Members aZnrockstar Posted February 25, 2011 Members Share Posted February 25, 2011 I don't know when the last time was that someone has posted on this topic(usually stick to HCFX). I am collecting parts and ideas to build my own talkbox, and I need a few pointers. What I would like to end up with is something that carries an internal amplifier, has an instrument and microphone input, and a single line output. I'm looking at an Eminence driver(50w rms midrange). Do I need a 50w amp to drive this, or should I stay on the low side? I am thinking that pushing full range at peak power would probably kill the horn. I am thinking of using an impedance matcher to convert the microphone input to line level output to go back into my pedalboard. Is this a bad idea? My main concern is the size and power rating of the amp I need to use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted February 26, 2011 Members Share Posted February 26, 2011 I think a real talk box with a horn driver is a good project and very simple. I built one and they work like a champ. You get a fairly powerful horn driver and long plastic tube. Attatch the tube to the driver, run it up your mic stand parallel to the mic. Then you drive the horn driver with an amp of your choice. I've used my littel 15W marshall for this, but I've also used a smokey ciggarette amp. The only thing you need is a foot switch to turn it on and off. I used to take the guitar signal from my chorus pedals second output at the end of the chain, then run it through a cheap true bypass pedal. When the pedal was unplugged it would pass sound in the bypass mode and block it when turned on with no poer applied. Thats it. I step on it no signal would pass, then in bypass more it would feed an amp that would drive the horn driver, sound would pass up the plastic tube and The sound would reflect off the back of the throught into the mic. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1682170/Beckula%20%28master%29.wav If you want to build a vocoder type Digitech Talker pedal that uses the mics input to alter the guitar tone, good luck on that. My buddy used to have two of them and those suckers were always going out. For awhile Digitec would repair them. when they quit making them He'd bring them to me to repair. I could repair the controlls, jacks and switches, but as far as the electronics, they were multilaterd boards with a tone of chips. I couldnt even find a schematic for them, but once you get look under the hood you know why they cost so much. to build from scratch, its just niot going to happen. You'll easily spend a grand on it and would need to be a highly experienced engineer to deengineer one to build one. I'd definately stick with the old school type with a driver and plastic tube. The ones that look like foot pedals simply have a small driver in the box. What I did with mine is just hung the driver in a cloth bag that hangs on the mic stand. This way the tube doesnt have to be 6' long and you dont loose all that sound quality. Get yourself a good horn driver like a JBL or older Altec that can handel the wattage ypou may want to drive it with and you're in business. My buddy had one in the 70s and he could switch between his guitar cab and Marshall head. Its not the way I'd run it cause you spike the head switching elements like that. I run mine with both the guitar amp running and amp for the voice box driver. Then I just switch the singnal on feeding the voice box amp and that sound comes through the PA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted February 26, 2011 Moderators Share Posted February 26, 2011 I'd stay away from going full power, that is, a 50 watt amp into the 50 watt driver full range. I don't know that it would damage the driver, but it's not necessary, so why take the chance? There are lots of nice low power amps available these days, as well as plans for building your own. Around 15 watts seems a common size, and should work great for this application. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members aZnrockstar Posted February 26, 2011 Author Members Share Posted February 26, 2011 Definitely thinking about standard old school talkbox here. I'm considering using a practice amp of appropriate size to power it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members aZnrockstar Posted February 26, 2011 Author Members Share Posted February 26, 2011 Just found an old Marshall amp that happens to be 15w, 8ohms. All I need is $30 for that horn... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted February 27, 2011 Members Share Posted February 27, 2011 There you go then. I scored a driver off EBay about 15 years ago really cheap. Its was a mid driver, not a high frequency driver. You dont want a high frequency driver because they might have an alluminum element and just put out high frequency only and shread the element if you try to push the mids you need. I think mine was from one of those Pagine horns you see in Factories, maybe its a 50w ducane or something like that designed for full frequency voice applications. JBL or Old Altec drivers work real good. Something like this may work http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=264-204 Something like this would not work well because of its design and frequency responce is too high http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=290-446 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted February 27, 2011 Moderators Share Posted February 27, 2011 I should do this, too. I have an old Cobreflex driver around here, somewhere... