DIY Talk-Box Project

Talk-box guitar effects like those heard on Peter Frampton & Joe Walsh songs aren't stomp-box type effects so much as an amplifier & speaker adapted to bounce the speaker output from your mouth into a microphone. Since I already had a 6 watt Champ clone (head) that I built several years ago, this project is about the speaker end.

DIY Champ head

I was at the local dump and saw that someone had left a Kenwood computer speaker on the wall, so I grabbed it. I hacked off the bottom "ported" part of the enclosure, wired it with a proper speaker cable & cut a piece of scrap aluminum to fill the void. The speaker is 3.5 inches in diameter, 6 ohms & rated to handle 20 watts. Not perfect but an adequate match for the Champ's 4 ohm / 6 watt output.

Next, I added a long funnel ($4 at auto-parts shop) to the speaker using flexible glue & plenty of duct tape.

Sound isolation is important, since you want to get as much sound as possible at the tube-end of this rig and as little as possible from the speaker enclosure. I used some medium-density foam rubber and, yes, more duct tape.

... and applied several layers of green towels (green being the most sound-deadening color).

Finished by placing the whole thing in a black pillow-case. It's bulkier than a pedal unit would be but at about $20 and an hour or so of my time, I'll take it. It's loud enough for stage use. There is no high-pass filter like most commercial units but with the Champ's tone knob all the way up, it is fairly balanced. I need to put some time into practicing with this thing. It's not difficult but coordinating playing and mouth-shaping the sound is a little trickier than I thought it would be. Video... soon.