Ampeg unveiled the third of its reverb amps, the jewel in the triple crown of reverb amps, the Echo Twin. The model ET-1 was a true stereo amp with two separate power amp sections. While this was Ampeg's first stereo amp, it came a few years after other manufacturer's first efforts...the Echo Twin, however, was an all-new design, sporting twin power amps each driven by a pair of cathode-based 6V6GTs through its own 12 inch speaker. Unlike other amps of the day, which used a single common power supply for both amp sections, the Echo Twin had separate power supplies. Having an additional power transformer, rectifier tube, and filtering added to the cost of the amp, but was well worth it. A performer could continue a show if one side of the amp failed by playing through the side that was still operational.
The Echo Twin was equipped with dual tremolo sections. Setting different speeds for the two amp sections...the tremolo setting possibilities seem endless, especially for players with a stereo-output guitar...
The Echo Twin used the speaker-driven type of reverb which was expensive to manufacture because it required a separate preamp, power amp, and speaker. Fortunately the ET already had an additional amplifier and speaker available.
There is a drawback to speaker-driven reverb: if the dry signal amp was overwhelming, then the "dirty" overdriven signal was sent into the reverb amp for processing. This would result in a muddy, sometimes unpleasant texture to the sonic mix, and owners had to be alert to prevent this from happening. Fortunately these were clean-sounding amps, though the Ampeg literature cautioned users to turn the volume down at the slightest hint of distortion--at the behest of Everett Hull, an ardent jazzer who loathed the overdriven and just plain loud sound of rock-n-roll.
For 15 watts per side or 30 watts mono, the ET was somewhat expensive with a list price of $332, but still less expensive than buying two Reverberockets.

Sounds like a cool amp to me...

[parker_knoll]

what's the price on it? these are cool and rare amps that usually don't cost too much.

it's true stereo, so yeah, it's basically two completely separate amps stuck back to back. the downside is weight and a lot of tubes, and it might use the weird tubes that some early Ampegs used, have a look. if it's 6l6s then obviously you're laughing. There is more to go wrong. As i remember using the reverb actually disables one of the speakers, due to some complicated circuit i don't understand, but it's called "speaker driven reverb" - give it a google.

The plus it's a good sounding amp. i played through one i was trying to buy but i couldn't get the money together in time and someone else walked off with it. i couldn't get it to overdrive but the clean sound was good, plus you can run your stereo FX into it of course.