reverb pedal for live vocals?

[JGriffin]

I have seen some cats get a great sound by using dedicated vocal mikes for the reverb and clean. It kinda obviates the need to have a footswitch and also allows you to put the verb on single words or phrases.

When I mixed the Willy Waldman Project, this is what Willy did with his trumpet. Worked great. Also saw Jack White do his vocals that way on live TV. Also cool.

The The has also done this for years.

[Eric Rottmayer]

this one looks cool but haven't heard it:

http://www.ehx.com/products/voice-box

anyone?

[vorian]

this one looks cool but haven't heard it:

http://www.ehx.com/products/voice-box

anyone?

Haven't seen it used live but WAY WAY cool sounding.

[chris harris]

I play mostly in small clubs, house shows, or "non-conventional" venues which usually have no outboard fx. Here's what I'm thinking: plug vox mic into 'lil notepad mixer (mine) on stage, run 'verb on send, run main into DI for soundguy, maybe I could run a dry insert for monitors, too?

Adding a second mixer into the equation just complicates gain staging. That's not the kind of curveball you want to throw the kid who works 6 hours a night at the shitty venue for $40.

A much simpler method is this....

plug your mic into this:

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/pr ... sku=336317

then, using an XLR to 1/4" TS cable, take one output and put it through your pedal and then into a DI. This is your "wet" signal for the house.

The other output from the mic splitter is for a clean monitor send.

It's easy. It's cheap. And, engineers (and even "soundguys") will love you for it.

Thanks for all the responses guys. From my experiences, I would have thought that all soundguys would prefer less work, but maybe that's not that case. Or maybe all the guys I know half-ass it.

See, to me this is the biggest problem with these threads. The idea that this provides "less work" is completely misguided. You're providing more work, that is less predictable, and uncontrollable from FOH.

And, this attitude is part of what causes the rift between artist and engineer. There's an implied lack of trust when you presume to do some of their work for them. There's also a definite lack of understanding about the nature of live sound in different venues.

Oh, and I should say this is partially inspired by the Vivian Girls. They tour with (3) EHX Holy Grail pedals, one for each vocal mic!

I'm guessing that they also tour with a sound engineer who is accustomed to integrating their pedals into a variety of house systems and who has a good plan for monitoring.

I'm not exactly ANTI using pedals from the stage for vocals. But, I would agree that if you're doing it, it should be for some really special reason.... either you use some esoteric sound or you need to change effects throughout the set. In the second case, you should have all of your presets LOCKED DOWN AND DIALED IN. Getting varying levels from different patches of a stage effect, or even wildly varying levels between pedal on and bypass, is a huge reason why dealing with this stuff sucks.

But, most of the time people bring pedals on stage for vocals, it's because they're MASSIVELY insecure about their singing and/or they think that the engineer is standing between them and the opportunity to have a killer voice.

[calaverasgrandes]

I dont know about massive distrust and all that, but having done sound in the 90's when there were all these guys trying to al jourgensen their voices from stage... well yeah the varying level thing sucks a lot. It is very difficult to keep the vocals front and center when the level changes by 10-20db within a song or from song to song. Of course this was the era of the Quadraverb, so it was way too easy to have one patch giving you a nice 50/50 mix of direct and effected sound, then the very next patch be 100% effect with a very long decay. BOOOOOOOOOM. Sure there are way to work with this, like putting a very tight compressor on that vocal channel. But in the end what happened was that the vocal would sound like shit at least twice during the set, and everyone looks at the sound guy. Audience members dont know the difference between the sound guy fx rig or the vocaist fx rig. They just want to rock. When the verb is too big to hear the vocal they assume the FOH fucked up. If they look up at him and he has a pissed look on his face they are SURE its his fault!
This is why sound guys (and girls) are reticent to endorse such behavior.
If you really want to go there rig it so the FOH gets a wet and dry feed.
Use impedance adapters and DI boxes so you keep it low noise. All of the acts that I have seen that pulled it off
A) facilitated the FOH guy's job by giving him some nice mic level feeds.
B) were sound engineer types themselves so they were respectful, helpful and chummy.

I even showed up at a gig one time and the band not only had a wet and a dry feed for me, they had my choice of line or mic level, XLR or 1/4", a set list with the songs numbered and color coded, (you can just turn it off during these 4 songs) and they gave me their drink tickets for "being such trouble". Dude I hugged them all and gave the drink tickets right back (I had run of the bar at that venue, not that I was so cool. I also had to barback!) This crazy band had all their stuff sequenced, and had reverb/FX changes cued up, down to the chorus and verse of each song!
Yeah, 90's! Go MMT8! Go Quadraverb!

[darjama]

+1 for the extra mic or splitter if that works better. The best advice is be prepared to be flexible.

I'd tell the venue it's an effects feed, not just a reverb. When you sound check, run some delay patches or something as well.

And though it may send a shiver up calaverasgrandes's spine, I'd pick up some old rackmount thing like a quadraverb, where you can change effects patches and bypass the effects with a footswitch. Just make sure to thoroughly check your levels to make it easier on everyone.

[calaverasgrandes]

Hey nothing particularly wrong with a quadraverb. In the right hands they sound awesome. I used to hook a midi controller to one so I could change the pitch shift on my voice in real time. Not exactly Troutman but neat. Sing one verse in chipmunk, the next verse in Vader.
The problem with Q-verbs is that its way too easy to get the levels all screwy. They are far from idiot proof in this respect. It is also confusing to most folks on how to actually set the internal levels!
I think this is why later model midiverbs and such had autolevel sensing.

[Grapejuice]

My suggestion would be to use whatever pedal you end up picking plugged into a keyboard amp or perhaps a small mixer into a powered monitor speaker.

Use this set up to rehearse with your band and get the balance of all the instruments and your voice so you can hear all things at their optimum levels without vox feedback. This will be the most difficult part.

From there you can show up at the club knowing you've got the sound you want on your vox, you've worked out all the kinks with level changes etc if you're changing effects settings and you know you can hear yourself without the club's PA/monitors.

Now all the in house guy has to do is take another feed from your mixer and put it in the house along with the other instruments.

[vvv]

I have seen some cats get a great sound by using dedicated vocal mikes for the reverb and clean. It kinda obviates the need to have a footswitch and also allows you to put the verb on single words or phrases.

When I mixed the Willy Waldman Project, this is what Willy did with his trumpet. Worked great. Also saw Jack White do his vocals that way on live TV. Also cool.

The The has also done this for years.

Also, Janes Addiction.

And isn't that how Plant did some vocals on ...Clarksdale? (Recorded, no less, by S. Albini?)