How John Leckie's Binson Echorec Setup on Pink Floyd's 'Echoes' Shaped Space-Rock Production

The most interesting thing about John Leckie’s work as tape op on Meddle isn’t the recording logistics—it’s that he essentially learned how to build the sound of space-rock by wiring up David Gilmour’s Binson Echorec for “Echoes.” Gilmour wanted that long, swimming delay that stretches across the 23-minute track, and Leckie spent hours getting the Echorec’s four playback heads dialed into just the right rhythmic slap and decay. The unit was finicky—vacuum tubes, mechanical tape loops, and a constant threat of wow and flutter—but once it locked in, it gave “Echoes” that signature liquid glide.

Leckie carried that understanding into his later production work with bands like Spacemen 3, The Soft Boys, and later Spiritualized. He knew that the Echorec wasn’t just an effect; it was a spatial instrument. On Spacemen 3’s The Perfect Prescription and Playing With Fire, he applied the same tape-echo logic to Jason Pierce’s guitar and vocals—except now he was running it through a mixing desk rather than a studio patchbay. His method of pushing echo into feedback and letting the repeats blur into drone became a blueprint for the