The Catalinbread Belle Epoch
Tape Echo, has tape echo sounds so authentic you'd swear there was tape inside
the pedal! Inspired by the Maestro Echoplex, EP-3 model, perhaps the most
famous tape delay ever, the Belle Epoch features everything Catalinbread love
about the EP-3 in a small, maintenance free pedal format. Catalinbread felt
that a "tape echo" pedal was much more than just a standard digital
delay with some "filtering" on the repeats. There are a lot of subtle
and not-so-subtle traits of the Echoplex that needed to be implemented in order
to be authentic. The preamp, the self-oscillation character, the ability to
play the pedal as an instrument unto itself, the ability to control the
"record level" of the signal hitting "tape", the wow and
flutter, the way the repeats decay, the way the circuit interfaces with the amp
and other pedals - all these things were important to get right.