Voice Tone Correct Review

Hi all,
After much anticipation, got a hold of the Voice Tone Pedals!

These are serious tools. These are simple tools. A colleague once called me a MIDI Commando, but I have since been liberated. All the essential tools in a box about as big as 5 or 6 CD boxes stacked up.

I consider myself to be an average singer - a perfect lab-rat for Correct. I've sung lead and harmony in bands for years, with varying levels of success. Many career singers seemed to be able to establish a signature or a way to get out in front in an original manner, and I always felt a little mediocre by comparison. Help has arrived.

Correct has a little meat on its bones - when you kick it on and off, it's not going to slide off the stage. The lights are bright so you know at a glance what's happening. The simplicity is classic and innovative at the same time. I can get what I want in seconds. The foot switches are robust, and quiet. No 'CLICK' during a subtle a-capella part. The noise floor on these is super low all sound and no hiss. For this test, I used a standard Shure SM58 mic.

I find that when I use a 58, I have a lot of low mid frequencies that muddy up the mic tone. I like to be very close in a high volume setting, and subsequently my voice sounds nasal and honky. The first knob I reached for was the shape knob. I took it up to about 12 o'clock, and there was a nice presence sitting on the top end, with no mud. I fired up my Gibson and Marshall, and played and sang. The great thing about the Correct is it sits well in the mix, especially with midrangy guitars. For more subtle songs, try the warmth button - a little vintage sheen.

I tried the compressor with some dynamically diverse stuff, and was surprised. There wasn't any pumping and breathing, just a consistent output, whether I used full voice or falsetto.

The de-esser is smooth  -  nice for early Zeppelin or Aerosmith songs where it gets a little brash.

A neat thing that I want to experiment more with is the adaptive control of the shape and compress controls. when engaged, the parameters work together to optimize the output without endless tweaking. It changes as you change your singing.

I can be a pitchy singer, still learning to bend blue notes well. I worked through some scales with the pitch corrector engaged, and wow - what a learning tool. On sight, you can check to see how close to reality your notes are. The great thing is you have a separate footswitch for the pitch control - you can leave it on for tricky spots, and turn it off for less pitch defined singing or stuff you have mastered. If you crank it, you can get a more produced sound - so many records are pitch corrected these days. A middle setting is subtle enough to use live with confidence.

While it's nice to have a rack full of boutique toys, the reality is you need to get to the gig, get set up and sound great with minimal fuss and extraneous excercise. Throw a correct in your bag, and the control is there when you need it.

A review of the Create pedal is coming soon...

Stewart