It was with sadness I read that Mike Battle, the inventor of the Echoplex, passed away at the age of 90.

I was born in the fifties and grew up in the sixties, two decades where on a large scale our country represented the post war industrial boom, and on a smaller scale people like Mike Battle tinkered in a basement workshop and came up with magical devices like the Echoplex.

I probably got my got my own tinkerer bug from my dad and my uncle, who both had basement workshops. They weren't inventors but they could fix stuff and build stuff using tools made of wood and steel that used cloth covered power cords. I took their hand me down copies of Popular Mechanics from the fifties and dreamed of building atom bomb shelters, go carts, and flying machines.

Nowadays it's corporate bean counters selling flavor of the month gadgets copied from someone elses idea, built in communist factories by indentured proletariat workers.

Excepting maybe Les Paul, Mr. Battle was probably the last of the musical tinkerers in the vein of Leo Fender, in who's mighty company Mike surely belongs.

My late father and Mr. Battle were both born in 1918. I'm sure they would have like each others company.

Go in Peace with Spirit, Mike.
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