Tono,

Chet's middle period* guitar sound was characterized by a light "slap" echo with a little regeneration, along with some light reverb.

Slap echo has a very short delay after the original sound, sometimes with no repeats. It is a very bold and distinctive sound. In Chet's case, there were a few repeats but they decayed quickly. They are clearly heard on headphones or in a quiet environment, but not on casual listening.

In contrast, Elvis used a heavy slap on his voice. It's also useful for making a sound cut through a noisy environment without raising the volume.

Play with the delay time on your effects box. Start at zero and increase it until you can just hear the effect separate from the original sound. Set the delay level close to that of the original sound and adjust down as you experiment.

Then look for a control named regeneration (or repeat, or feedback) and add that--not much. (Feedback means something different when applied to delay effects; it's not the same as guitar feedback.)

Then set a very short decay time, another control you will find on your effects device. Try one quarter of a second if your device lets you set it that way and adjust it from there. All of these controls are somewhat interactive, but do it in the order above and you should get it pretty quickly. Write down or save your settings so you can recreate them easily.

Finally, find a nice plate reverb sound and add a little of that.

Once you get it down, the slap sound is very handy to have in your "toolbox".

Wishing you the best,

Richard


* For those who might quibble about what he did early or late, fine. I don't claim to know about those.

"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."