• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Voicelive 3

R

roadyboy

Supporting Member
Dec 10, 2012
118
228
Hudson Valley NY
#1
Just a heads up to other bass players who might want to give this a try.
After some experimentation with the voicelive 3, I have come up with some of the best effects I have ever used for bass guitar.
Reverbs, choruses, flanger. Even delays, compression, and overdrive.
I don't know if they even considered bass guitars, but it works for me.
I have only started to scratch the surface of what the board will do. Its highly programmable, and when programmed before-hand, very easy to use on gigs. Small footprint and not obtrusive on stage.
Its a pricey little beast, but well worth trying out.
Just to make this post clear; I am in no way associated with TC Helicon, [or any other manufacturer for that matter] [too bad, $$$$$]
 
  • Like
Reactions: /\/\3phist0, pacojas and ryansalmond
#5
Note that I resurrected this after it was sleeping since April. The OP may not be around here anymore (don't know either way).

I haven't yet dug into the manuals (and they seem to be a bit vague anyway - TC-style), but from seeing a few video tutorials it looks like "harmony" effects are not available on the guitar channel. There's an octaver that the one-man-band user is supposed to use on his guitar for making us useless :unsure: but no harmony.

You may be able to use the voice channel for all this, but this accepts balanced XLR, so slightly more complicated (I'm sure you know what to do though), and anyway these are voice effects so YMMV.

My particular interest is in doing a one-man-band thing with a bass, so I was looking for something that will make the guitarists redundant by allowing me to do chords, but I guess this is my queue to start working on actually producing chords on my bass (possibly with a good polyphonic octave-up).
 
#7
.....apologies for not having followed my own thread. [my social skills are severely lacking].
The way in which I use the voicelive 3 is to add very subtle effects to my live rig: compression, reverb, delay, chorus, boost. I also switch during gigs between electric upright and one of several electric basses. The ability to have set up a preset for each instrument, allows me to make quick switches between the various instruments on the fly, and not to have to arrange the set list, around my choice of instruments.
The voicelive 3 has very deep controls over amp modeling and eq. Once you get the hang of tweeking the various parameters you can make one amp work well for a variety of situations.
I am the primary background vocalist in my band, so I use the harmony effects on the vocal side [ dialed down to almost inaudible levels] to thicken vocals during harmonies. I find the effects artificial when used too heavily. I have not tried to use harmony effects on my instruments, but if you wanted to try that, you would have to send your instrument through the low impedence section of the pedal.
The voicelive 3 has become an indispensible part of my live rig.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ProfFrink, ryansalmond and Ba55Man1ac
#8
I gave the VL3 a go on bass last weekend. We have a regular gig on a tiny stage with a sometimes over-enthusiastic audience & wanted as little on stage as possible. It actually sounded quite good. I didn't spend long tweaking & thought the latency I heard at home would bother me, but live - no worries. I used the 'British Overdrive' amp model, assigned some extra drive, comp, chorus, octave & envelope to footswitches & off I went. It was kinda liberating!

I agree with you roadyboy, the generated vocal harmonies need to be subtle or they sound silly.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: ryansalmond
#9
I got a VL3 last week (and was too under the weather to try it out more than a bit). Yeah the harmony effects can only go so far, but I really got it for the mixing, for the more "usual" vocal effects (reverb, chorus, transducer) and for what seems to be the most feature-full looper ever. I plan to try to use it with bass (line and chords), a new beatbuddy, and me singing - possibly all at once. It will take me a few good months to master all this I guess. Still pretty new with a bass...

Can anyone share any good amp-modeling presets? (I mean - for bass...)
 
  • Like
Reactions: ryansalmond
#10
In the meanwhile I've had some time and energy to try it out some more today, and I'm pretty impressed. Even just for bass (without singing), some of the effects are very usable. I don't think I'm going to sell my pedalboard just yet, but it's definitely a good-sounding and mind-boggling addition.

Regarding the amp-models - yes, they are very tweakable. Just started with something that looked relevant (4x10, I think), put all of the parameters at 0, and then "speaker FC" which I think is a high-cut at around 2kHz - and this gives a good first approximation of something usable.
 
#11
I have watched a lot of demos on this pedal, and am impressed. The I/O combinations, dual FX layers, and what might be called 2 1/2 phrase looping. (what that means is you can play A + B or A + C and bring those in and out as normal, but you cannot play B + C, nor A + B + C. In serial mode you can go A-->B-->C)

The pedal appears to have a slight marketing problem, in that it doesn't come up in many loop-dedicated websites, even those that feature other current TC products that loop. I think the name of the product is hurting them - this is a hell of a lot more than a voice processor.

There's a British dude doing a youtube demo that highlights some really great presets, named by close monikers of the songs they emulate. Combining very close guitar AND voice effects as on the original recordings make this pedal a money-maker IMO.

Major GAS on this one, folks. What some of you have said about running bass through it make it tempting to ditch my Boss GT-10B for it (but I won't).

Any new info from those of you using it with bass?
 
#12
It's all I use live. I run around a lot, so I have a Line6 wireless rig for my bass and a Sennheiser EK300 for IEM's and a Voicelive three extreme for my rig. Each patch handles different bass rig requirements and voice/harmony presets at the flick of a footswitch. Easiest setup ever. Admittedly you have to put the time into setting up your bass and voice sounds, but that just gets simpler each time you do it. The Voicelive 3 extreme has more bells and whistles than you could ever wish for.

Mostly I just use a solid compression on a straight bass sound and then embellish it with chorus (or whatever) when required. You can also set the Voicelive up as a stomp effects unit if you don't want to worry about too many presets.

Before each gig (I play a wide variety of covers) I just connect the Voicelive to my PC, and arrange the patches to match the gig's setlist.

Easy Peasy :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: AC Davis, hs123 and Ba55Man1ac
#14
I just got a VL3 myself & was wondering whether you set all presets on the instrument side to global, or do you change each preset for each song?
I'm getting huge differences from preset to preset.
 
#15
I'm a Singer Songwriter and have been using the VL3 pretty much since it came out with the common Voice+Guitar model.

Recently acquired my first Bass Guitar to start doing some recordings and thought I could use the VL3 as a Bass processor. Found this thread here which initially made me really happy but no one has shared specific presets in depth or posted any videos/samples.

As I am not originally a Bass Guitar player would be great if I had a place to start in terms of Bass timbre/tones.
I have bought a 5-String Squier Affinity. I know is no Music Man (or even Fender lol) but the more reason to get a good processing.

Any extra info on what's been discussed here in the past would much appreciated. Any preset sharing or settings, any videos or samples etc.

Cheers from Australia!
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back