Technically, how does a "talk box" work (RE: Frampton, Jeff Beck, etc.)?

[Willie G. Moseley]

I'm wondering about the actual interaction between the tube in the mouth and the guitar.

And is the preferred term (nowadays) "talk box", "voice box", "squawk box" (albeit different from other items with that particular term), or something else?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Steve Haynie]

The guitar is just a tone generator.  Your mouth is the equivalent of a modulation wheel on a keyboard. 

[Stike]

It's basically a horn driver from a PA speaker. Plug the speaker output from an amplifier into it and replace the horn with the tube. Stick the tube in your mouth and start playing. 

[Rich_S]

Traditionally, talk boxes were just as Stike described, a PA driver connected to a plastic tube.  It required an amplifier to power it.  Ritchie Sambora reportedly used a  Fender Showman head to power his Framptone talk box. Why it didn't rattle the teeth out of his head, we'll never know.

Usually, the talk box would be powered by a separate guitar amp from the guitarist's normal amp. So, you'd need an A/B switch to re-route your signal to the talk box amp instead of the regular amp.  So the signal goes guitar, amp, talk box, plastic tube, mouth.  Then you play and move your mouth around to change the sound.  The sound coming out your mouth isn't very loud, so you have to do this in front of a vocal mic to amplify it through the PA, just as if you were singing, except the sound is generated by the talk box instead of your vocal chords.

That's the OLD way to do it.  Modern talk boxes like the MXR are self-contained units that include a bypass switch to shut off the normal amp signal, plus a little solid state amp and the driver.  This way, you don't need the extra amp head, and the whole thing sits on your pedalboard.  You still need a vocal mic to make it audible to the audience.

Modern talk boxes are a lot simpler to use, but the DIYer in me likes the old way.  Come to think of it, I have a pair of heavy duty Atlas Sound drivers stashed away and I've been meaning to build myself a new talk box. 

[HAMERMAN]

I have the MXR talk box and it works well. Using one takes some getting used to because it's a pretty strange feeling to have a guitar sound piped into your mouth. You also feel goofy as hell using it because you are making the motions of talking but the sound that comes out doesn't sound like normal talking (which is of course the whole point).

The MXR is heavy as far as pedals go but otherwise is about as convenient as a talkbox can get.

 

[The Shark]

Check your fillings...

[Bennyboy-UK]

Checking TGP about talk boxes, Eric Johnson had all his fillings changed to gold amalgam as it has a more pleasing vintage tone when compared to the modern mid-scooped sounding silver amalgam fillings that are all the rage these days

[hamerhead]

9 hours ago, Rich_S said:

Usually, the talk box would be powered by a separate guitar amp from the guitarist's normal amp. So, you'd need an A/B switch to re-route your signal to the talk box amp instead of the regular amp

I have a 50W Dean Markley Voice Box from the '70s (is there any bandwagon I didn't jump on?) that has a speaker in and a speaker out so you use one amp and the footswitch basically A/Bs between your amp speaker and the talk box. On the plus side you only need 1 amp, but it also mutes your amp speaker when in use. One cool thing is the light bulb inside it that protects that driver from too much power - the louder your amp, the brighter the light.

You can use them like an Ebow too by putting the tube near the pickup and getting individual strings to feedback depending on how close or far away you have it. You know, for when you get bored playing Rocky Mountain Way.

[Rich_S]

Yeah, most of the commercial talk boxes in the late '70s had a footswitch to select between your usual speaker and the talk box, allowing you to use just your one amp.  However, I'm not a big fan of adding a failure-prone stomp switch, a couple of 1/4" jacks, and two long cable runs between the output of a tube amp and its speaker.  Marshalls in particular were very sensitive to open circuits on their speaker outputs and any little failure in all the talk box-related wiring was just ASKING for a blown output transformer.  That's why most guys used a separate amp and A/B switch.  Frampton uses several miscellaneous amps in his main rig, but he has a 50-watt Marshall dedicated to his talk box.

Rocky Mountain Way is a special case.  Joe Walsh didn't need an A/B switch because he used a whole different GUITAR for the talk box part.  He used an open-tuned guitar for the main slide parts in the song, then slung that around on his back and played the talk box solo on a different guitar in standard tuning. Very Neilsen-esque.

