Danelectro Free Speech Talk Box

The two knobs are simple; Volume and Growl. neither seem to do a whole lot. The tricky part is getting the tube in place and then hooking up the useless mics that go with the unit.

I didn't get the gnarly feedback problems that everyone has been talking about. I was only getting moderate volume out of it and I tried it two different ways. One I hooked the tube onto my mic and let the PA pick up the sound from my mouth. I then turned the PA off and tried to get the sound from my amp but it was barly audible. I practically had to put the clip on mics in my mouth. I have my amp up at my normal stage volume too. I use a JTM45 head and a 2x12 cab. Crappy buzzy distortion. No true tone at all.

Seems like it is buit pretty good.

I've emailed them about a week ago and haven't heard anything. Their website sucks. There is no extra info at all on this pedal there.

I figured I would try this talk box first just for the sake that it was supposed to be easier and safer than a Heil unit. You get what you pay for. I aint saying that you need to spend three or four bills on the Framptone. But I think for purists, you probably want the tone from your amp. Not from some rinky dink pedal. I always thought that Dan0 stuff looked hokey. Now I know it.

It's as easy to set up as they say it is. I must admit, I thought I had done something wrong when I cut it on, and this 'hum' started coming out of the box.

Very thin impersonation of the real deal. Danelectro makes some smokin good products. I've got a Danelectro Daddo O, and love it.

This thing is a different story.

Way to much of a feedback problem to in any live application.

I play a Gibson Les Paul Double Cut, Epiphone Les Paul Standard, and a Route 101 Solimar (custom strat copy), into a Marshall hedad with a homemade 2X12 cabinet. I have a Boss EQ, Danelectro DaddyO, Dunlop Crybaby WAH, Flanger and Chorus in my chain. Mostly, I play 70s style rock with a tinge of distortion. I wouldn't consider myself anywhere near the player that a tourning muscian would play at, but I do play lead guitar in a band that plays weekly to 350-400 people at a time. I guess I'm not bad for an amatuer, so I hope my inability to use this thing is not a case of "user error."

OVERALL RATING: Here goes a funny story, that sums up all I need to say about the Free Speech. When the UPS man delivered to my house, I went up to my studio, and plugged the thing in. I was as excited as I've ever been after purchasing a pedal. After taking a gander at the manuel (which took 3 minutes to write - max - and 15 seconds to read) I tried to figure out how to make it play without feeding back, humming, and to actually get it to sound like a talk box on my own. No joke, the manuel cannot have over 100 words in it total. After 30 minutes of failure after failure, I gave up.

About an hour later, my wife came in to see how it was going. Trying to please 'my girl,' I cut the thing back on, and tried to make it do 'something' to impress her. I used every ounce of talent and concentration I could muster. About 60 seconds into this attempt, she looked at me, and asked, "Can you get your money back?"

I'm not giving into defeat though, at least not for another week or so.

Basicamente eu dividiria essa analise em duas situac?es: aplicac?es em estudio e palco.
Se vc for usar somente na primeira situac?o, excelente, vc tera todas as condic?es de manusear esse pedal.
Ja ao vivo a coisa e diferente. E praticamente impossivel tocar com o volume necessario para seu som aparecer numa banda, pois a partir da posic?o 1 hora, o feedback se torna incontrolavel.

As gravac?es que realizei ficaram razoaveis, muito proximo do Dunlop.
Ja ao vivo para controlar o feedback vc n?o podera avancar muito nos controles e ai fica dificil encontrar a posic?o certa com a mangueira para obter aquele vibe.

Escrevi para a Danelectro e n?o obtive nenhuma resposta.

Eu penso que se for o seu primeiro talk box e vc n?o for o Slash, por U$99,00 ate que vale a pena, nada mais que isso.

Inredibly easy to set up and use, however it eats the batteries. I do find the tube too short. Consider i have a large pedal board , a boom mic stand and a whole other bunch of people on stage including risers etc, it just doesnt reach! Making the sound with your mouth is easy, just expect to get saliva all over the place!

