vocal FX processors for live shows?

[decibike]

What is your favorite machine for live vocal FX and why?

The singer in a new electronic project wants to f*ck up his vocals with FX real time on stage by himself. Besides the usual delays and verbs we are also interested in a bit more experimental stuff, for example looping, filtering, flanger, pitch shift etc

It has to be:
- live proof: beer spills etc.
- non techie proof: our singer is not really into extensive programming, to put it in a nice way. so it has to have a intuitive interface.
- preferably XLR in and out, so no complicated routing via the mixing board. Just plug in a mic and go.

what else is out there besides the Kaoss pad, a megaphone etc?
thanks!

[surflounge]

Eventide or TC boxes

[chrisso]

I would suggest a separate mic routed through a pedal board (Mooger Fooger, Lovetone etc type pedals).
To my mind any hardware box (Eventide-like) is going to need techie type tweakin on the fly. Whereas you can engage or disengage a pedal with one stomp of your foot.

[msl]

Kaoss Pad, wouldn't survive a beer spill but they are pretty easy to use.

[decibike]

thanks guys! I'll check em out.

anyone else?

[d1rtynyc]

I always liked this for live:
DigiTech® Vx400
not exactly the most experimental, but it can get pretty extreme. Pair it with a Kaoss Pad.

[decibike]

Originally Posted by d1rtynyc

I always liked this for live:
DigiTech® Vx400
not exactly the most experimental, but it can get pretty extreme. Pair it with a Kaoss Pad.

cool. a lot cheaper than the eventide pedals and it has XLR in. Wouldnt use digitech in the studio but might be good enough for gigs.

[d1rtynyc]

Originally Posted by decibike

cool. a lot cheaper than the eventide pedals and it has XLR in. Wouldnt use digitech in the studio but might be good enough for gigs.

Yeah & it's very rugged too.

[reptar]

We bought a TC Voicelive for our live show, I wouldn't recommend it for non-techie types, or for extreme processing, which are the two reasons we sold it.

We're currently using a custom splitter pedal I made and a DM-100 delay unit, but we're gonna be looking at the Eventide Pitchfactor when it gets released, Pitch + Delay = Everything we want for vocals.

I wouldn't recommend a second mic for fx, too messy when you're on stage. Make or buy a splitter so you can run the one mic clean to FOH for your foldback and to the FX unit as well, that way your engineer can give you the right balance of clean and effected in the monitors so you can sing in tune and not get crazy feedback, but still have a heavily effected vocal in FOH.

If you've got the budget and you don't mind doing the programming for your vocalist it could be worth thinking about an Eventide Eclipse with a Midi pedalboard to control it. Should be able to do some crazy processing, can switch between your settings with the pedalboard and even tweak stuff live with expression pedals and footswitches. Might be a bit easier to troubleshoot at a live gig too, nothing worse than having one pedal on your board mess up during a gig and not be able to find it and pull it out of the chain.

I've mixed a couple of bands that used the Digitech Vocalist Live4 in the past and it's worked smoothly, this was just for a little bit of harmony and delay though, don't know if you could really mess the signal up with one.

[decibike]

thanks reptar. I like the idea of using good old stompboxes.

[Meriphew]

I'm doing this and it sounds very good.

Shure Beta 58 > Radial JS3 mic splitter (Jensen transformer) > Output #1 > FOH (dry). Output #2 > TC Helicon Create pedal > FOH (100% wet [fx] signal).

[decibike]

Has anyone tried:
mic -->Radial splitter ---> signal one into GUITAR pedals?
--> signal 2 to FOH?

[digital 1010]

Check out 3d from massive attack he uses something live for his vocals. Never spent the time to check what it was i think it might be a kaoss etc..

2 secs ill find a link

[digital 1010]

YouTube - Glory Box - Massive Attack y Portishead

Haven't got a clue what the box is but im sure someone will know.

Awesome performance this as well !!

[reptar]

Originally Posted by decibike

Has anyone tried:
mic -->Radial splitter ---> signal one into GUITAR pedals?
--> signal 2 to FOH?

