BOSS VE-20 Vocal Performer Multi-Effects Pedal, Red

Product Information

The VE-20 is a lot of fun, sounds pretty good and will be easy to use onstage once you've set up all your patches, if you don't mind bending down and selecting them between songs.

Suppose you’re looking for a reliable multi-purpose vocal effects processor that can deftly accommodate all of your creative needs without a lot of technical to-dos. In that case, you can’t do much better than the Boss VE-20 Vocal Performer. That said, the VE-20 is affordable and easy enough to figure out to make a gratifying buy for serious singers of all schools, styles, and skill levels. The VE-20 Vocal Performer by Boss is one of the more recent entries in the company’s wildly popular line of effects pedals designed specifically for singers. It’s a simple yet powerful processor with big-time user appeal that’s up for just about any sort of vocal challenge you might throw at it, whether you’re a touring musician or just messing around in your home studio.

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All of these sound pretty good for what they are. While most vocalists probably won’t spend much time with the kookier settings, you may find it useful to have them on hand if you aim to capture your listeners’ attention with unusual sounds. Social Proof This pedal offer creative possibilities for vocalists and may be particularly suited to solo acts that want to add a little interest to their music or just present a bigger sound to their audience. Best of all, the VE-20 is incredibly easy to use. There’s no need for programming, and you don’t need to input notes from a keyboard as you do with a Vocoder — simply sing and let the VE-20 do the rest! In the Box TC Helicon’s Play is a handy vocal effects processor that provides a slew of pro-grade effects, chief among them being the natural-sounding harmonies, which some users consider superior to those generated by the VE-20. It is also compatible with guitars, undoubtedly an attractive extra for instrumentalist singer-songwriters.

Sing, record, loop, and overdub with the onboard Phrase Looper, inherited from BOSS’s popular RE-20XL Loop Station. You get 38 seconds of mono record time to loop and layer phrases, and you can do it all in real time onstage. From doo-wop to human-beatbox, this tool will wow audiences! Special FX Not all effects need to be noticed and the VE-20 has what you need to bring your voice to the next level. Used sparingly; compression, chorus and pitch correction can give your voice a professional sheen. It’s powerful, rugged, reasonably priced, and comes with a shallow learning curve that makes it accessible to just about anyone with a voice. Perhaps most importantly, it enhances the pleasure of singing, which at the end of the day is what it’s all about.This Boss VE-20 review will explore several of the unit’s main features, both open-ended and refreshingly un extravagant. Pros Let’s be clear—Boss’s VE-20 Vocal Performer is not a toy. It’s a sophisticated piece of technology intended to expand solo vocalists’ sonic repertoire in a performance setting. If you’re just looking for a way to add fun effects to pre-recorded audio at home, there are all sorts of free programs and plugins that you can play with on the internet.

The VE-20's factory presets are a varied cross-section of what the unit can do and are based on various musical styles, special effects and different harmony intervals. While you might find something here that you can use straight out of the box, you'll probably head for the user patches where you can store your own particular sounds. Bear in mind, though, that this type of pedal demands to be used with caution, vocal pitchshifting technology isn't without odd-sounding artefacts and a shift of just a few semitones can sound unnatural if mixed too high in relation to the main vocal. All edits are automatically saved. Other parameters are easily accessed from the menu, including setting the level, pitch interval, pan and gender of the two available harmonies - unison and up or down thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths and octaves are all available. Doubling is also available as a harmony choice. The VE-20 also includes a pair of novelty pitch correction effects, “Electric” and “Robot,” which let users transform themselves into overproduced pop idols or droning automatons with the touch of a button. Special Effects Knobbage is quite minimal on the VE-20, with just a central knob to scroll through and select the patches. Reverb level is the only parameter that can be accessed by a dedicated front panel button but there are four more buttons, including two cursors, for getting into the menus and editing.With the ability to run on four AA batteries and if required, still supply your mic with phantom power, the VE-20 is an excellent choice for buskers. Here are a few of the best vocal processor options that are worth a look if we haven’t yet sold you on the VE-20: TC Helicon Play Acoustic Vocal Effects Processor To this end, editing is dead easy, with perhaps the two most crucial parameters instantly available - one being the previously mentioned reverb level and the other being the key for the harmonies, which is accessed by a single press of the right cursor - the rotary knob choosing a key other than the default C major setting. On its “Soft” setting, it forgives the kind of minor mistakes you often make during live vocal performances; on its “Hard” setting, it can practically sing for you. It’s possible to adjust the scale, key, and even the octave of both primary settings, and the resulting effects are applied instantly and fairly convincingly.