Beck started using this in the early 70's - they called it The Bag for a hot minute (as did Stevie Wonder) - Frampton's career came alive when he started using it - how does it work?
3 Answers
A talkbox is a small, self-contained amplifier and speaker assembly. There's a tiny little speaker in it and the speaker, instead of moving air in a room, moves the air in a plastic tube that it's sealed against. You run your guitar in to the talkbox and the plastic tube you insert in your mouth. So your mouth becomes a resonant cavity for the guitar sounds coming out of the tiny speaker.
You aim your mouth at a microphone, play your guitar, and by changing the shape of your mouth and the size of your open mouth, you can make it act like a filter on your guitar signal. Your mouth becomes the equalizer with far more degrees of freedom than something like a wah might offer.
Traditionally you'd "play" the talkbox in to a normal vocal mic and it'd be amplified at the front of the house just like your vocals. Because you're not using a tube amp or anything like that you'd run your guitar in to a fuzz pedal (like Frampton did when he Came Alive) or some such thing to dirty it up a bit (although the tiny speaker had a pretty good break up all on its own).
Rocktron has modernized the talkbox a bit with their Banshee 2 and they let you continue to feed your guitar signal to your guitar amp while playing the talkbox into the vocal mic to route to the front of house. But the speaker-driving-a-plastic-tube-to-your-mouth design has remained largely unchanged since it's inception.
When you talk into it you are transmitting sound(changing air pressure) into a microphone(essentially). This is used to modulate(or control in some way) another signal such as a guitar. It's based on the same principles as a vocoder(and essentially is one).
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5A talkbox is not a vocoder, not even essentially. And it's not based on the same principals (unless you get really loose about "same"). See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocoder– Ian C.Commented Feb 4, 2011 at 15:47
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Effectively the same thing(mathematically the same modulation principle is taking place). A talkbox takes the input signal into the mouth, the mouth applies a modulation to the signal and it is output to a microphone. A vocoder takes a signal and modulates it electronically. So yes, they are based on the same principles, that of modulation.– AnonymousCommented Feb 4, 2011 at 17:20
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I'm with @Ian C. on this. The vocorder results in a somewhat-similar sound, but how it works is entirely different. The vocoder tries to do what the talkbox is doing, but, well, it's comparing the original sound, as far as guitarists are concerned, with an interloper. Technically, the vocoder is more capable and can be controlled by more sources such as MIDI or control voltages, but I've never heard one come close to the sound of a cranked up talk box rattling the fillings of a guitarist.– AnonymousCommented Feb 5, 2011 at 1:44
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1I think they're taking issue with your phrase that a talkbox is basically a vocoder, which isn't really true. In your comments you're arguing that a vocoder and talkbox are based on the same principle, modulation, which is true. Understanding modulation will get you a lot further than just a talkbox and vocoder (chorus, flange, wah, phaser, tremolo), so I think your point wasn't particularly clear in your answer. Commented Feb 5, 2011 at 14:18
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1I'm also not so sure how useful the point is when explaining it to someone that doesn't even know the basics of the effect. Saying it's the same as FM radio may be true at an abstract mathematical level, but it's getting a little on the esoteric side in a discussion of guitar effects. Commented Feb 5, 2011 at 14:19
There are actually 2 basic types of "talkbox". The original one is exactly as explained in the first post. Basically, the amplified guitar signal is fed through a tube. The tube goes into your mouth, vibrating any dental work you may have (just kidding). When you move your mouth, the sound is changed, creating a vocal-type effect. This effect is amplified if you stand in front of a microphone (which of course must be attached to a working sound system).
The second - more recent - type of talkbox still uses a tube to "modulate" the sound, but the amplified guitar tone does not go through the tube and into your mouth. Therefore, it does not require a microphone. Instead, it works more like a vocoder, where you speak into the tube and the guitar sound is changed accordingly. I think that this is actually a vocoder that is being marketed as a talkbox, so the line does blur a bit here.