Ray Butts

American inventor and engineer

Joseph Raymond Butts (September 22, 1919 – April 20, 2003) was an American inventor and engineer best known for designing several devices that influenced the evolution of electrified music, in particular those used with the electric guitar. Most notably, Butts is the inventor of the EchoSonic, a guitar amplifier with a built in tape echo, and the FilterTron, the first humbucker guitar pickup (used extensively on Gretsch guitars). He was active in other fields from studio equipment maintenance to sound engineering, and had intimate working relationships with people such as Sam Phillips at Sun Studios and Chet Atkins.

Back in Cairo, Butts worked for an appliance store as a warranty repairman, and after some more experimentation Butts settled on the new plastic tape made by 3M, and soon created the Echosonic: Bill Gwaltney bought the first one. which he did on most of Elvis' late Sun and early RCA singles, in addition to the 1968 comeback special. Butts's tape loop technology was the basis for the later Echoplex, for which he received a "nominal sum" from the manufacturers. Though it has been represented in error by some authors in later years, Butts had received a U. S. patent for his tape echo technology in 1957.

In 1954, Gretsch began plans to produce the first Chet Atkins endorsed guitar model, the Gretsch 6120. Atkins recorded much of his music of the 1950s with the Echosonic, Throughout the early years of production, Butts insisted on making all the Filter'Tron pickups by hand. Mass production of the Gretsch Filter'Tron (or simply Filtertron) pickup began in 1957.