That Ol' Echoplex Rig

Do I hear an echo?

• Who said you can never go back again?
• What if you never left?
• What if the only thing standing between you and ecstatic release is a blown bias generator?

That was a heck of a road rig. I put it together in 1973. It held up until 1998. It's on the bench right now. Bad bias generator. I have an offer to overhaul it and install new tape for a great price, and I might just do that. This post might just prod my conscience bad enough to move me to action. Help me out, folks... this is sort of a survey. In a way.

The rig consisted of a Gibson Echoplex vintage 1970 I bought brand new from a music store for $100, and a Barcus-Berry flute system. The store specialized in school band instruments and couldn't sell it, so they had it seriously marked down. By a fortunate circumstance I was in the store shopping for a flute, trading up from a student Artley to a better student Gemeinhardt. The Echoplex got my noodle rolling, of course. I had experimented with the Conn acoustic pickup system in the past with trumpet and trombone. I knew I could use the same system by drilling out the head joint and installing the pickup fitting, but the pickups were so awkward. And I really didn't care to have yet another hardware mounting hole in an instrument.

The store happened to also have the Barcus-Berry system for flute in a little box down on the bottom shelf of the display case. The kind where the pickup replaces the head joint cork assembly, and drives to a preamp. Flute, pickup, Echoplex. I forked out all of my cash and took my goodies home.

Later I added a volume pedal which came in very handy. The outputs usually went into a small stage PA or a guitar amp stack. This rig served me well several nights a week for many years. I came to appreciate the "old school" analog echo as the years passed and really good digital time delays came around. Once control became all digital, real-time device changes became gawky compared to, say, moving a sliding bar or turning a potentiometer. Like comparing a MiniMoog (normalized knob noodling) with a DX7 (electronic calculator math). But that's not exactly a valid comparison. And I digress. But the best digital time delay is still not fun to play with. It's just a means to an end and not an extension into the tactile experience. That's where the ecstatic release thing happens.

Oh, the cascades of scales and trills overdriven to sustained echoes! The hard-edged quick slapback effect on brash solos. And the auto-accompaniments a la Chet Atkins. The flute just soared into space with a clean electric pickup and an Echoplex. I loved that rig. But it was not without a few rough edges. The Barcus-Berry preamp used a nine-volt transistor battery. If accidentally left on overnight, the battery was completely drained. That was a constant pain in the ass. The patch cord from the pickup to the preamp was a flimsy affair. It took a 1/16 sub-mini mono plug to a 1/4 standard mono plug. The sub-mini plug forced the gauge of the patch cord to be extremely small. Therefore flimsy. Well, you can't just walk into your neighborhood Radio Shack and get a sub-mini to quarter patch cord like that, and if you have to wire one up on a gig you better have high-quality low-heat soldering apparatus.

The preamp is blown now, and the Echoplex has as I mentioned a bad bias generator. But I could resurrect the rig. Coupla hundred bucks. Do you think there's still a place in the world today for that old time echo flute flava?

Jethro Who?!

People often ask me, "you must really like Jethro Tull, don't you?" I guess they presume that anyone playing a flute in a rock context must actually be an Ian Anderson cover-boy. Now, don't get me wrong; I certainly appreciate what this progressive brit rock band has done to improve a flautist's chances of getting laid after a bar gig. But Anderson-emulation was never my goal -- just a means to an end. I always tolerated the terminally lame saloon customers screaming, "Locomotive Breath," knowing that the lead guitarist would soon suffer a similar level of degradation when it came time to request "Smoke on the Water" for the third time in a two hour span.

To say a jazz-rock flautist naturally draws upon Ian Anderson for inspiration is tantamount to saying all jazz-rock guitarists have a John Scofield fixation. If all you've ever known is vanilla, a neopolitan cone probably isn't the first thing that comes to mind. For me, Ian Anderson is a rich, creamy gourmet french vanilla with whole vanilla bean imported from Zanzibar.

Some background: Flute is a second-language. I picked it up after years of brass instrumental proficiency. It seemed like a good way to impose myself on four-piece ensembles. And it worked. But my role models didn't even play flute. First, I wanted to (eventually) trade blistering leads with the guitar. Jethro whatsisname didn't do this. Second, I could wrap my puny little prefrontal lobe around blues and freely improvise. Again Jethro presented a plethora of styles but the blues flute was somehow never exploited to its logical end.

And then I heard Don "Sugarcane" Harris. Wow! Who'd've thought you could play soulful, playful bee-bop and tasty blues on a violin? Soon thereafter I heard the SF seminal band, "It's a Beautiful Day" doing their tribute to Don Harris & Dewey Terry. But rocked up a bit. Double-wow! Suddenly I realized my goal was to play flute like that cat plays fiddle, and never mind what the neighbors say. He and Dewey had developed a synergy, and achieved what was eluding me. For Don & Dewey, the fluid ability to cross over into another instrument's domain and share its soul was for me the example I had been striving for.

Fast forward: As my flute proficiency increased I pissed of one lead guitarist after another. There can be only one lead guitar, you see. Unless that guitar is a flute. I can't count the number of times on all fingers and toes when a really great guitarist told me, "I love playing with you, you energize me, the combination of guitar and flute leads is fantastic," only to be fired from the band later that evening by the drummer (who was of course put up to it by the guitarist.)

Flash forward: It has taken over twenty years for me to learn to lay out and listen, and an equal number of years to present my style gradually rather than abruptly. It has saved many relationships with guitarists. And with all of that new-found silence, I can actually think ahead a bit and avoid the inevitable lead instrument contests. But make no mistake about it. The flute is my voice. And when the strongest voice in the choir is playing an electric instrument, I make my tubular acoustic axe coexist in the sharp-edged and aggressive atmosphere of guitardom.

Now, if I can only get my guitar playing friends to start thinking like a flute ;')