BEYOND THE FILTER'TRON
Over the past couple of issues, we’ve seen how the documents and parts in the Ray Butts archive have provided fascinating insights into his career. In addition to inventing the Filter’Tron – possibly the earliest humbucking pickup designed for the electric guitar – Ray could also claim to be the inventor of the first guitar amplifier with a built-in echo effect. Though fewer than 70 units were built, the EchoSonic’s slapback sound would become iconic.
In the early 1950s, Ray was running his music shop with his wife Ann, in Cairo, Illinois. Local guitarist Bill Gwaltney explained to Ray how he was eager to recreate live the slapback tape-delay sound on Les Paul’s recordings. At the time, those echo effects could only be achieved in the studio. Ray set about to change that.
At first he experimented with an old Gibson amp and a wire recorder but, by 1953, he’d built the first of his EchoSonic amps, using an onboard tape loop to produce the desired echo effect. It captured the
