Because needs must! You’ve had the idea that music would often benefit from a bit of echo. But the electronics to create that doesn’t exist. So what do you do?
 
The solution Charlie Watkins came to at the end of the 1950s was brilliantly inspired. Create a sort of tape recorder where a loop of tape would pass over a record head and then a series of spaced-apart playback heads before getting to a magnet where it would be wiped before cycling back to the record head again.
 
It worked – countless music recordings of the day, from Shakin’ All Over’ to many songs by the Shadows, provide testament to that.
 
Watkins’ company was called WEM – Watkins Electronic Music – and he called the resulting product the Copicat. The distinctive spelling perhaps because the name CopyCat had already been claimed by a copying machine of the era.
 
Different coloured cases and controls denote different generations with slightly different functionality, but all with the ability to echo a sound and chose the balance of each echo against each other.

Copicat
From Mike Walker Collection
Click thumbnail to enlarge

Copicat
From Mike Walker Collection
Click thumbnail to enlarge