Electro Harmonix V256 Vocoder

First think about what you need. I love these melancholic vocals that are just human but also a tiny bit out of this world (alienated). I saw Jan Blomqvist use this on his sets, very subtle and I think it's synced to the midi of the moog also. Its a nice fx and I liked the minor setting but didn't like it enough. It sucks when u overuse it, unless you're looking for that sound. In my case I just need a pretty sweet vocal station that also compresses, EQ and mixes your vocals with a nice harmonizer fx.
This unit didn't cover that (obviously) but just so you know, it's an extra, not a main "vocal station". It processes your vocals a little bit but it's not going to add up to the mix. The midi response was very nice. Also you can set the presets with your octatrack (program change) so track 1 will be preset 1 and track 2 preset 2 and so on... It's very easy to work with, very easy to control and save your own presets. But for my taste a bit limited and like I said more an extra as a complete unit.

This is a really cool piece of kit. It can be used to blend vocals with any instrument really but works great with guitars and synthesizers. It even has its own built in basic synthesizer that can generate its own carrier signal to modulate the voice, which can be triggered with a midi controller. There's a good range of sounds to be had from this unit also with male/female options to make the voice deeper or higher in pitch. It has a pitch control to tune your voice to other frequencies. It can also provide phantom power to condenser mics which is handy if you want to use this with a shotgun mic. The one down side I found was that using this with an SM58 was too sensitive and the pick up pattern was picking up the sound of the drum kit making it impossible to use in a live setting. Maybe a pre-amp is needed to take the edge off. Also going to try with a shot-gun mic and see how that works.

I play in a band where I have to do almost everything. The keys, the bass, drums. The only thing I can't do is sing. This doesn't make me sing, but I can do a lot now. I feed it a simple synth sound, then I have a vocoder that is clearer than any I've ever tried on (modern) famous small keyboards. I've been using it to emulate synth parts, horns, hit some harmonies under some high notes to give the poor singer a lift :).

Very versatile, and potentially if you set it up and feed it well, a great sound.

There is a great demo on youtube, if you search for "Electro Harmonix v256 Keyboard Demo" , by James Bowers.

What I did not like. The power feels somewhat flimsy, and it is very easy for the knobs to be changed by accident, if you're not used to using things like this as a keys player. Also, I can't say that it's the most easy to understand the operation. It's not very logical, for me anyway. I got there though!

No need to use the instrument output, the vocoded signal is in the mic one!