ElectroHarmonix
March 2010 Guitarist 117
£179 & £140
EFFECTS
E
lectro-Harmonix has
always been one of the
most prolific stompbox
companies, and also one that
likes to push the envelope when
it comes to guitar effects. Both
of those strands are reflected in
two of its newest pedals. The
Cathedral Stereo Reverb takes
E-H’s count of current pedals in
the reverb category to five.
Meanwhile, the V256 Vocoder
pedal has a lineage that can be
traced back to E-H’s seventies
rack-mounted Vocoder and
Golden Throat voice box, but
offers a modern take on voice-
driven sounds by offering the
likes of robot voices and
harmony generation alongside
that ubiquitous vocal effect.
V256 Vocoder
The V256 Vocoder isn’t your
typical guitar pedal – with just
a mic plugged in it can create
vocal effects, but effects that
incorporate guitar require both
a mic for the voice and a guitar
to be plugged in. A vocoder
works with two input signals:
a carrier and a modulator. The
modulator is typically the voice
and it’s used to modulate the
carrier signal, typically a synth
but it could be your guitar. In
short, via a complex process
involving filters and VCAs, your
vocal or speech characteristics
are superimposed on the
carrier signal, resulting in a
‘talking’ synth (it has one
built-in) or ‘talking’ guitar.
Sounds
Without the guitar plugged in,
the V256’s nine different
programs each produce vocal
effects. Six of the programs are
typical vocoder effects that can
make you sound like a robot or
give your voice a musical drone
– monophonic or based on a
major or minor chord. Two
other programs offer creative
pitch shifting to transpose the
voice or add a harmony (one of
these programs requires input
from an instrument – the voice
will follow your guitar chords).
The last program offers pitch
correction for vocals in a
manner much like the Antares
Autotune software, which
taken to extremes creates the
vocal sound that many will
have first heard on Cher’s not-
at-all-necessary comeback hit
Believe, and which has since
become quite popular (or
extremely irritating depending
on your point of view).
A series of knobs control the
smoothness, tone, gender and
pitch of the vocal effect,
allowing a wide range of off-
the-wall sounds that can also be
manipulated by MIDI input to
the internal synth.
Plugging in a guitar, you can
create a hybrid mix of guitar
and vocal effect by setting the
blend knob. With a 50/50 blend
you can hear the two signals,
with little or no interaction
between them, but moving the
knob clockwise so there’s more
effect gives you the talking
guitar sound. Depending on
how you use the microphone,
you can give the effect that
you’re singing through the
guitar or create vocally-
controlled wah. Getting the
exact sound you want by
tweaking the knobs takes a little
experimentation but, once
you’ve hit on a sound that’s
perfect for a particular
program, you can store it so it
will come up whenever that
program is recalled. Some
coordination between singing/
speaking and playing is needed
to get the full potential out of
the V256, but the potential is
Electro-Harmonix V256
Vocoder & Cathedral
Stereo Reverb
£179 & £140
A stompbox that combines voice and guitar and a ’verb to
expand your sound… by Trevor Curwen & Dave Durban
The Rivals
V256 Vocoder
Fancy building your own? Try
the PAiA Vocoder kit
($175.95), which has stereo
outputs and built-in fuzz. The
Heil Talk Box (£269) is a
classic design controlled by
a plastic tube placed in your
mouth. For a harmony
processor try the DigiTech
Vocalist VL3D (£316).
Cathedral Reverb
DigiTech’s stereo Hardwire
RV-7 (£149.50) is a versatile
unit with built-in Lexicon
quality reverbs; the BOSS
RV-5 (£109) offers six stereo
reverbs in a hardy BOSS
enclosure. TC Electronic’s
NR-1 Nova Reverb (from
around £185) occupies the
higher-end digital stereo
market and offers five studio
quality reverbs, switchable
settings and DynaMix.
there to coax some interesting
sounds from the unit.
Cathedral
Stereo Reverb
The Cathedral digital stereo
reverb is set among Electro-
Harmonix’s single-stomp
reverbs such as the Holy Grail
and Holy Grail Plus. But despite
the Cathedral’s extensive
feature list, the clever guys at
Electro-Harmonix are experts
at keeping things player-centric
and sonically involving.
There are eight reverb effects,
all easily selectable via a mode/
preset knob and indicated with
bright orange and green LEDs –
holding down the white push
preset knob will save and load
up presets for each mode.
The Cathedral features two
spring reverb modes, one of
them borrowed from the Holy
Grail and the other an
Accutronics Spring tank
emulation. Alongside these,
there are the usual suspects,
such as hall, room, plate and
Despite the Cathedral’s extensive
feature list, the clever guys at Electro-
Harmonix are experts at keeping
things player-centric
GIT326.rev_ehx 117 28/1/10 12:44:8 pm