Rocktron Product Reviews – ROCKTRON’S BANSHEE AMPLIFIED TALKBOX from Guitar Player Magazine
RocktronBanshee Amplified Talkbox
“COOL PEDAL ALERT”from Guitar Player Magazine,
April 1997, by Joe Gore
The ’70s Rock Tolerance Litmus Test: Does the thought of Peter Frampton inserting a tube in his mouth to render “Show Me the Way” make you: a) sigh nostalgically, b) shudder in embarrassment, or c) vomit blood?
Even those who incline towards b or c shouldn’t hasten to avoid the $399 Banshee, Rocktron’s latest spin on the talkbox, a gadget long considered hopelessly out of date but now enjoying a retro-cool revival. Talkboxes route your guitar signal through a plastic tube that you insert into your mouth. As you ooh and aah, the changing shape or the oral cavity imposes speech-like inflections on the sound. Just aim your face at a mike, and the audience will feel like they’re sitting on your molars.
The Heil Talkbox, the most popular version of the effect, is a passive device driven by your amp’s speaker output. The Banshee, however, follows the example of the old Electro-Harmonix Delux Golden Throat: It’s an AC -powered unit that sits in your signal chain between guitar and amp, just like a regular stomp box. Actually, it’s a tough little 5-watt amp with two output jacks: one leading to your amp, one capable of driving an 8ohm cabinet. That means you need no A/B boxes or secondary amps as you do with a Heil-style system. In fact, you don’t need a regular amp at all for recording purposes.
Like some of Rocktron’s other current distortion pedals, the Banshee deleivers ridiculous amounts of gain. With the volume pot dimed and the gain almost off, it’s pretty loud; with the gain cranked, your entire head vibrates with a mighty buzz. (Some pay well over $399 to obtain this sensation from controlled substances.) The separate gain and output pots are handy for setting relative levels in live situations; there’s also a single tone pot. Workmanship and parts (including a classy EV driver) are first-rate. Rocktron sets the mass-market-stompbox durability standard with such armament-grade housings. The AC adaptor is included.
Naturally, this gizmo is the coolest when you depart from the ’70s arena rock applications. It’s awesome for imposing subtle filtering/wah effects on an already recorded track. (Try it on keyboards, drums and vocals!) Spinning the tube in the air near a stereo mike yields a phenomenal Leslie impersonation. Rubbing the tube against the strings unleashes blistering feedback even at whisper volume. And since we’ve already mentioned blood and vomit, it’s worth noting that dripping a bit of water in the tube (and no doubt completely invalidating the warranty) produces a horrific gurgling sound that belongs on the next Marilyn Manson album or Alien soundtrack. Keep this device away from sick mindsit’s like giving a loaded gun to a monkey.
Article Copyright © 1997 Guitar Player Magazine.
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