Jim Dunlop Heil Talk Box help

LesbianWithAGun

In plain and simple English, please, WTF do I need?

I have A/B box, pa box, 2 combo guitar amps and the bloody thing doesn't come to life.

What do I need?
Another type of amp/what?

MikkiMcMurderer

You need an amp to power it. So you use your a/b box to split the signal and take the talk box side to an amp head that has an overdrive channel. If there is a ground look him then put an isolator transformer in the chain like a gigrig humdinger or use an ab bix that can lift ground.  
Dial in a good gainy sound and take the correct impedance speaker output of your amp with a speaker cable to the input of the talk box. Put the tube in your mouth having attached the tube to the side of a vocal mic with a couple of inches poking out to stick into your mouth while being close up to the mic grill. Connect the mic to a PA or a clean guitar amp and away you go. Move you mouth to change the vowel sound.

LesbianWithAGun

I have a
Marshall SL5 Slash Signature Combo for the guitar.



& for it I have a Orange Crush 30 R Combo.

and an MXR A/B splitter the guy sold me plugged into the mains via a power pack and enough instrument cables and speaker cables and a microphone & PA box (even)... but... So far no juice and I'm thinking you're right @MikkiMcMurderer and Jim Dunlop's UK distributor Westside conventionally on Denmark St / open on Sunday were wrong when they said 2 combo amps would be fine and didn't have any amps in store today to verify this for me.

I got money off the Jim Dunlop as I bought the only one/floor model (in the glass case unused) and they confessed people buy the MXR talk box because my one's a pain to work with.

Am I just missing the right amp type?  

darcym

you need to put the output of the head / combo into the talkbox, and the output of the talkbox into the speaker of the guitar cab

so guitar -> amp:
amp -> talk box -> guitar cab in

you then need to put the tube up to the mic and plug the mic into a separate amplification device eg: pa input.

so the sound will no longer come out of your guitar cab when the talkbox is in engaged, and will use the speaker on the talkbox to send the audio up the tube, you shape the sound with your mouth with the tube in it and the microphone from picks up the sound coming out of the tube and sends it to the PA.

do not drive the talkbox harder than 50w 

the Dunlop Heli talkbox is a great great talkbox, but it is a proper one and needs a proper setup, you don't need an A/B splitter/switcher, you just need one amp with the talkbox between the amp and the same amp speaker, and a different amp for the microphone to pickup the talkbox output from the tube.

darcym

you can use combos just fine as long as you can disconnect the speaker from the combo so that you can put the talkbox between the power section of the combo and the speaker of the combo.

LesbianWithAGun

So I need a female to female it through a coupler and feed that direct to the box to give it the juice? @darcym ;;

darcym

no, you need a standard speaker cable, with a male jack (or the speaker cable from the combo which will most likely already be a male jack, you feed the "output" of the amp into the input of the talkbox, and the output of the talkbox (via another speaker cable) into the input of the speaker in the combo

darcym

if you look at this
http://www.slashparadise.com/equipment/marshall-sl5-slash-handbook.pdf

you'll see 8ohm and 16ohm output. so you'd need to either disconnect the internal speaker and use the 8ohm output into the talkbox, then put the talkbox output (via a speaker cable) into another cab (it doesn't look like the SL5 has a jack socket to power connect the speaker looking at the manual, but I don't know as I don't have one).

darcym

I see you've posted photos now of the back of your amp, thats helpful, it looks like it's using the 8ohm output to connect to the speaker, so either take the back of the amp off to see how it connects to the speaker, or disconnect that and use another speaker cable to connect out of the 8ohm into the talkbox, then connect the talkbox out into another cab

ICBM

Don't do that. It's a really bad idea to use the 'through to the cab' connection system with a valve amp - the amp will not like having the output switched on the fly into a horn driver, and in the worst case it could blow the OT. It's always much better to use a separate solid-state amp to drive the Talk Box.

The Orange will be fine, but you need to disconnect its speaker and connect the output to the input of the Talk Box. Then you can either use the switch on the Talk Box to turn the effect on and off (leaving the sound coming out of the main amp as well) or an A/B switcher in front of the two amps (the sound through the main amp stops when the Talk Box is in use).

So either:

Guitar > splitter > Marshall + Orange > Talk Box

Or:

Guitar > A/B switcher > Marshall + Orange > Talk Box

Then you will need a vocal mic and PA to reamplify the Talk Box effect.

darcym

ICBM said:

Don't do that. It's a really bad idea to use the 'through to the cab' connection system with a valve amp - the amp will not like having the output switched on the fly into a horn driver, and in the worst case it could blow the OT. It's always much better to use a separate solid-state amp to drive the Talk Box.

The Orange will be fine, but you need to disconnect its speaker and connect the output to the input of the Talk Box. Then you can either use the switch on the Talk Box to turn the effect on and off (leaving the sound coming out of the main amp as well) or an A/B switcher in front of the two amps (the sound through the main amp stops when the Talk Box is in use).

So either:

Guitar > splitter > Marshall + Orange > Talk Box

Or:

Guitar > A/B switcher > Marshall + Orange > Talk Box

Then you will need a vocal mic and PA to reamplify the Talk Box effect.

That is massively useful to know, I count myself fortunate that I've always used this with a 2 amp setup to make the setup and volume levels easier to manage. 

Thank you 

Teetonetal

Man, the Rocktron Banshee solved all of this hassle, as the pedal itself drives the talk box (it's an amp in a box). Really, anyone using a talk box, for simplicity of setup it's so much easier. Still sounds good too.

Sassafras

Seems like a lot of faff for something that doesn't sound as good as a wah pedal.

MikkiMcMurderer

I use the MXR talk box now, so much less hassle as it has its own power amp inside.

Teetonetal

Sassafras said:

Seems like a lot of faff for something that doesn't sound as good as a wah pedal.

It's pretty different to a wah. Especially if you use one live and loud. Nothing worse than someone using a way instead of a talk box. Would rather use no effect.

darcym

£100 says this is to do the 30 seconds of talk box on Rocket Queen live 

Teetonetal

darcym said:

£100 says this is to do the 30 seconds of talk box on Rocket Queen live 

anything goes