TC Voicetone M--First Impressions

Posted by: travlin'easy

TC Voicetone M--First Impressions - 08/01/08 06:37 AM

MY TC Helicon Voicetone Harmony M finally arrived at the local GC yesterday and I picked it up. Upon arriving home, I opened the box, pulled out the unit, then pick the operating manual out of the box. Unfortunately, the operating manual was for the Voicetone Harmony G, which is just about worthless when it comes to learning how to perform the proper setups.

The first thing I did was contact GC and told the sales person what happened. He said he would get me the right manual, but it would take a few days. It wasn't his fault, obviously, it was TC Helicon's quality control, or lack thereof.

There is no telephone number for TC Helicon in the instruction manual, and for any kind of service you must go through their website, which was down. I called GC again and they provided me with a telephone number, which tortures you with a number of button pushes to get to the technical service area. Of course when you do finally get to the technical service area the first thing that happens is you get put on hold for at least 20 minutes while listening to a stupid message that keeps telling you to go their website.

Finally, after 20 minutes of listening to that dumb-assed message, a young man gets on the phone and asks the nature of my problem. I explained to him that I recived the wrong manual and could he tell me how to set up the midi channel over the telephone. As it turned out, he knew less about the Harmony M than I did and I only had the thing for a couple hours at this point. Then he told me to download the manual from the website. When I told him the site was down he replied, "Oh, someone told me that but I think it's back up now." NOT A PRAYER! Then he said he would email me the manual, which they have not done.

Later that night, I was able to post my problem on their email customer service area, but thus far, still no response--18 hours later.

Fortunately, DonM was able to email me the manual, which is relatively short and easy to work with. It only took 2 minutes to determine which buttons to push in order to set up the midi connection.

The unit sounds great. It's easy to work with, the vocal harmonies are crisp, clear and full. As for vocal quality, it is superior to my Digitech VRs, particularly when it comes to realism and clarity.

The bottom line: It's a keeper. It's very compact, and I think I've already figured a neat way to incorporate it within my console so everything can remained plugged in, thereby not adding any additional gear to the console and still keep overall setup time down to 10 minutes.

The only drawback is TC Helicon's customer service division. Hopefully, I will not need to use them anytime soon.

Cheers,

Gary

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Travlin' Easy
Posted by: zuki

Re: TC Voicetone M--First Impressions - 08/01/08 06:57 AM

Good news about a unit that should sell a lot here
Posted by: Dnj

Re: TC Voicetone M--First Impressions - 08/01/08 07:23 AM

Gary thank you for the informative review...good luck with the Harmony M unit.
Posted by: Gord

Re: TC Voicetone M--First Impressions - 08/01/08 02:16 PM

Hi Gary
Thanks for your info on this unit. The demo's
on u tube sounded nice and clear- you confirmed what I heard when you mentioned 'realism and clarity'. -Would like to hear a demo from you using the Vr unit -(even one verse of a song like 'Cab Driver'- Harmony on through the verse)
-then a repeat using the Harmony M unit. The company demo's always show what their product can do-but it sure would be nice to hear a 'real world' comparison.
Posted by: travlin'easy

Re: TC Voicetone M--First Impressions - 08/01/08 04:07 PM

Gord,

I'll record something tomorrow if the weather turns nasty and I can't go sailing. NOAA just posted small craft warnings, so there's a good possibility this will be the case.

The weather is really going to be nasty tomorrow, not much to watch on TV, so I recorded a quick demo and posted it at http://psrtutorial.com/ForumMain.html under the Accessory Hardware heading. No editing, just a one-shot deal using the TC fired through the PSR-3000's line in and recorded using Acid Pro.

Gary

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Travlin' Easy

[This message has been edited by travlin'easy (edited 08-01-2008).]
Posted by: tony mads usa

Re: TC Voicetone M--First Impressions - 08/01/08 07:04 PM

Gary ... The Harmonizer sounds really good ... but of course it helps to have a great voice going into it .
Best of luck with it ...
t
Posted by: Dnj

Re: TC Voicetone M--First Impressions - 08/01/08 09:13 PM

Good job Gary WTG!!!!
Posted by: travlin'easy

Re: TC Voicetone M--First Impressions - 08/02/08 07:02 AM

Thanks guys. Like I said--it's a keeper.

Gary

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Travlin' Easy