hahaha Mr. Freeman
I finally got the Little Rocket Man achievement in HL2:EP2. I started on it in November around thanksgiving (I always seem to be playing HL around thanksgiving, it’s a tradition) and got bored, went back to it.

There’s still plenty of effects nobody’s ever made before, and also ones that others have made that could be improved upon.

Once you get a good synthesizer and begin to truly understand what sound synthesis is and how it works, you’ll realize there’s nearly limitless possibilities for guitar effects.

Well….to get back to Tube Reverb and Tape Echo, the best Tape Echo I ever used comprised two Revox reel-to-reel tape recorders with the tape running from one to anothher over a distance of about five feet before looping back again.
Otherwise for live gigs I often used and still have the Korg 500 Stage Echo with multiple tape heads. A great machine with true analog sound-on-sound. A modern EHX version of the Korg Stage Echo would be simply fantastic. (I tried out the Pigtronix Echolution which is really good but does not offer any equivalent sound-on-sound functions)
Tube Reverb is generally warm, very effective, super expensive and has a tendency to emit low hums, unless you buy the even more expensive TRs. An XO TR from EHX could be interesting though.
…and,yes….I really like echo ever since my first WEM Copicat.

Absolutely John J. And an EHX True Tape Echo would be really cool and also extraordinary since EHX started its incredible delay and echo reputation based on the fact that they did the tape thing without a tape! Of course, some brands offer Tape Echos without tape. Well, that just does not work, however Lo-Fi or Plastic Synthetic they make them.
And any reel-to-reel tape recorder can be looped so as to function as an echo machine. Cheap and great fun to experiment with.

Here is a brief selection of the sort of reel-to-reel tape recorders you can find either on eBay or in pawn shops. You take a given length of magnetic tape, splice it together (thin transparent Sellotape and a sharp razor blade on a non-metal support surface using a diagonal cut should do the trick), then you place your tape loop on to the empty reels, left and right, put the tape machine into record, link the playback RCA cinch connections to your amp or mixing table by using an RCA cinch > telephone jack lead, start the recording and then start playing, the tape loop will record what you are playing and then put it out through the playback tape heads and voilà! tape echo.
You change the speed of the tape recorder as you wish, change the length of your tape loops and you can also link two tape recording machines in series, first left reel to the second right reel, and experiment with distance between them, with great results.
One reggae album I produced featured two Revox reel-to-reel tape recorders with a distance of four and a half feet between them and a tape loop crossing the control cabin. This produced some great echo/sound-on-sound drums and vocals, with one incisive guitar chop which would appear in the mix, then disappear only to re-emerge at certain moments. If set up correctly, the double tape recorder system gives you a double stereo echo with great variations.
The reel-to-reel tape recorders featured in the selection below are:-

Akai GX 215D
Philips N4520-High End
Revox B 77 MKII Stereo
Revox B 77
Revox Type A 77 MKII
Sony TC 252 Stereo
Sony TC-755
Teac X-300

This is a small selection of what is out there and up for grabs. I do not recommend Uher, by the way. Good recorders but no good for echo.
The best by far, as used by many musicians in the past and present, are the Revox B77 Mk II and/or the Revox A77 Mk II. Tascam / Teac are also good but you have to make sure that the model you are looking at is not a super hi-fi automatic tape reverse model. They are useless for echo. However the big Teac and Tascam 2 Track Stereo Master Recorders are great.
Last but not least is the Teac 3440 reel-to-reel 4 Track Sync Recorder (not pictured here) which is the nec plus ultra!
It allows you to record on 4 sync tracks separately, with mixdown from two or three tracks to two or one track as you wish. You can imagine that with a tape loop this offers a load of possibilities.

…..and if you are still reading this you must be hooked on the idea…and a reel-to-reel tape recorder as featured in the picture below costs between 50 and 600 USD, so you have a wide choice to fit your budget.

John J, here is a photo of the TEAC 3440 four track sync tape recorder I mentioned before. I saw one for sale here in Bremen, Germany, a little while ago for 350 Euro.

Yes, John, it is indeed incredible. I am lucky enough to still have the one I bought years ago and it has held up very well to years of use and also several years on the road. I wish you lots of fun and success experimenting with your loops!

reverse gate isn’t the same as reverse reverb. reverse gate just increases the reverb as your notes sustain and fade away, which almost acts like a compressor in some respects, but it doesn’t do my bloody valentine type reverse reverb. for reverse reverb you need a digital processor.