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Nux pays tribute to the Roland Space Echo with its own Tape Echo pedal
Interest in the RE-201 seems to be hitting a peak at the moment.
Image: Nux
Nux has announced a new delay pedal, bearing the self-explanatory name of the Tape Echo. The pedal pays tribute to the Roland RE-201 space echo in its sound and aesthetics, with some modern feature updates such as full MIDI control.
- READ MORE: Boss officially confirms the RE-2 Space Echo
The pedal provides basic control of bass, treble, delay time, repeats, mix and reverb. A secondary control mode offers adjustment of the level of tape saturation, wow, flutter and the reduction of your dry signal.
There’s also the Select knob. This adjusts the configuration of the three virtual playback heads, which are displayed on a small OLED screen on the face of the pedal. By engaging different combinations of virtual playback heads, you can get different delay patterns with various subdivisions being mixed together.
The secondary footswitch lets you set the delay time with tap tempo, or, if you hold it down, ramp up the feedback to max for blasts of self-oscillation. The pedal can also function as a looper pedal, with sound-on-sound mode being engaged by pressing both footswitches at the same time.
The pedal also has eighth-inch MIDI in and out jacks. NUX’s own software lets you assign which controls correspond to which MIDI parameters, which is handy if you’re integrating the pedal into a larger digital-controlled setup.
The original RE-201 was introduced back in the 1970s, and quickly became a staple of guitar rigs at the time. The original analogue design made use of a long spool of magnetic tape, kept vertical in a clear tank.
If the Nux pedal looks a little too large for your rig, Boss has also recently confirmed the RE-2 Space Echo. This pedal is a shrunken-down version of Boss’ legendary RE-20 pedal, fitting the Space Echo emulation into Boss’ timeless compact pedal format. While full specifications are yet to be revealed, it looks to offer the same control as the Boss RE-20, utilising concentric control knobs rather than secondary functions to save space.