Ares

Aion FX from Des Moines, IA has helped guitarists build studio-quality effects since 2011. They excel at making legendary studio tools accessible to the DIY community.

The Ares reproduces the Echoplex EP-3 tape echo's preamp section in bypass mode, based on the ClinchFX EP-Pre trace. The original EP-3 (1970) became famous not for its echo but for the tonal character its simple JFET gain stage added when players bypassed the tape mechanism.

Eddie Van Halen, Eric Johnson, and countless others chased this sound - a subtle compression and harmonic richness that makes everything sit better in a mix. The circuit is deceptively simple, but the magic lies in the specific JFET biasing and component values that create that elusive EP-3 sparkle.