[velorush]

Gosh, I was only ever around one once (around 1982), but as I recall (I'm remembering it was Electro Harmonix) you just plugged your guitar into a stomp box, the stomp box sent your guitar signal through the tube up to the mic and the PA put out the modified (oralized?) sound.  I Googled a picture:

Was this one different, or am I not remembering how it all worked?  Maybe I didn't understand at the time what was actually going on.  I didn't set it up; I walked into a friend's store and he already had it set up and working.  I don't recall any amp in the setup other than the PA.

[Rich_S]

That EHX was one of the first ones that provided its own amplification.  The earliest talkboxes (most notably, Heil) needed an external amp.  We're talking late '70s: Jeff Beck, Rocky Mountain Way, Frampton Comes Alive, Joe Perry on Sweet Emotion and Walk This Way.  

The EHX came a bit later.  I think Rocktron made a similar one.

[LefThanDed]

"I like Zapp not Zappa
So please quit your jibba jabba" - Hot Chip's  Night and Day

 

[Dana_V]

I've never owned one, but I always seem to end up playing with somebody who does.

Back in the 70s I played with a guy that had a Heil Talk Box. Even as teenagers we deduced that running speaker cables from his amp (a Peavey Mace) to the talk box and back was a recipe for disaster, so we rigged up a switch box so he could power it from a separate amp (a silverface Fender Super Reverb, if I remember correctly). We didn't have access to a decent footswitch, so we put together a little box with a mini-switch from Radio Shack that he taped to his mic stand. Aside from the occasional ground loop issue between the two amps, it worked pretty well.

Here's a photo from 1978 with a pretty good view of the homemade switch box; that's me in the background about to go Pete Townshend on another cheap guitar (loaded with smoke bombs, of course). There's a lot of Peavey in this picture.

 

The guy I've played with since 1999 uses a box he built himself out of an old horn driver; he powers it with a Crate Powerblock and has an A/B/Both footswitch on his pedalboard. And so of course we do "Rocky Mountain Way" (I play the slide part) and sometimes "Show Me the Way." People love it. The joke is that The Tube gets more attention than the band does. As the talk box part in "Rocky" has gotten longer over the years, I use that opportunity to touch up my tuning, drink water, check my email, read a novel, take a nap, etc. Sometimes someone will come up and ask "what's that tube for?" His standard answer is, "It's a breathalyzer -- if I get too drunk my amp shuts off."

[Rich_S]

Do you play the RMW slide in open or standard tuning?

After this thread, I want to haul out those drivers from the junk box, build a nice talk box, and power it with my new Vox MV-50 "Rock" model mini-amp.

[velorush]

29 minutes ago, LefThanDed said:

"I like Zapp 

Love me some Zapp!  

RIP Rodger! 

[Dana_V]

26 minutes ago, Rich_S said:

Do you play the RMW slide in open or standard tuning?

I play it in standard -- back in '77 I didn't really know about open tunings yet, so that's how I learned it.

[cmatthes]

11 minutes ago, Ed Rechts said:

You had me at Peavey Mace  

 

[Bennyboy-UK]

I can simulate the effect by farting into a miked up watering can

[Willie G. Moseley]

Betcha them Peavey Mace amps and speakers shown in the Pete Townshend impersonator photo are still roadworthy.

[Rich_S]

BTW, I'll add a little technical nerd-stuff here.  If anyone is thinking of building a DIY talkbox out of a PA driver, make sure you protect it from low frequencies with a crossover cap.  Most PA drivers are designed for mids or highs, and even the full-range drivers for voice-only systems are only good down to about 800 or maybe 500 Hz.  Lower frequencies can blow them if they are not protected.  The simplest way to do this is to add a non-polarized electrolytic cap in series with the driver: the value depends on the impedance of the driver and the crossover frequency you want to achieve.  Parts Express has a calculator on their web site to help with selecting the right cap for the job.

[ARM OF HAMER]

                                                      I had one for a while when I was doing fusion stuff..................... here is a master using it briefly for the subtle effect it was really meant for 

 

[jwhitcomb3]

I recall seeing a kit in the 70s for converting a Pignose amp into a talk box. Essentially it was a plastic funnel you placed over the amp's speaker that fed into surgical housing leading up to your mic.