Live vocal effects using guitar stompbox...?

F

fastestmanalive

New member
Hi,

As a cheap way adding a bit of delay to some live vocals, I was thinking of using an existing tape echo pedal in-line between mic and mixer...

From what I've read, I'll need some sort of signal converter that will take the balanced mic output to unbalanced level for the pedal - is this right? :confused:

If so, I have been looking at the 'ART Cleanbox Pro' which I think will do the job.

I notice it only has 1/8" jack outputs, but I think I can use 1/8" jack - 1/4" jack for the mixer right?

Any thoughts are much appreciated :)
 
just use the pedal in the effects loop of the mixer. Or it may be labelled aux input and output. That'll work much better and you won't have to spend any money.
What kind of mixer?
 
Thanks for the reply Lt. Bob - I never thought of that! It's just a cheap no-name mixer, but it does have an effects loop...

my only concern is when we're playing out of town gigs - some engineers may not like us doing it this way and will also be in control of the dry/wet mix - we're looking for complete control on stage. At rehearsal your suggestion is ideal, but will my initial idea work too?
 
Well, I'm all about experimenting so I never want to discourage that but I don't feel it would work very well .... and let's look a bit closer at the out of town scenario. First off ..... there's no way from stage that you'll be able to make good judgements about the wet/dry mix. Unless you're using the delay for some bizarre or extreme FX on your voice. It's kinda like ..... you also can't EQ from stage even if you use your own EQ the same way because you simply can't hear. There's absolutely no way you'll have any idea of how much FX you're putting on the voice from stage.
Plus guitar pedals aren't usually intended for this putpose and have their EQ'ing and such designed for enhancing guitars and not vox.

Secondly ..... you'd need TWO converters as the mic is gonna be going into an XLR which goes to the mic preamp of the house board. So you'd need a converter going into the pedal and a second one coming out.
And it sounds like the main reason you want to do this is to have some effects which you don't have at present. For the out of town gig scenario there'll be better effects than what you'd have doing it this way.

You could make it work but I don't personally see any benefit and it's gonna cost ya' a little money for the converters.
If you want to spend some money to have something like this onstage instead of the converters I'd get something like: Product: Vocal 300 | Vocalist
It has a built in mic pre and is intended for live use like what you're asking about.
Personally I wouldn't bother but if you really want stage control of your FXs this is how I would go about it rather than that cumbersome converter method.
Plus

But standard practice would be to simply tell the house guy what you like as far as FX's go.

Yes ...... you could make it work but it's a round about way to probably have a poor wet/dry mic out front.
 
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