This was the year that Roland became a guitar effects company but "nobody" knew it yet. Of course Boss pedals wouldn't appear for years, but the Roland Space E

This was the year that Roland became a guitar effects company but "nobody" knew it yet. Of course Boss pedals wouldn't appear for years, but the Roland Space Echo was a little portable accessory tape echo effect that got them started in this direction and made it all possible. I eventually got one and by the time it needed restoration in the 1990's the internet was already out and it only took a couple years before the electronic schematic showed up by pure luck one day. I went over the whole thing in detail, I knew there were input impedance mismatches with many instruments from the way it acted, but it still sounded cool and people always loved it anyway. But when it came to the tape itself, I just couldn't believe it. With all good components and ideal spec operation, there was no way to get the tape bias anywhere near what it was supposed to be for any known tape formulations. By a long shot. It still worked but just barely, and that's what everybody had been enjoying from the beginning, no different than they were when new. With major modification to the bias circuit, it's way better than new after that. Turns out the high-tech Japanese electronics outfit built its first momentum toward becoming the biggest guitar effects company starting with a tape echo unit, when the engineering was so far off it could only be that nobody involved knew what they should have known about tape bias at all. One of the critical things that all studios and especially audio enginers kept up with since all they had was tape and it was everywhere.