About
After seeing numerous sites and videos demonstrating the making of
"ghetto" talkboxes, I decided to try to build my own. I made
a few modifications to the ideas found online, and I think mine turned
out pretty well. I've also decided to make this an
instructable page so that people can build a talkbox based on my design
and/or so that they can improve on my design (if you do this I'd love
to see the results, feel free to contact me).
The talkbox I made from
salvaged parts and plumbing supplies.
Overview
The idea behind the operation of a talkbox is fairly simple:
Re-rout the audio signal from your amplifier to an enclosed
speaker with a tube leading out of the otherwise-airtight space.
You then put this tube in your mouth and use your throat and
your mouth and your tongue to modulate the sound and to add interesting
inflections. If you're skilled enough, you can form words
with your mouth and whatever instrument is hooked up to your talkbox
(generally a guitar) will "speak". Stevie Wonder and Roger
Troutman are two prominent users of talkboxes in this style.
Generally, even though the speaker
enclosure is close to airtight, lots of sound still escapes through the
sides and seams of the talkbox, so the sound that travels up the tube
and through your mouth is usually fairly quiet. By placing a
microphone near your mouth and by muffling the talkbox itself with a
blanket or a pillow, you can achieve a fairly loud and good-sounding
recording of talkbox. My talkbox is nowhere near as
articulate
as Stevie Wonder's talkboxes, but I only paid $15 for my talkbox, as
compared to the $200 and upwards that you'll pay for a really good
talkbox. A "ghetto" talkbox works almost as well as the real
deal, at a
fraction of the price, and you can still get some cool stuff out of it
if you record it right.
Supplies
Needed
Although you can make talkboxes from a variety of different materials
(generally all you need is an enclosed speaker and some tubing), this
is the list of everything I used in the making of my talkbox:
- Old powered computer speakers (the
kind you plug into the wall)
- A [new] toilet plunger (about five
inches in diameter)
- A 4-inch PVC plumbing cap (should fit
nicely and snugly into the plunger)
- A few feet of half-inch vinyl
tubing (I used about two-and-a-half feet)
- Some wire (alligator clip wires work
fine)
- Soldering iron and solder (if you
don't have alligator clip wires)
- Quarter-inch male mono audio jack (for
connection to amplifier)
- Duct tape (lots of it)
- Hot glue (for sealant)
I salvaged the speaker from an old pair
of computer speakers and I already had a hot glue gun. I
bought the rest of the supplies for about $15 at a plumbing supply
store (included in that price is the nine feet of vinyl tubing I
bought, though, so the real price is significantly lower than that,
because I only used two-and-a-half feet of tubing for the talkbox).
Procedure
A
simple diagram of how the talkbox components fit together.
First, take the old speakers out of their housing so you're left with
just a bare speaker (if you have new speakers or a speaker specifically
built to drive a talkbox, that's even better, but old speakers are
easier to find and/or cheaper to buy). For best results, the
speaker should be a high-gain speaker built for music playback, with no
problems with the paper sound cones. It should be about three
inches in diameter. Keep the wires connecting to the positive
and negative sides of the speaker. If there are none or if
they're not adequate enough to protrude a decent way out from the side
of the plunger, clip the alligator clips onto them or solder some more
wire on. Slide the speaker into the plunger. Glue
it in place with some hot glue, or if you have a plunger that has a lip
inside it, you can wedge the speaker into it so that it remains
stationary. Hang the wires out of the plunger so that you can
connect audio from outside the talkbox.
Drill a hole through the top of the
plumbing cap with a 3/8-inch drill bit (you want the hole a bit smaller
than the half-inch vinyl tubing so that it's a tight fit)
Slide the tubing into the hole and seal around the outsides
of the hole with hot glue.
Now, slide the plumbing cap
into the plunger. It should fit snugly against the sides of
the plunger. "Plunge" the plunger down onto the cap and fix
it that way with strips of duct tape going from the top of the plunger
to the plumbing cap. This will ensure that there is some
tension so that you can easily seal off the cracks between the
plunger and cap and keep it that way.
Seal all around the edges of the plunger
and plumbing cap with hot glue, paying special attention (i.e. lots of
hot glue) to the area where the wires protrude from the talkbox.
Add more duct tape to help keep the plunger tight against the
plumbing cap and to keep the hot glue from getting pulled apart from
wear and tear.
Solder (or alligator-clip) the
quarter-inch male audio jack onto the two wires protruding from the
talkbox. Since the speaker is separated from its power supply
(the amp will act as its power supply), it doesn't matter which wire
goes to which part of the audio jack. Once you have the jack
in place, you can plug it into the speaker port of an amp or keyboard
(not the headphone jack, and make sure it's the four-ohm speaker port
if you have more than one). If your keyboard/amp only has a
headphone jack or if your talkbox is too quiet, you can use the power
supply from the speakers that you took apart to add a boost of power to
the talkbox, as in the diagram below:
If your sound source doesn't supply enough
power, you can supplement it
with the power supply from the speakers you took apart.
Tips With Inflections
And General Use
It's fun to experiment with all the
different sounds you can make with your talkbox.
- Try positioning your tongue in
different places. Depending on where it is located, the final
sound can be radically changed.
- Try opening your throat as if you were
yawning or singing. This will add some cool phaser-like
overtones to the sound.
- Different mouth shapes contribute to
the final sound. Try large and small openings.
Giving the talkbox a "voice" involves both mouth shape and
tongue position. It's much like forming word shapes with your
mouth but without making sound.
- How far into your mouth the tubing
goes also affects tone. If the tube is in a long way, it'll
bounce off the back of your throat and then back out, but if it's only
in just past your lips, the sound will bounce off your cheeks and go
right out of your mouth without much chance to gather cool overtones
from bouncing down your throat.
- Position your talkbox so that the
final stretch of tube climbs up into it (so the talkbox is above the
last bit of tube), so that spit can't drip directly into the talkbox
enclosure, where it can potentially damage the speaker or create nasty
mold (you'll produce a lot of spit, so be careful).
- When recording, get your microphone
fairly close to your mouth, but not close enough to pick up the
lip-smacking sounds and the tongue-clicking noises that you will
invariably produce. About two to three inches from your mouth
is a good distance.
I hope you've learned some good stuff from this instructable, and I
hope it wasn't too confusing. If you've got questions about
the process or if you've got pictures or examples or better methods,
feel free to contact
me.
