Copicat tape echo (video)

This video documents the working principle of the Watkins Electric Music Copicat tape echo device. Short percussive sounds are fed into the device, and different combinations of playback heads (labeled “1” to “4,” with varying amounts of delay) are demonstrated. According to a collector’s website, this version of Copicat was produced in the late 1970s. It features four inputs with gain adjustment, four buttons for the selection of the playback heads, and two additional controls labeled “swell” and “sustain,” used to set the level of the echo signal and the amount of feedback.

The video was made by Nikita Braguinski at the Media Theory department, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, in April 2018. The unit used is part of the department’s collection of historical apparatus, the Media Archaeological Fundus (Watkins Copicat Super-IC, accession no. 007).

The Media Archaeological Fundus at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Collector’s website listing Copicat models

Nikita Braguinski