TC HeliconVOICETONE H1 Single-Button Stompbox for Realistic Guitar Controlled Vocal Harmony

I play 4 to 6 gigs a month with a three piece band or solo and have been using this unit for a couple of months. It has served me well. Simple to use and very effective for basic harmonies. I keep it low in the mix and it sounds like real back-up singers. The only down side is remembering to engage or disengage while emotionally performing. Also being careful not to change the settings with your foot. I think this unit is very useful and of great value.

I purchased this mainly to experiment. We have a male and female lead vocalist, as well as a backup vocalist. However, harmonies have proven challenging. Our lead vocalist had been using a harmony pedal that frankly sounded like a haunted house. This one is a lot simpler, and if you take the time to carefully read the instruction sheet and experiment you can actually get some realistic harmonies.This supports harmonies a third or a fifth above or below where you are singing. You can set the key manually, or use a guitar or keyboard for the box to detect the key (you need to set the selector to Guitar for the latter). This does work with keyboards, but regardless of whether you are using a guitar or a keyboard you need to be playing chords for the box to correctly detect your key.While the basic operation is simple to learn, the instructions include a key and scale chart to help you to dial the harmonies in because some minor and major keys require tweaking.The Dry/Wet knob determines how prominent the harmonies are. The drier, the more emphasized the lead vocalist is. The wetter, the more emphasized the harmonies are. To be honest, anything over twelve o'clock on the knob setting starts sounding unnatural. A safe place to start here is around nine o'clock and increase it slowly until you find the sweet spot.If you are purchasing more than one of the Voice Singles pedals, here is the order in which they need to go: Microphone > T1 > C1 > D1 > H1 > R1 > Mixer. I am using mine with a TC-Helicon VoiceTone Mic Mechanic, and with the Mic Mechanic's correction on and EFX off I have it chained as Microphone > Mic Mechanic > H1 > Mixer. With correction off and EFX on I reverse the signal path with the H1 first in the chain.Note that this comes with phantom power permanently on. There is no way to turn it off. I am using a variety of dynamic mics and none are the worse for it. Also, the USB connector in the rear of the unit allows you to connect this to a laptop or PC that is running the Voice Support app to download and install the latest firmware upgrades to keep this pedal current.Bottom line: this is simple to learn, but as you dig deeper it has a lot of power and capabilities. If you spend the time to both carefully read the instructions and to experiment you can dial this in nicely.

The TC-Helicon H-1 pedal does exactly what it is supposed to do. So I'm not complaining about that, but without some sort of modulation to pair it with (reverb at least) I get a very flattened sound, and the vocal won't sit down in the mix. I have a Flamma "Harmony" pedal that i have used for over a year, and the only real difference is 1: this H-1 pedal has more natural sounding Harmony accompaniments. The "voices" sound pretty realistic where the Flamma voices sound a tad mechanical, not to the point of being unusable, but enough to make you want to keep them buried deeper in the mix than you should. And 2: a MAJOR difference in the H-1 and the Flamma pedal is that the button on the H-1 is essentially silent where the Flamma button makes a huge "CA-CLICK" sound. So if you're switching it on and off during your recording the H-1 won't make any noise and the Flamma sounds a little like racking a 12 guage shotgun in the background. So, in conclusion, the pedal is what It's supposed to be but you will probably want a touch of fx to go with it. Also it seems to be built pretty well with a tough case. Should last for years. If i were picking between the H-1 and the Flamma I would overwhelmingly take the TC-Helicon H-1.

I love the functionality of this product, especially the function of hooking up my guitar to it so that it will pick up the correct harmony key from it (rather than me having to switch the harmony key per song). This is my second TC Helicon pedal and as I suspected, the quality of the materials and how it is all put together is excellent. The only downside is that it alters the sound quality and makes my voice sound slightly robotic. It is not terrible enough for the typical audience to tell (and adding some effects to the vocals also helps matters), but I think most musicians would be able to tell the difference. I would have given it 5 stars if it did not have this issue.

This is a SUPER product. I just received it today, read the brief instructions, hooked it up and tried it out. It's really marvelous. It matches your voice or your guitar (which your voice should be in tune with) and produces harmonies in your choice (above plus below, a third and a fifth above, or a third above etc, if you choose just one harmony "voice." It is intuitive and very easy to learn. The mic can be dynamic or phantom power and there's an input gain control which should generally be turned to near the minimum to avoid overloading your speakers. You can also adjust the tone of the harmonies from "dry" (very little reverb, more in the background) to "wet" (very prominent). When you plug your guitar in it follows your chords; otherwise you select a key and it follows that. However, if you set it to "guitar," it will follow your voice pretty closely without the guitar. You can also link it up with the C1 to correct minor variations in your voice if you tend to wander off pitch. The C1 should be first in the chain, obviously.It works GREAT and the only (minor) complaint is that you can't change the harmony during the song. For instance, if you want dual harmony for one part and only single harmony for another, you would have to be moving the switch while you were singing. You can only turn the effect on and off, but this is certainly a minor downside and in the interest of simplicity, it is better without it, except perhaps for recording. Even then, you could probably manage it with overdubs.