MusicRadar Verdict
A viable substitute for the real thing at a fraction of the size and price.
Pros
- +
Great price.
Cons
- -
A little bit niche.
MusicRadar's got your back
This Catalinbread pedal is more niche than the recent Hall And Collins Signature Echo, and concentrates on the sound of that most revered of drum echos, the Binson Echorec, as used by David Gilmour, among others.
The pedal features a 12-mode selector dial that offers different combinations of the four heads to produce the rhythmic patterns of the original plus a few extra, offering them with a wider range of delay times (a max of 1,000ms compared to the original's 300ms).
There's an excellent tone control for darkening/fattening or brightening/thinning the repeats, while an internal modulation trim-pot can add a bit of wobble if desired, simulating an ageing drum.
There's also an internal gain pot that has a secret full-on fuzz setting at its extreme! Overall, you're getting a pretty close approximation to the sound of a real Echorec but with extra capability.
Trevor Curwen has played guitar for several decades – he's also mimed it on the UK's Top of the Pops. Much of his working life, though, has been spent behind the mixing desk, during which time he has built up a solid collection of the guitars, amps and pedals needed to cover just about any studio session. He writes pedal reviews for Guitarist and has contributed to Total Guitar, MusicRadar and Future Music among others.
“The EP635 delivers the unmistakable high-gain aggression and clarity that Engl fans love”: Engl packs its iconic Fireball head into a compact dual-channel stompbox with onboard noise gate and IR support
"There had to be some sort of telepathy going on because I've never seen spontaneous inspiration happen at that level”: The genius of Eric Clapton's controversial masterpiece, Layla
"I said, ‘What’s that?!’ He looked at me strange and said, ‘We’re line checking. We’ll be gone in five minutes’. I said, ‘You won’t - meet me in that room in 10 minutes’": How a happy synth accident inspired a US number 1 single for Terence Trent D’Arby