You gotta dig the folks over at EHX. They take classic designs then put their own unique twist on them. I’ve been considering getting one of their envelope filter pedals for awhile, but then they recently released a harmonizer pedal called the Voice Box that is very intriguing. I myself have been using DigiTech’s Vocalist Live 4 for a few years, and it has served and continues to serve me well. But after a few years of gigging, things are starting to wear down, and some buttons are just plain broken.
As such, I’ve been looking at either getting a new VL4 or going with a completely different unit altogether. The TC Helicon VoiceLive Touch seems pretty cool, but this new entry by EHX warrants a deep investigation; especially as it is priced at under $220 street, where the VL4 and VoiceLive Touch run about $500.
Granted, the Voice Box doesn’t have many tweaking features, and it doesn’t have nearly the amount of presets as the VL4 or VoiceLive. However, from what I could gather from watching a couple of videos, the sound quality of the harmonies is great, and it includes a vocoder! Now THAT is cool!
For me as a solo gigging musician, a harmonizer has been an important part of my rig. And after years of use of my VL4, I have to admit that I only use four of the 100 presets of my VL4 – just four! So with the EHX’s nine presets, if I can get the harmonies that I use most often, then I may just have to get it. Besides, at around $220, it’s not going to run me broke. It also means that as a pedal, I can mount it on my pedal board, and not have a big unit that I have to run separately into my board. As I only use three effects on my board, there’ll be plenty of real estate to take this pedal!
Here’s a video:
Part Cool.. part annoying, on the vid.
I got the TC Harmony G XT a few weeks ago and found it very useful as well as easy to program and upgrade even for a novice like me.
http://www.tc-helicon.com/harmony-g-xt-tutorial-videos/
Pretty much cool as can be expected from a tiny unit.. Don’t get me wrong, if I get the chance to try the EH without having to buy it first, I’m there… They should have a demo room at the benicia site… That’s only about a half hour from me…
Quite annoying at the end with the vocoder. 🙂
Question though… why did you choose the Harmony G over the VoiceLive Touch? Just curious.
I love EHX pedals. I use their Magnum 44 as my power amp and just picked up the Micro POG today in fact. Thanks for the video post, I now grok how voice box effects work. This pedal doesn’t currently seem to fit what I’m doing, but I love it.