I had a lot of fun with this piece of kit from around 1960, although it was a stretch for me.

WEM (Watkins Electric Music) Ltd was a British company who manufactured guitar amps and other bits of audio equipment, there’s a mad following for all things WEM! Copicats are tape echo units, the loop of 1/4” tape goes round and over the first head which records the guitar onto the tape. The sound is then played back via the 3 play heads which are selectable via the thee white switches. You can turn the echo volume up using the ‘Swell’ knob but also loop the sound back round using the ‘Reverb’ knob. WEM made Copicats form the 1950’s onwards, up to Mark 4 with the early ones (including this one) using valves.

The customer had inherited this and was keen to get it going, alas it was in a bad way. The motor and tape heads needed replacing and I ended up rebuilding the entire circuit with new components. This needs to be a functional unit and will be put to work!

By the time it was done it really sounded amazing, a properly analgue-sounding delay effect and given the two ECC83 valves gives a lovely pre-amp boost. I promise I didn’t hold onto it longer than I needed to…..

HUGE thanks to the wonderful John Beer at http://amp-fix.com who provided the replacement motor, tape heads and also, very generously, advice over the phone.