That's what we do, except using the splitter I made instead of a Radial one. I think the Radials use a 1:1 tranny, I made ours with a 1:4 mic input transformer to give a gain boost and increase the impedance of the output to make it more suitable for use with guitar pedals. Works great, better than just running a mic straight into a pedal and I imagine better than using a 1:1 tranny.

I've been meaning to put the circuit diagram up on my blog but blogspot isn't happy with saving stuff for some reason. You will find some pictures attached to this post anyway...

You can use any mic input transformer I suppose, but the JLM 1:4 works well and is affordable. Feel free to make one of these for yourself, it's a really easy thing to make, the soldering is simple and the circuit is as basic as they come. The hardest thing was drilling out the holes for the XLR sockets; I was thinking about using TRS jacks and making short adaptor cables to use with it but in the end decided it would be better in the long run to just have one box to lose at gigs, rather than one box and two leads.

Oh, at the moment this design picks up hum if there isn't a mic plugged in. I could fix this by adding a terminating resistor but I haven't bothered yet, as there isn't any point using it if there isn't a mic plugged in.

[decibike]

reptar: nice job on the splitter! thanks for the pix.

love the massive/ portishead you tube! Not sure what he uses. COuld be a kaoss pad?

[TimBass]

Hey there Decibike,

If you're still looking for set up ideas for vocal effects i'm using a Shure SM 58 -> Digitech Vocalist Live 4 -> Kaoss Pad KP3-> Sterio Mixer and it sounds wicked.

The Live 4 gives your dry vocals a touch up by adding,

Harmonies; either 3rd,5th or octave above or below. There are 50 presets and its easy as to store custom settings and you can blend the harmonies so they are not very noticable or to make them really stand out,

Pitch control; via analyzing a guitar or key board input, or if you don't play guitar you can just input the key or the song. ( also the preset GOLD CHAN(nel) has chromatic pitch control so you don't have to press a button after each song to change the key)

Reverb, Compression, Effects and also a De-esser.

Then that improved vocal signal goes into the Kaoss pad to make sick effects. I also pre record vocal phrases and save them in the KP3 for cool loops etc.

All the outputs are there to have the vocals swirling from left to right in sterio via XLR and 1/4 inch jack.

Another point to make is that the Live 4 can be setup to add harmonies only when your foot is on the button... or... so that when you tap the switch harmonies are on until you tap the switch again to turn them off.

I hope this helps a bit.

I'd also like to thank REPTAR for his detailed splitter post. Thanks man!!!

[nofi]

I had a digitech vocal 300 a while ago. Cheap as, and did lots of fun stuff.. It's not dummyproof, though. you need to know what you're doing, as you can easily set up massive feedback (especially with reverb!) you really don't want reverb or any fx in your foldback if you can avoid it.

also, if you are going to risk it with foldback fx, you need to learn how stuff sounds on stage via foldback vs front of house, as hearing a sound on stage, it never sounds the same out the front.

really - unless it's a very small gig with a very simple luggable PA, you need a sound person who knows your music, and you can trust, to handle things like this... non techie singer playing with fx live (especially guitar FX!!!) is going to result in very bad feedback problems.

[argomax]

Hi, I have tried all those systems above since a long time ago, and Im not keen on any. The Digitech vocal processor, whatever the name is now (it has gone thru 3 or 4 name changes), can spark furious feedbacks that you won't be able to subdue easily because all the programming (gain, for instance) is under menu. Also, it does weird stuff, yes, but nothing you'd actually ever use onstage, trust me. besides the usual fare, the weird modules are, plainly, too weird.

Rackmount processors are not designed to be used on the fly, no matter which midi pedalboard you connect to them (and even connecting and programming one isnt' that simple a task, mind you). Also, they're generally no fun, have WAY too many parameters to quickly pinpoint the sound you're looking for unless you dedicate A LOT of time to programming, and they require endless volume levelling from patch to patch before you reach the correct setup.

Guitar stompboxes are, strangely enoiugh, the best, most practical, most easy-to-use, and most creative solution.

