TC Helicon GIG BAG VL 3 Durable Travel Bag for VOICELIVE 3 and VOICELIVE 3 EXTREME

Its a solid build and a great product for vocal effects. So far works fine with more than 200 presets built in and more than 1000 downloadable presets from the PC app (Voice Support 2) they give. I am loving it. Now researching on DAW functionalities as audio interface.

So the backstory is we’ve recently put our old school band back together but the vocalist moved away so I’ve had to step in. Never sang in a band before but I have played in them quite a bit so I have a reasonable level of experience. Decided I needed to some vocal effects and after doing some research settled on the TC-Helicon Play. So far so good, observations below…Initial setup: There is a cartoon style quick start guide which gets you up and running easily enough but be aware you’ll have to go in and learn some of the setup controls to make the best of the unit based on your own requirements, microphone, PA setup etc… The menu takes a few minutes to get used to but it’s actually pretty intuitive when you get used to it.Controls: The selection knob is cool, you can quickly cycle through presets with eace and the buttons all feel solid and high quality. As stated below most stuff is pretty intuitive – only a couple of moments where I have scratched by head once or twice but I downloaded the PDF instruction book and referred to the forums a couple of times which are pretty good.Tone settings: This is set globally and you have a variety of settings to choose from, I have a bit of a trebly / upper mid range voice to I selected a setting that adds a bit of warmth and it has made a bit difference. It auto applies various compression and EQ settings and as long as you’re happy enough to let the unit do all the thinking for you it is basically like having a sound engineer working for you in a stomp box.Auto tune: Seems like in a lot of reviews I read about these types of units everyone just kind of skips over auto tune like they are embarrassed to admit using it. Well guess what, I use it and that’s one of the reasons you buy a unit like this! I don’t want to sound like Cher or Kanye but you know what? When you’re 10 or 12 songs in and you’re aiming for that stretched high note sometimes a little help is really handy! There is a global setting that sets the overall ‘how dramatic you want it’ setting and then you can turn it off and on plus tweek some other settings on a per preset basis. I was after a natural sounding key correction for those moments where it’s clear I’m still new to being the front man and it manages that really well. I haven’t tried some of the more ridiculous settings because, well, why would you? One point to note which is mentioned in the instruction book – sometimes when using auto tune you hear a ‘doubling effect’ which can seem a bit weird when singing, it can be a bit off putting to be honest – that’s because you can hear both the ‘in tune’ output signal through the speakers and the ‘not quite so perfect’ version resonating in your head. That’s nothing to do with the unit; it just means it’s working and helping you out, you’d get that with every auto tune unit.Harmonies and doubling: Struggled a bit with harmonies at first and I would say don’t over use them – nothing looks more obvious on stage that one guy singing away with the voice of a choir but after making sure I got the key and various other settings right they seem ok to use in short bursts for emphasis. The doubling I use a lot more but be sure to use the level to bring up or down the effect to where you want it.Other effects: You can do all kids of weird and wonderful stuff like megaphone effects, change gender etc… all of which are very good but often best used in a limited fashion. I have used the transducer setting on a couple of songs though with good effect.Using the presets: The way the unit works is that you create a preset which gives you a base setting, for example a bit of reverb, delay and auto tuning perhaps and then for each pre-set you can also create a ‘Hit’ setting on which you can store additional settings such as doubling or harmonies. This works really well and is pretty intuitive, it certainly works for the majority of songs we perform where you may want to add emphasis on the chorus but there are occasions where you are better off creating two presets next to each other and swapping between them. For example I haven’t found a way of having one reverb setting for the main sound and another when you apply the Hit setting so if you want a different setting you need to use two presets. Navigating the presets is pretty easy though, the knob cycles through them quickly, you can create ‘favourites’ etc… and creating a new one is pretty straightforward.Looping: It does looping. It does it loads better than I can so I’ve only messed around with it as I have no idea what I’m doing. The only time I’ve used it was to insult our guitarist repeatedly and hilariously during band practice and it worked very well.Practice mode: This was a big plus for me in that you can plug an MP3 player (or whatever) into it via the AUX socket and if you’re on the right setting it can attempt to strip out the vocals of the song so you can practice singing along almost as if it were a backing track. In practice I’ve found this works quite well with tracks that have very clear, easily distinguished vocals, you get mixed results with other stuff but tbh it’s not bad at all. You also see how well you are doing at hitting all the right notes as it keeps track and tells you which notes you’re struggling with. I look at this when I’m feeling brave.Silly stuff: My kids love the Barry White, Tinkebell and various robot settings. There’s quite a cool one where you can sound like Predator or another which is like Princess Leia in the part of Return of the Jedi when she’s disguised as a bounty hunter and rescuing Han from Jabba’s palace. But anyway, you can have a lot of fun with it. If you have the rest of the gear you can also set up a great home karaoke machine by plugging in a tablet to the AUX, setting it in practice mode and loading up those YouTube video’s with the lyrics on.From a guitarists point of view: I play electric guitar as well in the band and so a small stomp box format to sit alongside by guitar effects unit is ideal rather than anything touch operated. I did for a while consider going for the more expensive version which incorporates electric guitar effects as I liked the idea of having everything in one unit but to be honest I when I looked deeper into it there seemed to be too many limitations on how you swap between guitar effects while performing etc.. and I could imagine it getting a bit confusing, also the range of effects was pretty limited compared to the separate guitar effects unit I use so I opted for the straight forward vocal ones which is about £40-50 cheaper than the Play Electric version at the time of writing.Overall then this unit is excellent. I went to music college for a while back in the 90’s and you would have had to pay thousands for technology that could do what this unit does and some of them hadn’t even been invented (if you wanted to sound like you were singing through a telephone you had to use a telephone). Great value for money, yes there are much more comprehensive units out there for more money but if you want something to help you sound great without a load of fuss then this is for you. Our other guitarist is actually considering getting one just to help out with backing vocals.

ProsArray of effects as many as I use on my DAW (more than boss)Not explored everything yet but effects comprehensiveSounds infinitely better than boss ve 20, ve 5I'm not pro but sounds like I'm in a studio environment but live!Superb metal build qualityFoot activated great!Can monitor your vocal through unit whilst performing live whilst unit is plugged into pa. I use an headphone extension lead. This is a relief when the band is so loud and you don't have monitors or have no control over the sound. I also have a wireless sure in ear monitor. But sometimes it can be too much stuff to connect up.Presets great starting point for making own. Also at first you might think they aren't very good, but after using them for a while they are really really really good!!!!!!ConsFeeds back really badly unless you get settings correct , which is hard to work out how to do, can't find help how to on linePre program, can't do it live too fiddlyMenus with deep paths (boss ve-8 better has knobs for most things)No batteries only mainsNot very intuitive, not many buttons, small screen

Being used with TC helicon MP75 mic gives me very good results. The mic is performed at its best. I like the harmony. It is so handy at the press at the button. I also like the tone style’s function preset: a combination of EQ, compress, Gate. It is so handy. Pitch-Correction-Amount function also serves me very well.There are many functions more for your individual purposes - so professional in my opinion. Your vocal voice will be lifted to another level.Bad points: in my opinion, the colour finish is horrible. I don’t understand why TC Helicon chose the green colour finish. It looks very cheap and not attractive at all. Another bad point ( I think they want to cut the cost) is there is NO on-off switch. However, for the current sale price £197, I find it is fair. Take all into my consideration, I could have given 5 stars instead 4

This has been pretty good so far. I've not used all the features but it definitely is worth the bunce.

Cracking bit of kit ,well made ,loads of features ,all good .