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MDLMUSIC Posted February 27, 2011 Members Share Posted February 27, 2011 I made one from a 25W Gorilla amp, some plastic tubing, an A/B footswitch, and a small traffic cone. I just hotglued the traffic cone over the speaker portion of the amp, hot glued the tube to the top of the traffic cone and used the A/B switch to choose between my regular amp and the talkbox amp. I laid the amp on its back so the cone was pointing straight up. Looked extremely funky onstage, but it sure was a topic of conversation! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members aZnrockstar Posted February 27, 2011 Author Members Share Posted February 27, 2011 I'm looking at a Selenium D250-x horn. Looks like the closest to what I need. 400-9khz. The problem is now finding an amp that can drive it at sufficient levels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted February 28, 2011 Members Share Posted February 28, 2011 One of these will work http://www.smokeyamps.com/products These put out enough power, have the extension speaker jack and will overdrive nicely. When you get board of using the talk box thay make for a handy practice amp too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members aZnrockstar Posted February 28, 2011 Author Members Share Posted February 28, 2011 That's going to be pretty dirty, no? I don't mind overdrive on talkbox, but I want to have enough power to drive it cleanly, and add overdrive after the effect. The horn I want to use is rated at 150w rms at 8ohms, I believe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted February 28, 2011 Members Share Posted February 28, 2011 Its actually overdrive that makes the horn work right for a voice box, but yea, you may want something cleaner and add drive to that afterwards. Keep on mind, you are going to be putting all that horn power in your mouth and it can rattel your teeth. 5~10W is more that you could ever yell into a mic. a 150w driver is really over kill unless you have some wisdom teeth to remove, then I'd say just hook it up to a tube head. May save you some money at the dentist, and with the price of gold, it may be a good way to cash in at $1000 an ounce. Just kidding of cource. I've used my littel marshall practice andp, and unstalled a speaker out jack that kills the internal speaker. I run the master on maybe 3 or 4 and crank the preamp drive up so its highly driven sounding. Its a bitch to haul to gigs though and set up. I found its just as effective using the littel smokey and a lot easier to set up. Its not like you're driving a regular guitar speaker and will be using alot of other effects or using it clean. Your mouth will mask all that completely. You just need overdrive voiced for guitar that sustains notes long enough to mime out the words and the amp acting as vocal cords. If you need more sustain then just use a compressor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ptkbass Posted February 28, 2011 Members Share Posted February 28, 2011 and a small traffic cone...... I think that is brilliant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members aZnrockstar Posted February 28, 2011 Author Members Share Posted February 28, 2011 The problem is finding a good driver that hits midrange at a low enough wattage. WRGKMC, what kind of horn are you using? The one you linked is the same one I'm looking to purchase, and it's a 150w. Obviously, I don't want to pump 150w into it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Bim1959 Posted March 1, 2011 Members Share Posted March 1, 2011 And nobody said you had to. It just HANDLES 150 watts, meaning that's the most it'll take. The car you drive, the speedometer says it'll top out at 120mph, right? Does that mean that you drive it at 120mph? Of course not.It's overkill for what you need but it'll do the purpose. It's not going to hurt anything pushing it with a 15 watt amp. It'll never see it's full potential. Besides, you'll probably run it without a crossover and to handle lower frequencies the lower the power the better. You dont want to have to constantly replace diaphragms, do you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members aZnrockstar Posted March 1, 2011 Author Members Share Posted March 1, 2011 And nobody said you had to. It just HANDLES 150 watts, meaning that's the most it'll take. The car you drive, the speedometer says it'll top out at 120mph, right? Does that mean that you drive it at 120mph? Of course not.It's overkill for what you need but it'll do the purpose. It's not going to hurt anything pushing it with a 15 watt amp. It'll never see it's full potential. Besides, you'll probably run it without a crossover and to handle lower frequencies the lower the power the better. You dont want to have to constantly replace diaphragms, do you? Yes, I have taken that into consideration, based on recommendations from this thread. I will have a 150w horn. Can't find anything below that with the desired frequency response. Need to know how big an amp I have to use. A lower power amp is fine, as long as it will give me enough volume. That's my biggest concern now. I have, and was planning on using a 15w Marshall practice amp. Think that will do the trick? If not, I have to go amp shopping. