The Digitech Vocal 300 has everything you could want for getting a great harp sound in a live environment-fast and easy. It is designed for vocal mikes and singers so it is super clean or saturated, depending upon your custom settings. Therefore, it is an easy transition for harmonica players to use it.
It is an all in one floorboard unit and has footswitches to scroll through your custom sounds and a volume/expression pedal. It has everything-- Mic pre and voice characters, compression, EQ, noise gate, chorus, flanger, phaser, tremolo, vibrato, strobe, doubler, envelope, pixelator, detune, pitch, Whammy, digital delay, analog delay, ping-pong delay, 8 reverb types and more. It comes with 38 fully programmable studio quality effects (up to 7 effects at once). The built-in expression pedal can be assigned to control your choice of up to 3 parameters in real-time. Once you find and fine tune your favorite presets, you can use the led display to call them anything you want.
It only weighs 3.76 lbs, it has a CD Input: 1/8 in. TRS. It has very good converters A/D/A: 24-bit, the sample rate is 44.1 kHz, the inputs are quarter inch and XLR !!!! The outputs are stereo quarter inch TRS and Mono XLR.
Plus, this thing is built like a tank. It also has a master output so if the dunderhead engineer doesn't give you enough monitor, you just reach down and crank up the master output knob and you will have plenty of volume. Setup is a breeze, plug in the mike, power it up and send a cable to the mixer. The assortment of effects and volume pedal gives you an edge that guitar players have utilized.
I have tried some of the guitar effects units of other manufacturers with limited success. I have found that they certainly could overly color and distort my sound, and if I wanted super clean sounds, the frequency response of some of those guitar units were lacking, There are no problems with the Digitech Vocal300 - I believe this baby runs 20Hz to 20,000Hz so the top end is super clean. Plus, this is a footcontrolled unit so accessing your sounds become a breeze. You can even use the volume control as an expression pedal to control the amount of delay or reverb, for example.
The only drawbacks that I can find is that the bypass switch is placed too close to the expression pedal...be careful not to hit it accidently. Also, the quality of the reverbs are fine for live performance, but I would not use these reverbs in the studio.
Also, I found some of the distortion mike preamps were a bit too distorted at low settings. I found excellent results just turning up the input knob and overdriving the front end of the unit. So, when you play soft, the sound is clear. When you blow it harder, it distorts accordingly and naturally.
I have a Monday night gig with a jazz band. This unit sounds unbelievable with my chromatic playing jazz standards and then gets as nasty as you want to be for the diatonic blues. Plus, I can add my effects for some of the spatial compositions and life is great!!. And the soundman loves it because he does not have to ride my level for the ballads to the rockers and adjust reverb levels. And the EQ gives me the smoothness or edge that I require.
This unit was designed for vocalists, so the unit is super clear when you want it to be or distorted when you need it to be. This unit starts with a strong solid clean foundation to build all other effects on in one small affordable footpedal unit.
You can find more information at http://www.digitech.com
No, I do not own stock in this company-- just passing along the news of
a great product for harmonica players.
peace and harps,
Randy Singer
2004
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