Korg SE-500 Stage Echo
A tape echo that wants you to think a full thirty seconds ahead of your own playing.
Overview
The SE-500 Stage Echo is the bigger sibling in Korg's tape-echo pair. Period dealer listings show the gap: an R.R.P. of £425, against the £350 asked for the SE-300 Stage Echo Reverb. The extra money bought the Sound-on-Sound facility. That feature defines the machine, for better and, by at least one reviewer's reckoning, for worse.
The S-on-S system records a phrase into the tape loop and holds it before playback. How long depends entirely on the delay-time setting, and the numbers are not small. In a period rundown of multi-echo boxes, one reviewer estimated that the SE-500 in Sound-on-Sound mode would record and delay a signal for somewhere between 15 and 30 seconds. It then plays the signal back while still capturing whatever the player lays over the top. That is a real compositional tool if you are building layered loops. It also takes planning. The same reviewer pointed out that with a delay this long you have to trigger the effect ten to thirty seconds before you want to hear it return. That is an eternity in a live performance, and a big adjustment for anyone used to a slap-back echo.
The echo side is more conventional but still flexible. A mode selector steps through six positions covering progressively longer delay ranges. The later positions bring multiple playback heads into play for a compound echo signal, which can itself be repeated via the Intensity and Repeat Rate controls. Position four uses heads one and two, position five heads two and three, and position six all three together. A Volume control sits to the right of the mode selector. It gives no effect signal at zero and equal effect/direct balance at ten, for both the echo modes and Sound-on-Sound.
Reception was respectful rather than rapturous.
That is a fair critique from someone who clearly knew the machine well, and it neatly frames what the SE-500 is: a studio-minded tape echo with a looping function that rewards patience and punishes improvisation. As one period writer noted in a rundown of tape-delay techniques, mixing the delayed signal from the repro head back with the original produces the echoing effect — a principle at the heart of the SE-500's design (Modern Recording, November 1979, p.34).Anyone chasing one today should expect a mechanical instrument as much as an electronic one. Tape path condition, head wear and the motor are the usual concerns on any drum-echo unit, and the SE-500's long-loop trick depends on all of them behaving. The £425 list price in period dealer advertising put it firmly in professional territory for its day. This was not a budget toy.
eBay Listings
As an eBay Partner, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support our independent vintage technology research.
Related Models
- Korg DSS-1 (1986)
- Korg 01/W ProX
- Korg 01/Wpro (1991)
- Korg 01R/W
- Korg 05R/W (1993)