Tape loop was one way-and long before tape existed-they used a small speaker in a long coiled tube (the length of time needed for the delay) with a mic in the end. The idea being that in a plane wave tube there is no loss and then the mic would go to the delay speakers.
Not quite as easy as punching in a number these days.
Ivan,
I remember lugging a Revox A-77 tape recorder in and out of clubs in the 1970's, using it as tape delay. Weighed around 60 pounds in the case.
An Echoplex would have been cheaper, lighter and more variable, but the Revox was more "hi-fi"
.
Running four hours a night in smoky bars wore the heads down to where they should have been re-lapped, but it still was used for click track playback of backing tracks for Andy Williams in the mid 1980's, using foil tape between songs to trigger an automatic stop mechanism we added.
The Cooper Time Cube was a UREI-branded, Bill Putman/Duane H. Cooper coiled tube delay device first made in 1971.
It had 14ms, 16ms or a combined 30ms delay, too short for the delay speakers needed on big shows.
The Time Cube was popular in high end studios (1000 were sold), but I never heard of them being used other than for effects on a live show, too feedback prone, using Shure SM57 cartridges for both the microphone and speaker.
Have you heard of an actual event that used coiled tubes for sound delay on a show?
Art