I've been hearing a NEW TALKBOX

[M2E]

Of course we all love the Roger Troutman sound. And I wish I could get my hands on what he use's( which someone told me that he made it himself) But what are the new producers using now? Like Teddy Riley, DJ Quick to make it sound so close. I bought a Heil Talkbox and it's cool but not the real thing, not even close. Anybody know this one?

[tsampson]

Roger Troutman, God rest his soul, used a Heil Talkbox, if we are talking about the "Peter Frampton" thing. A friend engineered a session and Roger asked him not to reveal the technique. I doubt it matters now. All I was told was it was a combination of the talkbox, a specific guitar with a specific amp, a certain mic (and for some reason I think it was the ubiquitous SM57) and EQ setting, and as you might guess, Roger's skill in performance. My favorite was "Ooo, There She Was" the Scritti Politti tune. There are numerous ways to approximate it, maybe try Bruno or Virus. Or you could woodshed the talkbox...

[Chucky]

Check out the Electrix Warp Factory. Talkbox, vocoder and then some - with a lot more control. You can even "capture" any sound you sing & then sweep it up and down like a synth filter.

C

[Disco_Doctor]

I recorded Roger back in '97 on a pop/R&B project. For starters, I'll tell you this - the supercool Troutman talkbox sound does not come from the gear, it comes from the performer. Roger's gear was (as best as I can remember) - a little wood box with a small 5" or 6" speaker mounted in it with a couple of wood screws, a Radio Shack 100 watt power amp, a flimsy piece of 20 gauge speaker wire wrapped around the amp and speaker leads, and a piece of really old and well used surgical tubing, which connected to the box with a large mass of duct tape mushed up all around the end. We had an SST Mini-Moog there for Roger to play, and we mic'd Roger's mouth with a Sony C800. The resulting sound was "THE" Roger Troutman sound to a tee. The moral of the story is that, obviously, the cool sound had little or nothing to do with the gear being used.

The funniest part of that session, (besides Roger, who ran around the room in a frenzy between takes cracking everybody up, and who at one point got so excited that he started talking like Donald Duck - no - I'm not kidding)...I digress - the funniest thing was afterwards, Roger went into the iso booth with the surgical tube and swung it around in a circle over his head really really fast, thereby clearing out all the spit and other particles in the tube and distributing it all evenly on the walls.

[Huby SEA]

WOW!! Your Iso-boot has become a real collector's Item: "Look, here's still some traces of Roger's spit!"

[Fletcher]

Originally posted by M2E:
I bought a Heil Talkbox and it's cool but not the real thing, not even close. Anybody know this one?

If it's an "old" Heil Talkbox it is the real thing.

Back in the day, if you couldn't afford one, you'd pick up a cheap amp (one that had some tone like a Fender Champ) then steal a compression driver (most of the time we stole them from the high school football field...they were using JBL 1" drivers!!)...get a 6' length of 1" plastic tube and stick it on the end of the compression driver...tape the tube so it sticks like 3-4" past the head of a Shure SM-58...and practice with it a whole lot.

Works like a charm!!

------------------
Fletcher
Mercenary Audio
mercenaryaudio.com

[knewbee]

Disco Doctor,
Hey, thanks for the classic anecdote!

[dabu2012]

I think electro harmioncs made one called the Golden Throut.

dave

[Eric Heil]

All this talk over the "Talk Box" and I have yet to see a single penny of royalty... LOL

Disco_Doctor is right! It's the performer not the gear! The big fancy gear is for US, LESS TALENTED FOLKS to get the sounds that the real genius' of the music world can pour out through a reltive pile of garbage!

I've seen the best gear sound like crap and crap gear sound like the best!

That's MY $.02

Eric Heil
The Loft Recording Studios
Lawrenceville, GA

[M2E]

Man thanx you guys. I'm a big fan of Roger and Teddy Riley. I used to work with a fellow writer of his Billy Beck(Ohio Players) and all he said is that he use to stack it about 100 times.
Also a friend of mine Robert Palmer said that he use to stack each line 8 to 16 times.
Dang.......
Well anyway, anybody else?