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Pedalboard / 104

Chet Atkins

Atkins adopted Ray Butts' second EchoSonic, using its built-in tape-loop slapback as both a live effect and a recording sound.

Board
EchoSonic integrated tape-echo path
Context
Grand Ole Opry and Nashville recording sessions
Board date
Evidence
Documented equipment · 3 cited sources
Order
Source-described
Scope
Core signal path
Routing
Serial path
Audited
Signal
1 unit · Guitar to amplifier

Signal path / A

EchoSonic integrated tape-echo path

Builder- and artist-documented integrated effect

InputGuitar
OutputAmplifier

Documented equipment · Source-described order · Serial path

Ray Butts recalled taking the second EchoSonic to an Opry rehearsal, selling it to Atkins and hearing him use it the following night. In separate archived interviews, Butts identifies the purchase period as 1954 and names Mister Sandman as a likely prominent use; Vintage Guitar documents the amplifier's integrated controls and says Atkins began using it immediately. Atkins independently told Radio-Electronics in 1966 that an engineer friend had built a tape loop into an amplifier for him around 1953. The year is therefore intentionally broader than a specific show date. This is a single integrated guitar-to-echo-to-amplifier device, not a claim that Atkins had a separate floor pedal or that every 1954 recording used it.

Cited sources

  1. Vintage GuitarThe Ray Butts EchoSonic
  2. ReverbI Feel I Was First With It: Ray Butts on the creation of the EchoSonic
  3. Radio-ElectronicsGuitar amplification in the Atkins style