I use a fender strat plus deluxe / 1221 pacifica into a cry baby, tubescreamer , marshall jmp1 art sgx200 fx processor into a marshall power amp driving a 2*12 marshall cab. On every stage ive played in the last 20 years i cant think of one that would be big enough to be able to get far enough away from your cab to enable you to hear it coming out of your amp without feeding back! This thing just doesnt work live at all. The drive level simply adjusts the amount of 'box of flies' sound you want and the volume actually adjusts the amount of ear piercing feedback you want. There needs to be a noise gate set in the pedal itself cos the mics are really sensitive at high frequencies thus causing feedback from a billion miles away when your amp is only audible! This is tottaly unusable live the way danelectro say it should be set up. I have set up a 2nd mic and ran it straight to my p.a but then you dont get the signal through your amp so you cant hear it. The tone lacks that rich , deep quality that richie sambora etc get Sounds cheap!

Tottaly unreliable as a good talk box effect. If you want to annoy your band mates and seriously damage peoples hearing then crank it up to 1 !

None Danelectro said ' it simply takes a lot of experimentation to get it right' Rubbish. you need to be in your bedroom with almost no volume at all then youve got it cracked

I play in a bon jove tribute band and i never use it cos its awful.

im gonna try and sell it to some spotty 14 yr old that doesnt know any better!

Feels odd at first having this huge thing stuck in your mouth but you soon get the hang of it

Fantastic. There is sooooo much you can do with this. It sounds great just on it's own but if you use your voice at the same time you can get some really cool sounds. You can emulate Bon Jovi's Livin' On A Prayer or It's My Life no problem

Not had it for long so can't really say, but it's a good, solid piece of kit so I have no reason to think it's gonna break down soon

Never had to deal with them

This is an amazing pedal. There is NOTHING out there which will do what this does for the price. It sounds just as good as a more expensive talkbox and it's all in one, which makes life easy. As for the feedback, etc issues well, use a bit of common sense and all should be fine. Get the tube stuck right in your mouth, don't stand right in front of your cabs and expect to get no feedback and of course, switch the thing off when you're not using the tube. If you're a Richie Sambora or Joe Walsh fan, this will suit you down to the ground.

The sound is not real finetuned, but it gets the job done. It growls if you want it to growl, and the tube does work rather well. Keep in mind, there is no manual for this product, your pretty much on your own... but trust me, its not to difficult to figure out.

OK, i've been hearing about problems with the volume not being loud enough... I have the fix. In a live setting, tie down the tube around the mic of for your vocals (for me, its a Shure SM58). If you turn the mini-mics on the tube around so the face the other way, you can have the sound go though your SM58 into the PA. The tube will also be conviniently accessable next to your vocal mic. I need this effect to do "livin on a prayer" and "kickstart my heart" and i find it gets the job done... BE CAREFULL OF FEEDBACK! Make sure you sound test it before using it... must use at a low volume with little growl in a live setting. I use either a PRS Custom 22, 1979 Hamer, 2000 Mexican Strat, or 2002 ESP LTD through a Peavey XXX 2.12 combo amp.

I wouldnt DEPEND on it. If you DEPEND on a talk box, there's something wrong anyways. A wah can be used to back it up if for some reason it fails... but it just wont sound the same.

Dont know.

I play in a coverband, so its mostly used to play live. However, I have noticed in my home studio that it is really more valuable than in the live setting. I've been playing for about 14 years and have never seen anything like this.. its a really cool concept that allows an easy access to a talk box effect. Other than this pedal, my live rig consists of a Boss TU-2 tuner, a DOD FX7 processor pedal (i only use it for flanger/chorus/octive), and a cry baby... all through Monster Cables. As stated above, I use the SM58 to trasmit the sound back to the PA (All Peavey PA Gear). This is a great pedal, I would buy it again if I had to. There are much better talk boxes out there, but for the price... if your only going to use it for a couple of songs... this is the one to get.

