i use one of those for live stuff, but in studio conditions you can see right through to the piece of crap processing going on inside.
it craps out on sssses and lets them pass through without processing... ouch.
the real vocoders from the 80's are very expensive right now. but the real ones sound the best. old rolands are probably the cheapest of the bunch.
sorry, i just cant get behind that se-50 vocoder. my band struggled with that thing for the first half of our first record, then moved on to struggle with the digitech which was an improvement. we also tried the se-70 which was a bit better than the se-50.
however, you can get some decent sounds out of the se-50 if you work hard. also, i agree that some of the other effects are decent as well.
how much vocoding are you going to do? if you are just going to throw it in here and there, actually the se-50 might be a good bet. i think they are dirt cheap right now.
if you are in a jonzun crew cover band, i would look elsewhere.
Electrix put out a hardware Vocoder about two years back - it's the one with the red face. I believe it's called the WarpFactory
I believe all their products are discontinued now, but I'm sure the vocoder is.
Check Ebay- I'm sure there plenty there. Guitar Center blew all the electrix stuff out for $99 (i picked up a filter factory) two summers ago, so the public have them..