Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Boss VO-1 Vocorder

Probably my favorite thing from NAMM 2016 is the Boss Vocoder. A Vocoder is one of my favorite weird effects. Also, thing that make my singing sound cool/unrecognizable is awesome. BOSS had a great showing at the last NAMM. The DD-500 and RV-6 were homeruns. So this year BOSS had a lot to live up to. What they brought to the table, was... interesting. The promotional video that BOSS released was really impressive.

However, there was a lot other than this pedal going on in this that video. Without the backing track, this pedal would sound a little two dimensional. There were several videos from NAMM showing off the pedal in a live situation. It still seems a little lacking. The effect sounded like a quality effect, but the filter was very overpowering. The voice was drowned out in the mix. This is probably defeatable, but the balance seems hard to strike. Also the control instrument is just that, a controller. So unless you are splitting your signal and blending back together, then you lose all your guitar sound when you engage this pedal.

Conclusion

This is a very particular pedal. It does what it does well, but it might be out-matched elsewhere. BOSS has started to develop vocal effects and this seems to be a blend of guitar and vocal effects, but it may be best to keep the two separate. At least, for now.



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1 comment:

  1. I'd say you missed the point of this demo by a wide margin. This clearly is intended to be viewed as a high tech talk box, not a filter to make robot voices. I don't see that as a desirable pedal, but I'm pretty sure that's what they are intending.

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