Oil-Can Delays from the 1960s

The Blue Tubes bundle from Nomad Factory ( http://www.nomadfactory.com/products/bluetubes/ ) includes the TLE-2S Oilcan Delay. This is available for most every plugin format. It's actually quite tasty sounding, especially good for doing that "John Lennon" type slap-back on vocals. There is a switch for setting the year which is kind of nifty. It is a bit of a pig on the CPU, though.
 

Here in the States, a similar beast was available in the '70s as a foot pedal in the Morley Rotating Wah, which used a miniature oilcan delay for a faux Leslie effect (I've still got one - don't know what they're running for on ebay, but it's a solid little spud).
 

Since I have built some of my own Oil-Can delays, I thought I'd add some more technical info:

Oil Can delays are basically large capacitors. If you're familiar with the idea of magnetic storage (i.e. Tape) then you know a charge is recorded and read. In our case, our charge is a bundle of conductive wires that brush up against an insulator. The insulator will hold charge temporarily, but will eventually dissapate charge off into the air. The Oil was used to further insulate and prevent signal loss. The brushes move through the oil, so read/write operations are still possible.

One of the little mysterys about the oil cans is that Tel-Ray put metal flakes of various types into the insulating oil apparently to increase the volume of the effect. So, you choose an oil based on its insulating properties, and then impregnate the oil with a conductor?? I have found that it increases the "Hall" effect of the echo. You can try different amounts of different conductors to impregnate the oil with, but at $200 a gallon.... I've found a gram of Iron Filings works nice for the original sound, while silver gave the sound I prefer.

I personally think they're awful unless you're looking to get a lo-fi effect. You'd be better off with either a good digital repro that's going to sound exactly like that oil-can reverb you're looking for, or using a good long-tail reverb if you aren't looking for that particular sound.

I use mine to get "Creepy/Distant" sounds. I have it hooked to a volume pedal so I can "fade in" with a distant/warbly/twisted Headless Horseman plays Fender vibe.

Note that the delay timing is dependant on how fast the motor moves the arm, meaning delay time is not anywhere near as settable as what DD-5 users would be used to.
 

I found a fender tel-ray unit at a thrift store for 20 bucks...and it works perfectly, i later traded it to my guitar player roomate for an Ace tone tape echo which was way cooler!
 

Does it has something to do with "tank reverbs"?
 

If you have ever heard Vincent Bell and his beautiful WATER SOUND, would this be similar technology that he used to come up with his unique sound? Mr. Bell is the only one in the universe with this beautiful guitar effect. Check out his hit song, AIRPORT!!!!!