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members aZnrockstar Posted March 1, 2011 Author Members Share Posted March 1, 2011 Oh, and violin don't need no overdrive to sustain for days Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted March 1, 2011 Members Share Posted March 1, 2011 The most thing thats important is the SPL rating. The higher the SPL, the less power you need to drive it to make it loud. Frequency responce isnt super critical. You're only going to get midranve squeezed through that tube and very littel else. Amp drive and saturation you'll find to be critical with any instrument you use. Unless the sound is driven you wont be able to mouth the parts well enough to pick up with the mic. As I mentioned befor I used a 15 W solid state marshall set in maybe 4 max and thats maybe 5w. keep in mind 5W for a horn is alot of power because thay normally drive high frequencies. Woofers on the other hand may need 5x the amount of power to sound equal to the ear. You will have some special considerations if you plan on using a violin. I do play fiddel as well and have one with an acoustic bridge I installed. Main problem is going to be the limited frequency responce in the upper mids, and lack of bass responce. If it was a guitar, I'd say that smokey amp may be all you need to drive it. With a fiddel you may need an amp that has some EQ control so you can dial the sound in. Guitar amps really arent voiced for fiddel but you'll just have to do the best you can. I'd select one with a trebble, bass and mid, and an amp with fairly wide fidelity. One of those 10~15w peavey practice amps should do the trick. If you get one with a drive knob and master volume you should be fine. The drive is key as I mentioned. Drive is a form of compression. When the signal is driven the peaks are clipped and the softer notes are boosted. This maintains a constistant volume level when using the tube and miming words with the tube. The sound going into the mouth is fairly monotone, but you can hear frequency changes. The mouth itself is what gives you the tone changes. Depending one weather you are using the throught or just the mouth, the length of reflaction will determine how bassey or shrill the note will sound. The mouth and throught absorb alot of the harshness and reflect back alot of midrange tone. So as I said, wattage is not a loudness rating, its a power consumption rating. But knowing the loudness of most amps and what they produce, a 5~10W amp with a horn driver rated at 90+db should do the trick just fine. The frequency range of the normal talking voice is in the 1K range, singing voice will reach from say 600 to 6K maybe. If anything, on a fiddle you're going to have to push the low and mid frequencies harder than you would a guitar. The high end fidelity of a fiddel will be absorbed passing through the tube and mouth. You wouldnt want alot of that anyway because it would sound awful. Basically youre using drive to creats a sustained reed sound that mimicks the human voice box. If you have to, you can even try an old HiFi amp head then just throw something like a tube screamer in front of it. It will provide the gain you need and help to push the mid saturation up. It is going to be difficult to operate the thing with a fiddel though unless you know how to play it between the elbow and hand. Tucked under the chin its going to be a bitch mouthing notes with the tube and mic. I find it difficult enough with a guitar and getting the breathing down. You tend to hold your breath at first using the contraption. If I get a chance, I'll pull mine out and try it with the fiddel to see if I can give you some more specific suggestions of what will work. I have a few songs to complete recording and one has a fiddel part. Maybe a voice box will give me some cool tones I can use with the fiddel tracking and I can post you an example of what you can get. I may wind up with bleedover through the mic though with an acoustic fiddel. My buddy has a 6 string solid body fiddel he just had built for himself. Maybe that will do the trick. He could play the thing and I could work the voice box or something like that. Reamping the fiddel part through the voice box with a track I already have recorded would be another option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members fatusstratus Posted March 1, 2011 Members Share Posted March 1, 2011 Those little smokey amps WRGKMC is talking about are basicall LM386 "amp on a chip" things - they are RALLY easy to use and require really minimal external