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I bought a Echoplex that wasn't too insane price wise. It emits the aroma of old peoples house and it hums and squeeks sometimes but it sounds pretty amazing. It's just so much more full sounding than the delays I've had before. The difference in EQ is very apparent when palm muting bass strings on a slap back setting, the bass does come right back and thwack you.

I might need to get a new tape for it. The copper tension arm with felt pad seems to be causing a lot of tape sqeaking too so I might need to bend it or replace the felt pad.

The pre-amp is pretty pleasant too. I was kind of expecting it to contribute some drive but its pretty mellow and just fattens things up a bit.

Nice score. The preamp makes everything sound better, much more noticeable when you take the EP3 out of the signal path.

The tape squeaking you're referencing, are you talking about actual noise in the repeats or noise from the unit?

If the latter, I've never gotten one to be dead quiet and not have some sqeaks and mechanical noise from the box.

Mechanical squeaking, if I take the copper tension arm off it doesn't squeak. I think that part might help hold the tape firm against the heads though because without it it seems like the repeats are a bit weaker.

There is something else I have noticed and that is I can hear the faint repeats of previous stuff that has not been erased fully, that may have occurred when I took the tension arm off though so maybe the tape did not pass over the erase head firmly.

I also toggled the sound on sound thing, which recorded some stuff and haven't read up on how to operate it, I guess its a looper?

Yea, it's gotta be there to hold the tape in place.

Erase head eventually goes (along with other tape heads), and it's rarely a 100% wipe like a demagger.

Sound on sound just disables the erase head (footswitch on/off) and works as a fixed-length (of the tape itself) looper, which is often less than useful with a 3m+ tape in most modern 'plex cartridges. It was a lot more useful in the older units or stuff with shorter tape loops, but if it's something you want to play with, you either learn to use the fixed length in the cart you have or wind shorter ones.

The shorter ones you'll have to do yourself won't last as long as the thing, as they'll cycle through the machine/across the heads a LOT more.

For the FS (both echo cancel and the SOS), you'll need something along the lines of http://www.musiciansfriend.com/amplifie ... footswitch - I have a box of those and equivalents because they were standard for my 'plexes and Space Echoes as well as early rack units.

Props to rfurtkamp for providing quality info. The only thing I can add is that any basic channel selector footswitch will work for a bypass pedal. Or even make your own. The cable for the bypass does carry some signal, and crap cable can cause issues.

One potential advantage (and likely why they kept that design), the linked FS will fit alongside the power cable in the EP3 storage area easily. Many others will as well, but...

As far as the rest of it, download the owner/service manual for the thing and make sure your record levels etc are set properly. You don't need an oscilloscope etc for basic stuff like that, but it's got everything that we did on the bench with them in Ye Olde Days.