Watkins Copicat Mod

I've had this Super IC Copicat for a long time, since way back in the '90s. It makes quite a pleasant lo-fi echo sound and is fun to play with. Unfortunately, after all of these years the heads have become worn out and needed to be replaced.

In the process of replacing the heads, a thought occurred to me -

why should the heads be fixed in place?

The result here, is some 3d-printed parts; a curved rail and 5 head carriers which can slide on the rail. The first carrier here holds the record head and is fixed in place. The other 4 can move back and forth along the rail, which changes the time delay between the recorded sound and it reaching each head. I've also in this project modified one of the rear jack sockets to intercept the feedback control, so that I can plug in an expression pedal and control it in real time when performing.

As far as I know, this is a unique modification, and allows to set up the delays in more interesting ways.

If you want to attempt this mod yourself you can download the files:

The erase head carrier is for adding an erase head to Copicats which never originally had one. Mine never did, it had a combined record/erase head, which are now unobtanium. In replacing the heads I've had to fit an additional erase head as the replacement for recording is record only. The erase head carrier does not go on the slide rail, mount it directly to the top panel in a suitable place elsewhere.

These files are made available under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license