These days, I do the following: I run the mic thru an onstage mixing board (which is, actually, on stage and we use it for keyboard premix, monitoring and stuff; you can use instead a small mixing board, such as the smallest Behringer Xenix series, and use it only for that purpose), then output the INSERT connection to an array of guitar and bass stompboxes (you can choose whatever you like at that point, from Tube overdrive to octaver, bass synth, whatever and in any order). This is necessary because the impedance input of a stompbox, designed for guitar, will severely deflate the mic signal: you need to preamp it first, that's why i exit at the insert stage; after that, I can do two things: either RETURN with the insert cable itself into my mixing board onstage, then further route the wet mic signal from there, or forget altogether the RETURN part of the insert cable and go from the pedals into a FOH mixing board, which will be manned by the sound guy. Obviously the insert cable is pretty long in order to reach centerstage, but, unless you're playing Wembley Arena or LA Coliseum that wont be an issue.
To make it simple, you could simply have a custom-cased pedalboard that includes a micro mixer or preamp first, then the effect boxes right after it, right in front of the singer.

Mind you, the bottom line is, you cannot fully use stompboxes unless you preamp the mic signal beforehand, and secondly, you cannot get the results you want with heavy and extreme effects if you route the mic via FX or AUX send: that might work for reverb, but some effects, such as pitch shift, distortion, bass synth, etc., require the full signal to be routed thru them to work properly.

[wally28]

what are the advantages of using a radial splitter rather than a cheap XLR "Y" mic splitter?

[soundseeker]

Originally Posted by argomax

Hi, I have tried all those systems above since a long time ago, and Im not keen on any. The Digitech vocal processor, whatever the name is now (it has gone thru 3 or 4 name changes), can spark furious feedbacks that you won't be able to subdue easily because all the programming (gain, for instance) is under menu. Also, it does weird stuff, yes, but nothing you'd actually ever use onstage, trust me. besides the usual fare, the weird modules are, plainly, too weird.

Rackmount processors are not designed to be used on the fly, no matter which midi pedalboard you connect to them (and even connecting and programming one isnt' that simple a task, mind you). Also, they're generally no fun, have WAY too many parameters to quickly pinpoint the sound you're looking for unless you dedicate A LOT of time to programming, and they require endless volume levelling from patch to patch before you reach the correct setup.

Guitar stompboxes are, strangely enoiugh, the best, most practical, most easy-to-use, and most creative solution.

These days, I do the following: I run the mic thru an onstage mixing board (which is, actually, on stage and we use it for keyboard premix, monitoring and stuff; you can use instead a small mixing board, such as the smallest Behringer Xenix series, and use it only for that purpose), then output the INSERT connection to an array of guitar and bass stompboxes (you can choose whatever you like at that point, from Tube overdrive to octaver, bass synth, whatever and in any order). This is necessary because the impedance input of a stompbox, designed for guitar, will severely deflate the mic signal: you need to preamp it first, that's why i exit at the insert stage; after that, I can do two things: either RETURN with the insert cable itself into my mixing board onstage, then further route the wet mic signal from there, or forget altogether the RETURN part of the insert cable and go from the pedals into a FOH mixing board, which will be manned by the sound guy. Obviously the insert cable is pretty long in order to reach centerstage, but, unless you're playing Wembley Arena or LA Coliseum that wont be an issue.
To make it simple, you could simply have a custom-cased pedalboard that includes a micro mixer or preamp first, then the effect boxes right after it, right in front of the singer.

Mind you, the bottom line is, you cannot fully use stompboxes unless you preamp the mic signal beforehand, and secondly, you cannot get the results you want with heavy and extreme effects if you route the mic via FX or AUX send: that might work for reverb, but some effects, such as pitch shift, distortion, bass synth, etc., require the full signal to be routed thru them to work properly.

would the tc helicon live 2 pedal solve these problems?

[undercoverhippy]

Hi Guys,

I've spent ages trying to find a good discussion on this topic, so very happy to have stumbled across this thread!