components so they are cheap and really easy to use.BTW if power is a problem, nationaal semiconductor makes a whole line of those up to abt 120 watts (though working with the bigger ones do require some more overhead) but also like WRGKMC was talking about - don't get too hung up on power rating - esp with a horn driver...on a full range amp most of that juice is going to your lower frequencies anyway and you will probably be throwing too much amp at a little driver anyway and not really using that amp to its potential (but still paying the cost/size penalty) The overdrive isn't really for sustain, you are feeding the sound into a filter -- so more harmonic complexity gives the filter something to "Grab" on to - a filter needs stuff to take away FWIW I've run a leslie cab off an SWR interstellar overdrive- that's like 3-5 watts, "watts" is a crappy crappy measurement for SPL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members aZnrockstar Posted March 1, 2011 Author Members Share Posted March 1, 2011 I thought that usually talkboxes are put early in the chain, but maybe not. I know that with my wah, overdrive is a necessity for violin(for me), simply because the compression helps keep the level in check. Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way, and the talkbox will end up being better right before my delay and reverb instead of at the front of the chain. I bet some compressed chorus and echo would sound pretty cool going into it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mrbrown49 Posted March 1, 2011 Members Share Posted March 1, 2011 I thought that usually talkboxes are put early in the chain, but maybe not. I know that with my wah, overdrive is a necessity for violin(for me), simply because the compression helps keep the level in check. Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way, and the talkbox will end up being better right before my delay and reverb instead of at the front of the chain. I bet some compressed chorus and echo would sound pretty cool going into it. By definition talk boxes have to be at the end of the chain, unless you put effects on the mic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members aZnrockstar Posted March 1, 2011 Author Members Share Posted March 1, 2011 Yeah, that makes sense now. I had always thought of them being used like a wah pedal, but that wouldn't work. I will be sending my microphone into a small mixer to bring it back to the proper level, and use a looper pedal to cancel the whole talkbox circuit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted March 1, 2011 Members Share Posted March 1, 2011 You just have to try them. I find a clean driven signal works best, maybe an actual compressor befor a tube screamer type box. Chorus and echo wont be heard and will likely just clutter up the signal. Wah or a phaser will likely be a fail too. You see your mouth is the wah wha. Maybe a octiviser would sound cool where you have a split voice at say the root and 3rd, 5th or octave. They are kind of shakey to get a steady note with though. The analogy here is like using a small transistor radio with a 1" speaker in front of a PA mic. You arent going to make out details of chorus, echo, that require some kind of fidelity to appreciate. All you need is good drive to make the sound coming out sound like a synthasizer note. The wah if used as a parametric filter to give you a mid boost may work out OK, but you just need to experiment with it and see what feels confortable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members fatusstratus Posted March 2, 2011 Members Share Posted March 2, 2011 Yeah, that makes sense now. I had always thought of them being used like a wah pedal, but that wouldn't work. I will be sending my microphone into a small mixer to bring it back to the proper level, and use a looper pedal to cancel the whole talkbox circuit. well.. you can put it wherever you want, but the mic and mic signal conditioning and everything is all one big "unit" in the processing chain. FWIW - I think it's good you are being sensitive to differences in your instrument (I didn't start on guitar myself and still occasionally break out the violincello to torture my pets) BUT the talkbox is pretty radical processing - you are running the signalk into a little "speaker" then shooting it down a tube (and that is a resonator) and into a multiple resonator system (the second half of your vocal tract) so 'fidelity' isn't really a big part of it. I'm wondering if you might be more happy with one of the newer vocoder products - EHX makes a nice little one.It has some advantages like not having a wet tube in your mouth, it's much easier to place it anywhere in the chain, and it can preserve more of your "source quality" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members aZnrockstar Posted March 2, 2011 Author Members Share Posted March 2, 2011 Well, I'm halfway set to building the thing, so I'll finish it. I suppose I will post clips and give a full process/review once it's done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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