Mouthbox

Hammeron

What experiences have you had with a mouthbox?

Mr-M

Do you mean a talk box? Something like this:

Hammeron

Yebo, that's the one! I've seen them called Mouthboxes too.
I'm keen to get myself one.

Squonk

Peter Frampton was pretty good with these things.
Didn't Richie Sambora use one in one of the Bon Jovi songs

Bob-Dubery

I think the famous, pre-Frampton examples of mouthboxing were Jeff Beck ("She's A Woman") and Joe Walsh ("Rocky Mountain Way")

Warren

Squonk wrote: Peter Frampton was pretty good with these things.
Didn't Richie Sambora use one in one of the Bon Jovi songs

Richie uses them on quite a few tracks. And to think, I always used to wonder how he got such weird sounds out of his guitar... :?

Hammeron

I've seen Slash using them too...

Jack-Flash-Jr

Motley Crue also messed around with them... a lotta fun if you ask me...

Vick

Rocktron banshee 1 or 2... Don't know much about talk boxes,but have heard these being recommended by people that do ?

Iv wanted to get one for a while, but then I have to get a mic,and if iv got a mic,I don't have a excuse to not learn how to do backing vocals...and I don't whana ?

singemonkey

I've heard they can mess up your teeth if you over use them. ???

Jack-Flash-Jr

singemonkey wrote: I've heard they can mess up your teeth if you over use them. ???

Nope, those are pacifiers and heroin (obviously different stages of life).

Malkav

Vick wrote: Iv wanted to get one for a while, but then I have to get a mic,and if iv got a mic,I don't have a excuse to not learn how to do backing vocals...and I don't whana ?

I may be wrong in saying this but I've never seen one used with a vocal mic, in fact I'm pretty sure you'd need an instrument mic like an SM57 so no you won't have to do backing vocals.

I've always thought these things were a major gimmick, I realise that you can't make anything else do what they do but at the same time they are damn expensive and a bit of a pain to setup. All just so you can go waaaaahooooooooooooooohhhaaaaaaa during the solo in like 1 song...

Meshuggah's guitarist Frederik Thordendaal so far to me has been the most interesting user of the effect, but then again when he does it you can't tell it's a talk box ? He just uses it as a freaky ass filter.

The likelyhood of anyone actually going to youtube to see him doing this is slim, the likelyhood of anyone who does actually liking Meshuggah is zero ? except for a couple of the usual suspects, but it's definitly more "open-minded" stuff ?

singemonkey

I also think they're a gimmick. However, I also think that SA bands could use a few gimmicks. Gimmicks exist for a reason. They can't cover for bad material and playing, but they create hooks so people remember you.

Chad, I'm confused. An SM57 and SM58 are basically the same mic. Both Sinatra and Elvis used SM57s as main stage microphones (Elvis's was gold-plated naturally) - Sinatra even recorded with an SM57 exclusively (don't know about Elvis). So while it's true they're mainly used as instrument mics, they do fantastic duty as vocal mics. In fact I've used mine in a little under half of the last shows I've done.

But no. You don't use a mic.

Quite intrigued by this demo. You can obviously use it as a tone-shaping tool rather than just as a gimmick:

VellaJ

I was considering getting a Talkbox a while ago. Changed my mind when I saw the price though... Can't remember what it was exactly, but I spent a month in hospital recovering from the shock... true story... ?

AlanRatcliffe

If you have a mic handy, you can also use an amplitude modulator circuit to do the same thing. An added bonus is then you can modulate any signal with another, e.g. a drum machine on guitar, bass or keyboard works like a programmable "chopper" effect. A mic on a keyboard works like a vocoder, an aux send from the kick drum mic to key the bass. Anything your fevered imagination can dream up - great fun...

The old Boss SE series of FX has one (plus a whack of other FX) and you can pick em up for R500 - R700 S/H (Turnkey's seconds list usually has one or two).