Custom Shop Solid State Tape Echo v2 (CS-SSTE v2)

Each one is hand-built here in Nashville, 

These are always the latest version, with the new & improved playback head mount, Roller mount, roller, and tape cart! With Full factory Warranty! If this item shows "Sold Out" you can buy a "slight cosmetic blem" here

All SSTEs serial# 388 and higher (that includes any one bought new) have a small toggle switch allowing you to choose between "Buffered" or "Bypassed" output. Why? An SSTE without its output buffer is very much an early EP-3 Echoplex circuit, and EP-3s have a pair of Mix potentiometers on their output that give them a very unhealthily high output impedance, degrading the instrument's treble and the the brightness of the repeats! BUT, some people like this effect, and I've had people ask me "Can you make yours sound more like an EP-3?" Lol, so the EP-3's sonic degradation is an "asset" to some people, and I get that. I like the sound of an SSTE with the buffer turned off...sometimes, so now all SSTEs have this "Buf/Byp" switch, and we can modify your SSTE to have it as well. 

In the early 80's I worked in music stores teaching Guitar and selling & repairing gear. One day a guy came in with a 70's Echoplex EP-3 tape delay asking $30 for it!. The owner of the store said he didn't want it so I bought it and thus was born a life-long love affair with tape echo. I used that solid-state Echoplex all through the 80's and early 90's. Everyone else showed up for auditions with a refrigerator rack full of cold, thin sounding gear, and more often than not I'd steal the gig using a pair of Blackface Fenders, a Plexi Marshall Half stack, a couple of homemade pedals and that trusty early version EP-3.

Go here to purchase replacement tape cartridges for your SSTE.

The definitive How to Install a Tape Cart in a Fulltone SSTE (4K hi-rez video) is live now on the Official Fulltone YouTube channel.

Which tape to use? 

We are getting a lot of questions about a new “lubricated tape” being made by a popular tape company.

This tape is strongly “not recommended” for use in Fulltone or Echoplex tape machines due to poor recording and poor erasure performance, and a very loud and constant sputtering noise present at all times due (in my opinion) to the lubricated coating being applied too thick to both sides of the tape, lifting the tape off the heads too far.

The tape we use has a lubricated material bonded to the backing that does not interfere with the audio quality.

Use Fulltone tape with your Fulltone tape machines.