TC-Helicon VoiceLive 3

The TC Helicon VoiceLive 3 is a three-in-one effects unit for vocalists and guitarists, offering a plethora of vocal harmony effects, guitar effects and an advanced looping function.

The TC Helicon VoiceLive 3 is a culmination of the first two incarnations of the VoiceLive unit, with an increase in the number of vocal harmony options while also paying closer attention to guitar effects and adding a looper feature.

The VoiceLive 3 starts with a solidly-built metal chassis with durable footswitches and an intuitive LED display and clearly laid out menu system. The VoiceLive 3 offers a variety of vocal harmonies as well as doubling of the vocal signal to duplicate the vocal sound to create a chorus effect. Harmonies include usual intervals such as thirds, fifths and up to three octaves up or down, as well as new pedal, fixed and mixed modes.

Also new in VoiceLive 3 is a live-engineered vocal sound with Adaptive Tone, to provide a professional live sound. There’s also a new Vocoder with voice-controlled synth and robot modes, including a new Talk Box effect and improvements have been made to the HardTune effects, with more options to choose from.

The VoiceLive 3 sees the inclusion of a complete guitar pedalboard and amp emulator, meaning the VoiceLive 3 can be used as your complete guitar signal chain and plugged directly into a mixing desk or guitar amp. The guitar effects section offers sounds from TC Electronic’s Flashback Delay, Hall of Fame Reverb, Corona Chorus, Vortex Flanger and Dark Matter Distortion pedals.

The guitar signal can then be passed through an optional amp simulation section, offering a variety of completely customisable amp models ranging from British to American tones. Of course, the VoiceLive 3 isn’t just for electric guitarists; at the touch of a button, the signal chain can be changed to accommodate an electro-acoustic guitar.

Regardless of the type of guitar plugged into the VL3, the chords played are directly used to influence the vocal harmonies produced by the pedal. Both vocals and guitar can be used with the built-in looping function, allowing endless multi-layering possibilities. There are three different phrase loops that can be recorded (verse, chorus and bridge), meaning each section of a song can be created in real time or pre-recorded to act as a flexible backing track for your performance.

The unit itself has footswitches for controlling all effects and looping functions, while the rear panel offers a variety of input and output connections for both microphone and guitar. There are additional connections for an expression pedal and footswitch, adding even more control of the guitar effects. The unit comes with a unique guitar headphone cable, which splits the guitar signal close to one end of the jack-to-jack cable, where headphones or in-ear monitors can be connected to provide monitoring for the vocals and guitar directly to the performer.