Boss VE-20 Vocal Pedal Review

 

I’m not going to get into the ethics of using a pedal for vocals, as everyone has a different opinion on the matter; Suffice it to say that I use one when I feel like using one. And thus, I’m going to review the BOSS VE-20 Vocal Performer pedal that I got a few months ago and try to give you and idea of how useful it would be to you.

What is it?

An integrated loop and effects pedal for on stage use by vocalists.

Technical Features

-Two pedal system, one to control the loop pedal and bypass and the other to control harmonies and effects.

-You can chain of up to six effects: dynamics, pitch correct, tone/SFX, double/harmony, delay and reverb.

-As well as a  straight forward doubling setting, the editable harmony effect allows you to play around with pitch intervals, pan and gender of the harmony (that is to say it offers unison and up or down thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths and octave harmonies).

-The pitch correction effect allows you to access normal auto-tune tones as well as the standard chorus, flanger, strobe, radio, preamp (for EQ and the like) and distortion effects.

Pros?

-Designed specifically for vocalists, so no messing around with guitar inputs (though this does only apply if you don’t play guitar and sing)

-Simple to use, I literally picked it up, put batteries in it and started using it. Assuming you’re familiar with the ideas of what the various effects do and a rough idea of what you want to sound like, the VE-20 is a pleasure to use and really easy to get to grips with.

-Space for 50 custom presets besides the 30 already supplied, so you’re not going to run out of space for your settings in a hurry.

-Editing presets is a super easy, one button process

-Factory presets are passable. Though nothing I could use immediately, they were solid enough.

-Harmony setting can be used to get some insane Slam/grind tones and completely dehumanise your voice.

Cons?

-The two footswitch system can be awkward. Given that one works for the loop pedal, and the other for effects and harmony, it is forced to integrated the effects and harmonies into a single patch- that is to say they become one ‘setting’. So you can’t turn them off separately, which can become an issue if you want to use a setting for only one section of a song, forcing you to either be really unsubtle and kneel down and change the settings on the pedal manually or be unsubtle and just leave the effect on for the entire song. This could be easily solved by there being two pedals controlling the effects instead of just one as it can get awkward if you want to do anything complicated (e.g. activating just an octave setting for a 20 second section besides the delay setting you already have running through it) – most of the VE-20’s competitors have this ability and are far easier to use in terms of this (though this is reflected in the difference in their prices).

-Doesn’t come with a power adaptor. Which means buying one separately, which is lame when the pedal costs £200 and you can pick up the adaptor for £5 on Amazon. It wouldn’t be THAT much of a financial strain for BOSS to include one…

-No way to quickly switch settings without bending over, as compared with say the TC helicon pedal.

-It can be a struggle to get some of the reverbs to sound natural, but this tends to go largely unnoticed in a live environment.

Conclusions

Really solid pedal, and I really like what I can do with it and in general it's a pleasure to use. It’s just a shame that it’s so fiddly to switch between settings rather than just turn them off. Would definitely recommend it if you’re not doing anything overly complicated, but if you are or you’re significantly richer than I- The TC Helicon VoiceLive 2 is glorious and literally all you could possibly want from a vocal pedal. But the VE-20 is good at what it does, and a sound investment.

-E