BOSS SPACE ECHO RE-202

103
JULY 2022 GUITARIST
BOSS SPACE ECHO RE-202
and distortion – and this is reproduced here
by the Saturation knob, which is great for
thickening and dirtying the repeats. You
have the option of preamp emulation either
being switched in with the echo effect or
always on, contributing to your overall tone
even when the echo is bypassed. In this case,
the Saturation knob will turn up the juice on
both the repeats and the dry sound. Besides
these, the Bass and Treble knobs provide
a practical range of adjustment, aiding
sculpting the repeats to blend perfectly
with your playing.
The reverb here is an accurate simulation
of the short spring found in an RE-201, but
if you’d prefer something different from
its somewhat boxy nature, then there are
Hall, Room, Plate and Ambience options.
With plenty of adjustable parameters,
it’s extremely useful to have four presets
onboard to save favourite sounds, but the
RE-202 actually supports 127 memories
accessible via MIDI program change.
Given the 40-plus years of use our original
RE-201 has clocked up and the inherent
differences between electro-mechanical
randomness and digital consistency, we
weren’t expecting the RE-202 to sound
identical to it in an A/B test. But it actually
nailed the sound – we were able reproduce
everything the RE-201 was capable of,
apart from the occasional random glitches,
3. Each footswitch has
a standard switching
function and a secondary
function when held
4. Quick presses on this
Memory button let
you scroll around the
four onboard presets
and manual mode.
Presses on the middle
footswitch do exactly
the same thing
4
3
THE RIVALS
Less expensive and smaller, the new Boss
RE-2 (£199) has the same basic sound,
although there are no presets, no Tape Age
or Saturation controls and a single Tone
knob. If it really has to be tape, besides
buying a vintage unit, the Australian Echo
Fix EF-X2 (£2,190) is a new-build three-
head machine inspired by the Space Echo.
It has the seven head combinations and
reverb. Strymon’s Volante Magnetic Echo
Machine (£375) does a solid recreation of
a multi-head tape echo, and not only does
it recreate the sound of a machine with
equidistant heads like the RE-201, it also
has a knob that can vary the head spacing.
VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
GIT486.rev_boss.indd 103GIT486.rev_boss.indd 103 12/05/2022 13:4412/05/2022 13:44