It's pretty easy to use if you dont mind choking on the tube. It's hard to find a good spot in your mouth since the attached mics have to be in a really good spot everytime you use it, to get any type of a sound.

one you figure out how to use it properly, it's pretty nice, the overdrive on the pedal is pretty versatile, goes from a frampton type sound, to the harder tone david gilmour used on pig's 3 different ones from the animals album.

defeinetly would not reccomend using this at gigs, unless you know exactly how to use it, cause if you fuck up with it, it would probably be pretty embarrising.

don't know.

It is easy to use, once you get the hang of manipulating the sound with you mouth. The manual isnt very helpful at all. Id assume if you are buying this product, you'd know a fair bit about talk boxes anyway, so as far as the manual goes, how about telling us something we dont know.

Ive got a couple of strats, and an ibanex rg with a marshall vs100. To get a good sound out of this talk box I have to turn my volume way up. So high actually that when I turn the pedal off, my volume is too high to play at. The feedback is unbearable. The actual quality of the sound isnt too bad at all. But the mics that are on the tube dont do the job very well. You can hardly hear the effect coming out of the amp.

I would use this live, but only with a separate mic going to the PA. You will never be able to hear this effect through your amp live. How many people have a backup talk box? If it screwed up id just use my wah.

Havent dealt with Danelectro. I wouldnt buy this again. Id just go straight for the Heil. Although the Rocktron banshee is a similar inline talk box. Not sure how much better or worse that is!!

I play most styles of rock, especially 80's. I like Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, this being the reason I got this piece of equipment. I been playing 6 years. I wouldnt buy it again. You can't beat quality. If I really had the dough, id buy the framptone talk box, but those b**tches go for over a grand here downunder. But hey, its a talk box, and fun to use nevertheless.

The tube is not very flexible. Attaching it to a Mic stand when going through the PA is a major pain.

Thhe manual is rudimentary.

I do not know where one could possibly use this thing, since it is WAY to low in volume to use it together with a PA in a band situation. The unit on the floor emitts more sound than comes through the tube into your mouth.

As already said, when using it in the inline config, you get feedback for days. There is no way to cure this problem. There simply isn't.

The box does do the talk when playing at room levels, but again, the box on the floor does emitt so much sound, that I have to put some pillows over it to hear the modulate sound coming from my mouth.

The Volume pot does only affect the amount of signal going into the mics. The mics themselves are the cheap indeed. Growl does what it says. You get some pretty distorted sounds.

The unit hisses quite a lot.

I will get rid of this thing and hope to get my money back. This thing is utterly useless in a band situation (volume simply too low). This is more of a gimmick than anything else, but for 100 Euro, I really regret buying it.

As said, I plan on handing it back, or selling (if possible!)

Will not need support, since I will sell it ASAP.

This thing is not worth the money I am afraid. Not of use in any musical situation. Should have gotten a real Talk box......

Easy to set up... but impossible to get a good sound...

This is where this unit really fails. I feel I have to say this cos no1 else has and it's so damn obvious. There are two fundamental flaws with this pedal, firstly, for a talk box to ever work well you need a VERY powerful amp going into the tube, with plenty of volume. Secondly you need high quality mics. This pedal has neither - It appears that danelectro have spent more on the packaging of this product then the actual effect. I own a Fender strat, ESP esplorer and Ibanez JEM. I'm running this through a JCM900 100W Stack with various other pedals. NO COMBINATION OF PEDALS, EFFECTS, PICKUP, VOLUME Adjustment etc can make a useable sound from this device. By the time I cure my feedback problems, I can hear more sound coming from my mouth than my actual amp.

AVOID THIS PRODUCT

No. You can't even use it why the hell would i want to depend on it? guess i could throw it at my drummer when he tries to steal my plecs...

Trying to get a refund now. Let's see what happens!

This product is awfull. there is simply no way to avoid the feedback. believe me, i have tried