I'm looking to buy an fx pedal for processing my voice prior to sending it to a Boss RC-50 loop pedal. As well as the usual delays, reverbs etc, I also want to be able to make snarling sub-bass with my voice to build up live dub-step/drum and bass style tracks. I know a few guys who do this kind of thing already:

Dub FX ( YouTube - Dub FX 18/04/2009 'Flow' feat. Woodnote ) uses a Boss GT-10b as far as I know, but I'm not sure whether he boosts the mic signal prior to the pedal. Anyway, check out his stuff, it's pretty amazing!

So my real question is, am I going to be able to create the same kind of deep bass sounds with another pedal, like the digitech for example? I'm guessing it's just an octaver effect with some distortion and modulation.. any ideas?

I've also been told that bass effects pedals are better than guitar effects pedals for processing vocals, as the freq ranges are more similar.

Another guy i know who uses loads of pedals hooked up is MC Xander... no idea what he uses except there is a kaos pad in there somewhere, but he gets some crazy sounds... all with his mouth again, no instruments or samples involved: YouTube - mc xander - sick of the lies

Boss are pushing their new VE-20 pedal as the solution to all our problems, and it's great that it has XLR in and out, but it doesn't look to me like it would do the job for the kind of extreme effects I want... anyone used one?

Cheers!!

Billy.

[FOURTHTUNZ]

Originally Posted by d1rtynyc

I always liked this for live:
DigiTech® Vx400
not exactly the most experimental, but it can get pretty extreme. Pair it with a Kaoss Pad.

I 3rd the vx400! You can use it as a pc interface, it has a built in drum machine and it's cheap!
The interface is a little busy cause it does so much but not hard to learn.

[baze sax]

maybe the lexicon mx 200 is a good match. it's simple to set up.

[kodaz]

I have a boss VE-20. It's great and will probably do most of what you want, i.e. it has flanger, dist, a vocal looper, dynamics, delays etc. There is a fair bit of room to customize these effects too. Obviously for a pedal there a limits, but for live purposes it suits me well. The only gripe I have is moving from patch to patch. You really need to use your hands because the pedal switch through different programs is a bit awkward, i.e. you have to hold for 2 seconds, then switch, then hold again for 2 seconds.

[blimpmason]

hey guys -

i have been experimenting with this as well. my setup is as follows:

SM58 -> splitter
direct out -> FOH
split out -> TC Electronic M-One XL

i only have one problem, and hopefully someone here may have a solution:

we use primarily reverb / delay combo. i want to make sure the FOH mixer is getting a pure wet signal and a pure dry signal. the direct out of the splitter takes care of the dry signal, but i can't figure out a way of getting a pure wet signal out of the M-One XL.

in order to have delay taps processed by the reverb there are only 2 internal routing options. if you set the "mix" to 100% so that the outputs are only sending 100% wet fx, when you speak into the mic there is no real-time reverb on the vocals. the reverb only sounds when the delay taps kick in. what we need is real-time 100% wet reverb, plus delay also feeding through the reverb. if we set the mix to 50% then the realtime reverb sounds, along with 50% dry signal in the mix, which means FOH is getting 150% dry signal.

is there no way of doing this besides buying two independent units? or can anyone recommend an FX unit that can handle this kind of routing?

i should mention we use a MIDI sequencer to fully automate the vocal FX so any alternate unit would need MIDI capability.

thank you!

[lolalola]

Originally Posted by kodaz

I have a boss VE-20. It's great and will probably do most of what you want, i.e. it has flanger, dist, a vocal looper, dynamics, delays etc. There is a fair bit of room to customize these effects too. Obviously for a pedal there a limits, but for live purposes it suits me well. The only gripe I have is moving from patch to patch. You really need to use your hands because the pedal switch through different programs is a bit awkward, i.e. you have to hold for 2 seconds, then switch, then hold again for 2 seconds.

Can anyone clarify if the VE-20 allows a wet AND dry signal that can be sent out to FOH? I know it has 2 xlr outs, but do they allow wet and dry, is that how it works? Thanks! If not the Boss, any similar unit that allows for this? I'd just want to give FOH both signals!

[theranga]

no the ve20 doesnt really. Some TC helicons allow for this.
Just plugged a ve-20 into a kaoss pad3...mad. wondering if a I need a splitter of some sort to get the left and right in, but the headphones sound stereo??