Back in the 70's I was too poor to afford a name-brand Echoplex, the popular brand of tape echo equipment. Digital memory-based echo systems were either still in the future, or so new and costly as to be far beyond consideration. The echo units of the day, used in performances, consisted of a motor-driven loop of tape that circles around a set of idler pulleys and three or more tape heads. The sound was recorded onto the tape on a write head and then played back as it passed over a read head to produce the echo. An erase head could be used to remove the sound from the tape before it again crossed the write head, and a variable level of sound from the play head could be re-recorded by the write head to make repeating echos with varying levels of sustain. The motor speed could be varied to lengthen or shorten the echoes.
My echo box was a cheaper model, however: a Japanese-made unit labeled AceTone, packaged in an oversized wooden box. The remarkable thing about it was that it had 5 read heads which could be selected in a variety of patterns to combine short and long echos. Like a lot of its ilk, it wore tapes out quite rapidly, and I had to carry a splicing kit with me and a reel of extra tape so I could replace the loop quickly as needed. Often the sound of the echo was quite poor in quality because the tape was badly worn, and I suppose the heads were pretty badly worn, too. Tapes wore out more and more quickly as the unit aged.
Nevertheless, that old AceTone did yeoman's work for me, and provided that spacey sound to my guitar. It was Out of Sight, Man!! Really Cool!
For decades it followed me around, usually lurking in the back of my garage, and I think I finally junked it or sold it at a hamfest (amateur radio flea market) for a few dollars. When I listen to the sound on the recordings now it brings back fond (and not-so-fond) memories of the old AceTone.