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Sorry if this is long and rambly. I actually gave you guys the TL;DR version of this.

They're noisy and lo-fi. They have an abysmal reputation for breaking down. And the damn tape cartridges are rarer than hen's teeth. But I'll have to say I'm quite smitten with the Univox EC-80 and EC-100 Echo Chamber units I recently acquired (for far less than the average boutique delay pedal). Got 'em both for less than $250 (combined).

However, neither were sold in 100% working condition, so I had to do some research and repairs to get them back up to snuff. The EC-80 was actually in good shape, the tape in the cartridge just sucked. The EC-100 passed clean signal and was mechanically functional, but there were no repeats. Turns out there were several problems, not the least of which was a dead playback head. I snagged a cheap tape deck from Salvation Army and pulled the head from that. Now the EC-100 is working normally again.

The rare-ass cartridges are old Dictaphone type. They are basically exactly like 8-track tapes but with 1/8" tape instead of 1/4". But you can take PlayTape tapes and use those instead, and they are way easier to find (and cheap). The PlayTapes do not have the same side groove as the Dictaphone tapes, so they don't fit in the Univox. So I modified the Univox cartridge housing (cut out the stupid little notch) and now the PlayTapes fit. Sweet.

Here's a pic of the EC-80 :







Expensive-ass cartridge opened up:




Here's the EC-100 out of the box and with a PlayTape:





Here's PlayTape vs Dictaphone:



Here's a shitty clip of the EC-100:

[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/effdub/univox-ec-100-with-playtape[/soundcloud]

Hell yea, that's great! I had an ec100 for a while. Loved that thing.

Nice job. I see these a lot but the cartridges have always put me off. Now I know a getaround, I might keep my eyes open for one cheap.

Ben79 wrote:Nice job. I see these a lot but the cartridges have always put me off. Now I know a getaround, I might keep my eyes open for one cheap.

I'm going to put together a document on how to do a few simple/easy mods to these units.

The PlayTape mod is easily the most important. I saw on a few forums that guys were buying PlayTapes and modifying the cartridges to fit the housing. That seems dumb to me, since you would have to make a long groove in each cartridge. There's a tiny notch in the plastic housing; if you shave that down completely, all the tapes (including the original Dictaphone style) fit without a need for modification. It's much simpler that way.

PlayTapes are cheap right now. Virtually nobody actually still has a player, and only the well known titles are collectible/expensive (I see a lot of Beatles tapes). For example, I just got a lot of three PlayTapes for $20 shipped. That's beats the shit out of buying an Apollon cart for $80.

My next mission is to learn how to repack the cartridges with fresh tape. That will be even cheaper than buying new carts.

This was extremely helpful -- thanks for posting!

Any more info on the Univox mod for the playtapes? I just ordered a few tapes for my EC-80A. I think I see the small plastic piece that is referenced for removal.

Wondered if you had any details of the mod, photos, etc. Thanks.

I've since sold all three that I had, but the mod for the PlayTapes is pretty easy. I actually modified the tape housing in the EchoChamber rather than modding each and every PlayTape. Seemed a lot more reasonable to make one mod just the one time. I go into a lot of detail in this thread:
http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/inde ... opic=14194

The tape mod stuff is on page 3.