Talk box position in chain & OUT4 vs OUT1

FarleyUK

FarleyUK

Inspired
Hi all,

I have my Dunlop MXR talk box input coming from OUT3 of the AFX3 (set to copy input 1), and I have the stereo outs of OUT4 feeding our mixer. Both are set to the max PAD settings of 18dB.

At rehearsal last night, I noticed the talk box sounded pretty crap, with no sustain - where do you normally position this in the chain? Should it be after the AMP block?

Also, OUT4 was pretty distorted; I reset the PAD setting but that made no difference; I then moved the cables to OUT1, and it was much better. What am I overlooking here? OUT4 is set a block on all presets at the end of the full signal chain, the same as OUT1.

Thanks!
 
I use a vocoder (ehx 256), but my thoughts:
I position it after the amp (and also modulations as sometimes a little movement adds a nice texture). While it’s tempting to have a pretty gained up time feeding it, I find that edge of breakup and clean tones work better for articulation. I’m not familiar with the MXR, but I found the same (not using too much gain) years ago running the Rocktron Banshee which had its own built in gain.

Additionally, I run it without a cab/IR in line (as a parallel path). This could potentially be the source of your unwanted distortion as both the cab and talk of in serial could create excessive peaking for some frequencies. I think IRs raise the overall level as well, so you could be hitting the MXR with too loud of a signal. (I’m not 100% sure on that though).
 
I’ve got mine after the amp block; when I switch to it, it bypass the cab block but still goes through all my post-amp/cab effects. Didn’t have any issues running it that way at all, plenty of volume.

I was devoted about 30 minutes to running a 57 into the AxeFX so I could keep it entirely self-contained; IE- the Talk Box sound would come out of my AxeFX instead of going to a PA. I couldn’t get the signal strong enough back into the AxeFX. I’m sure if I spent a little more time dicking around I could get it, but gave up that day because I had shit I actually had to record.
 
I use a Rocktron Banshee and put it before the Axe FX input and it sounds great.

Guitar -> Tuner -> Talk Box -> Axe FX input.
 
I set the MXR AFTER the amp in the end, and I think it worked out very well - helped that we had a sound engineer doing the FoH sound as well! Gain was almost zero, tone was around 10 o'clock and volume was about 3 o'clock.

 
No need for this actually. The mxr has its own amplification and distortion. Thanks to @yek: mxr at output 3 (or 4) linked directly after input 1; level out at front set to maximum.
 
Ad on 1: with an expression pedal and two volume blocks I morph between normal amped signal chain and talk box (which is always on). Works like a charm. See youtube tutorial by @Cooper Carter for this set up.
Ad on 2: have a guitar wireless in a rack case together with my AF3 so that is why I prefer this setup. Now looking for a cost friendly (I'm Dutch) cable snake-ish solution to reduce the amount of cables from three to one again (fc12 xlr + talk box humbuster signal + talk box 18 Vdc power). Ideas?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom