Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

Ive been thinking of getting a talk box for guitar.

My cover band does a few songs that they are used on and I thought it would be cool.

Just curious if anyone on here uses one and can tell me the pros and cons of using one.

The one I looked at the other day doesnt require an extra amp. Basically you just use it like a stomp box.

Thanks in advance.

never messed w one myself but i think they'd be a lot of fun.

mention talk box and most think frampton or joe walsh. being a big fan of jan akkerman and the group focus....i always dug this cut. funny all the shots they got together for the video montage and they couldn't come up w one of him actually using the talkbox!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odp7pNtIxzA

I use one every gig John we do Frampton I have had a Banshee $170.00 and I love it! A drunk fat chick fell on it dented it and knocked one of the feet off. It still works great I have been using it for 5 years now. The way they work is you run your guitar into it and then to your amp. When you turn the talk box on it cuts the signal to your amp off. Your vocal mic picks up the sound as you form the notes with your mouth! The crowd loves it when you use one they just can't wrap their head around how they work. Here is a video of me using one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzYn-BLn ... r_embedded

Very Cool Haley!

What do you do? Announciate vowels in that thing, in key with what your are playing?

You did a great job on that video!

Very Cool Haley!

What do you do? Announciate vowels in that thing, in key with what your are playing?

You did a great job on that video!

Yes, basically you just talk and fret the notes you want. I use it in Do you Feel Like We Do, Those Shoes, Rocky Mountain Way, and Man In The Box

Thanks John!

thats pretty cool , Jeff

I want one too . . .

Good job Jeff !

Thanks Tom and George! If you are going to get one get a Rocktron Banshee they are built like a tank and work perfect! They make a Banshee 1 and a 2. I forget what features the 2 offers. This one works great. Talk boxes are a great gimmick to enhance your show. Having said that they are very limited as you can only use them for a few songs. You should really consider if it is worth it to you to spend the money for something you will only use on 1, 2, 3, or 4 songs at best.

At this juncture I figure my best investment equipment wise would be an attenuator . . . but dayum this stuff gets costly.

For a time, while I was outfitting the band, I spent a lot of money.
If I felt like we'd need it and get good service out of it I just bought it and worried about getting it paid off latter.
Now that we're pretty well outfitted it's very hard for me to spend the cash like that.

George - How about a Tom Scholze Power Soak? Have one I never use, don't need, (it won't work at 2 ohm and don't need it with the Super Reverb anyway) Don't need it for the MX, so it's gathering dust.

One thing to remember though, those things can be tough on transformers. The one I replaced in my MX was $125 around 10 years ago. And that's soldering it in myself, plus $35 to have someone test the transformer so I could be sure that was the problem. The power soak didn't fry it, I think a bad speaker jack did.

A tube amp with no load can fry a transformer. So one night at an audition I didn't know the speaker jack was way loose, the amp sounded really nasty, I switched to the Super Reverb. Glad I brought it, I didn't know if the MX would work at all, it had been acting flaky. So the speaker jack was popping in and out really fast when I played, speaker on and off a lot, next day I had a garbled sound no matter what volume level, the amp had always been super clean...

Anyway I don't need the Power Soak, been thinking about selling it...

JW - I've never used one, thought about building one a while back and using the Champ to drive it, never did though. To use it you just mouth what sound you want, words included, and it plays back through your mic. the tube carries the sound from the amp or voice box, that is shaped by what your mouth does, "reflects" back into the mic. They say it feels weird at first. I did a lot of reading up on them, a small amp, horn driver and plastic tube can be used to build one, A/B switch for when you want to use it, and all I would have to do is unplug the speaker in the Champ, plug in the driver and hose, and no modifications to the amp at all.

Still might at some point, but I would have to figure out how to swap things around, since I now use the A/B switch to run through both channels of the Super Reverb. Normal and Reverb channels have different sounds, and Normal channel is louder for leads, it works out great. But that would mean a hasty swap if I wanted to run a voice box made from the Champ. Should be a quick and simple one though, unplug from one channel of the Super, plug the same cable into the Champ.


I dunno...might find another horn and try it sometime. The horn I had got lost in the shuffle somewhere between here and Louisiana and back...

I'm thinking of getting one.
A few years back, I seen the Digitech Talker at a local store for $75.00, I left my credit card home .... my old bank was just across the street, two weeks before I switched to a bank four miles away. By the time, I got back to the store to buy the thing , some one bought it

don't for get sweet emotion and walk this way (aerosmith) are good cover songs that talkbox is on and sound great on. i don't own a talk box but if i would get one, probably would go for one of those new MXR M222 or rocktron banshee.