DigiTech Guitar Talker

Very simple interface. Just the program and bypass controls. The program button scrolls through the 6 effects onboard, and one can use the bypass switch (which is hardwired) and then scroll through the effects without having the different effects enabled.

The effects are very well made. This is largely due to the fact that Digitech spent 2 years analyzing voice patterns and applying it to the talker. For somereason, the effects have different volume levels, so in switching effects, you have to turn the volume down or up depending on which effect you are using. For some of the effects, you can play guitar, and then when you talk into the mic, the guitar cuts out and the voice taskes over, but you still need to be playing for the voice effects to work. On some of the effects like NuWah, there is no voice effects, but it is simply a guitar effect (which incidentally is very cool)

It is made out of metal and the knobs seem to be dependable and sturdy. I would have to use it without a backup because I can't afford to have two of them

Never dealt with them

I play mainly hard rock/ heavy metal so this is cool to make devil sounding voice effects (ie: taz effect which turns you into the devil himself). I only wish it could have the guitar coming through with the regular tone, and also have the voice effects working at the same time. This could easily be fixed via a splitter box anyway.

Given the flexibility, this unit is utterly simple, provided you have a mixing board. Both the "PA" out and the "Amp" out can be routed into the board (make sure to match the levels), then the effects can be panned using the "effect" control. The manual is simple to understand, and this unit is essentially plug & play

Insane...the best sounding effect unit I've ever heard. Sounds exactly like ELO, Out of the Blue album (the one with Mr. Blue Sky). But then it includes effects like "alien" which have built in eq/filtering to give you messier sounds if you like. The only one that sucks is the "NuWah" which is completely useless. Also, the "taz" (the devil voice) is great, but it gates on and off unpredictably. For vocoding, this unit is the finest ever.

Haven't had it long, but no problems to date

haven't called them.

Best applied to guitar with "metal zone" or similar pedal to compress and overdrive the signal, but also extremely useful for analog synth filtering (try the Novation BassStation with it). Also, clean guitar gives really silky tones too. Try running everything through it! Further, for the money it can't be beat.

Quite easy to use. Just plug it in, adjust your levels and fiddle around until a sound you like comes out of it. There's not much on the unit that is user adjustible. All parameters are hard wired in. This can be good and bad.

The straight vocoding effects are superb. These include the patches 'NuVo', 'TalkBox', and 'Alien'. They are astoundingly clear and intelligible; Far better (clearer) than even the most expensive vocal processors on the market can produce. Some people don't like this, because it doesn't sound like a "vintage" vocoder (if there really is such a thing) which basically means it's not muddy and difficult to understand. A slight touch of creative EQ'ing and you can get the old style analog sounds out of this unit with very little effort.
There are however three other presets available on this little silver box, 'NuWah', 'TazMania', and 'AutoTalk', and quite frankly, they all suck. 'NuWah' is basically an envelope follower auto-wah type of effect that not only has no reason for being in a pedal like this, but it fails miserably at what it attempts to do. I do not understand what made the Digitech engineers think that it was a necessary or desirable feature to have in a vocoder, but there it is all the same... If you're looking for an auto-wah, go buy an auto-wah. Don't expect much out of this thing.
'TazMania' Is very cool sounding, when and if you can get it to work properly. It's basically just one of the plain vanilla vocoder effects, but instead of using the "instrument in" signal as a carrier, it provides it's own built in white noise generator which gives you quite a devilish sounding voice. The problem is in the noise gating the brilliant Digitech engineers decided they needed to throw in for no good reason. It is not nearly sensitive enough, and it frequently causes the effect to cut out on spoken consonants which are normally a little quieter than vowels. Even if you crank the mic input all the way up to the point where the clip light is on solid red, it still isn't enough to get past the noise gate and your signal is constantly breaking up. What's worse, the noise gating is neither adjustable, or switchible. It's just there. You can work around this problem by using a buttload of compression on the mic signal and cranking up the treble, but this is an awful lot of nonsense to go thru just to get around this stupid design flaw.
This is the same problem with the 'AutoTalk' patch. It's basically the same as 'NuVo', except that great noise gate is enabled on it so that it can supposedly detect when you want to use the effect, and when you just want to play straight thru. Would be nice if it worked, but I'd rather step on the switch when I need the effect than have it decide for me. Especially when it's decisions are almost always wrong. Get a clue Digitech. You should never put a noise gate in anything without making it adjustable. Never!

It's not given me any technical problems other than the design flaws mentioned above. I cracked it open to see if maybe there was a surface mount adjustable pot controlling the noise gate or something, and it is quite sturdily made. I don't think it's likely to be damaged by any treatment you might want to give it save for extreme humidity. Digital electronics don't like that sort of thing. Especially not salt water. The jacks are all plastic though. Minus one point for that.

I wrote to Digitech to bitch about the noise gating thing, they responded within a day, but their response contained no useful or helpful information. I was basically told that I was imagining things and that there was no problem. Sort of an old Jedi? mind trick I suppose. Screw 'em.

It's a great vocoder, a terrible prodcut. Digitech really needs to plan things out a little more carefully in the future, and possibly even let some real musicians test out there designs (what a novel idea that would be!). The bad presets wouldn't bother me quite as much if it weren't for the fact that you have to step thru them in order to get to the ones you want (in typical Digitech fashion, you change presets by stepping on a single footswitch which takes you thru them all one by one in a forward direction only). Luckily, you'll probably be able to find the one preset you like, stick with it forever, and never have to worry about any of the other crap. If you really like 'TazMania', you can always build your own white noise generator and plug it on in to one of the regular vocoders without noise gating, which again, are really quite excellent. Would definately buy it again despite it's problems. Nothing else like it on the market for this price. I'm still not convinced that this should be a floor unit, nor that it should be marketed directly at guitarists. It's really something that tends to appeal more to keyboard/electronics types IMHO.
One final interesting tidbit: The tag that was affixed to the knob on this unit proudly proclaimed "Made in USA", however the silkscreened print on the unit itself says "Designed & made in Canada". Who's lying?
P.S. The other guy who reviewed this payed waaaaaaaay too much! $400???!

It's very easy to use. You cant go wrong. You can control mic, instrument and effect depth. Manual is also very good and helpfull in getting the most out of the Talker.

It's very quiet and the NuVo and Talker patches are incredible. Hook a fuzz/distortion box between the guitar and Talker and you sound just like Roger Troutman. Put a synth into the input (instead of the guitar) and you have cleen funky talking basses and synth's.

Yes

Very good. I get a serious informative response to every question.

The talker is probably best used with rap/soul/funk and dance music. If your into classical this unit is probably wrong for you. It funky, fresh and easy.