Here we have a very rare Ibanez effects board which leaves us with a couple of questions. Why would Ibanez build a board like this in 1980, when they already had a rack unit with floor board (UE-700), featuring some of the best effects they had at that time? And only a couple of months later Ibanez launched the (comparably) inexpensive new rack units UE-400 and UE-405 featuring more or less the same variety of effects, the same Insta-Patch sorting feature and an effect loop as well? Possibly the EC 500 was a sort of prototype/test unit of the forthcoming UE-series. Anyway, it's a cool collector's piece...