Talkbox

[Xlrator]

I found a brand new P.A. horn and various sizes of vinyl tubing at work today. I was thinking TalkBox. Who has made one and which plans did you think work the best?

I might start on it tomorrow...  :twisted:

[Ansil]

i have made quite a few of them.  i used a lm386 for a small mic stand mounted one.

[smoguzbenjamin]

I've never really understood how a talkbox works... does it make sound through your mouth, leaving the amp dead, or does it modulate the sound through your mouth and send that to the amp? :?

[Ansil]

guitar......... amp to drive the talkbox.............tube.mouth.....sound comes out into a microphone.........back into another amplification system

[Mike Burgundy]

What you need to do is get the high-pressure driver (without the horn) to push it's sound into the tube. The horn you don't need: it's just there to focus the soundwaves on a larger area, but we don't need that here. (Acoustics? we don't need no stinkin...oh well)
Some drivers already have a very small aperture through which the sound is literally pushed (high-pressure driver, yup) and you can easily attach the tube directly, some however have a larger opening. This involves some kind of conical tube thingy to connect the driver and tubing. Some people have used kitchen-funnels for this with succes.
This is yer talkbox, done. The actual box is only there for mechanical reasons and some acoustic isolation.
You do want to make sure there's no real low-frequency content in the signal driving the talkbox: both to keep your teeth and the driver in one piece. The best drivers are high-midrange compression drivers. I've protected mine with a hi-pass filter, cutting off at 500Hz or something. If you want to power it internally, one or two LM386's will do nicely. You want lots and lots of harmonics, so distorting a really small amp is good here.
There's a couple of links in the links section on talkboxes.
hih