Digitech Vocalist Live 3 Vocal Harmonizer Pedal - Product Review

Digitech opened up 2010 with a few new exciting products and introduced them at the 2010 NAMM show in January. Among them was the new Digitech Vocalist Live 3 Vocal harmonizer pedal. This pedal is meant to replace the Digitech Vocalist Live 2 vocal harmonizer and it does a pretty good job. Let's go over the unit.

I do a one man acoustic show. Just me, my guitar and my voice. I have the Digitech Vocalist Live 2 and I'm quite pleased with it. What prompted me to purchase the new Digitech Vocalist Live 3 was what it had over the Digitech Vocalist Live 2. And those things are quite impressive. Let's go over them.

The total features on the Digitech Vocalist Live 3 vocal harmonizer pedal are as follows.

Two voices of fully automatic harmony with your voice. The Live 2 has this.

Gender controls for each harmony voice allow you to alter the character of the harmony voices making them female or male. I love this feature. The Live 2 does NOT have this.

A humanize control to adjust the style of the harmony voices from loose to tight making them sound more human and less robotic. The Live 2 does NOT have this.

Five harmony patches to save harmony settings, each with an A part and a B part to make on stage harmony changes easy. This is a great feature that makes for very smooth operation during performances. The Live 2 does NOT have this.

Real time chromatic pitch correction. With the Vocalist Live 2, your voice had to be in perfect tune, but with the Live 3, if you fall a bit sharp or flat with you voice, the unit will correct it and your audience is non the wiser. The Live 2 does NOT have this.

Vocal effects: Warmth (tube preamp), Compressor, two-band EQ, Low cut, and a noise gate. The Live 2 has some effects but these are much better.

Reverb with three different room sizes. The Live 2 has decent Reverb but less choices.

Delay with five separate delay settings. The Live 2 does NOT have this but in my opinion, it's not needed.

Built-in guitar chorus effect. I love this feature as well. The Live 2 does NOT have this.

Ability to mix the guitar and vocal signals to provide the acoustic guitar player with much more flexibility when connecting to a mixer or powered speaker. The Live 2 does NOT have this.

A low noise microphone preamp to give you more flexibility in mixing your vocals. The Live 2 does NOT have this.

48V phantom power for condenser microphones should you need it. The Live 2 has this.

Guitar ground lift to eliminate any noise hum issues from your guitar when connected. The Live 2 has this.

Built-in guitar tuner that's easy to read and easy to use. The Live 2 has this.

Balanced XLR stereo outputs. The Live 2 has this.

Balanced line input for post processing recording applications. The Live 2 has this.

24-bit, 44.1 kHz audio quality. The Live 2 has this.

After I messed around with the Digitech Vocalist Live 3 at home for a day or two, I took it out on a gig. Here's my impression of the unit when using it in a real live situation.

Hooking it up was pretty easy and not that much different than hooking up my older Vocalist Live 2. I opened up with an acoustic version of a Hollies cover called "Bus Stop". Using the Vocalist Live 3 on the chorus, I could immediately notice a difference for the better. The harmonies were just a little bit out of time with my lead vocals. Not enough to be bothersome or distracting but with the Vocalist Live 3, my harmonies sounded less artificial and more like two REAL people singing with me.

I used the Vocalist Live 3 on several other songs too with pleasant results. I'm a pretty strong vocalist so I didn't have a need for the pitch correction feature but I DID enable it just in case. It was nice to have it there for insurance.

One song I did was a Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer song titled "Gentle Arms Of Eden". I loved the sound they had with Dave singing lead with Tracy's voice singing background. I chose just ONE female harmony voice. It wasn't Tracy Grammer's voice but it was just as good. I loved it and I got a few funny looks from the audience as well. I love it when I have that effect on them.

I found myself using the Warmth effect on my vocals the entire show. It's hard to describe the sound but to me, it just sounded less crisp. Like a nice soft blanket you could say. More like a studio recording. I used the reverb on the "room" setting and I liked it better than the reverb on my mixer.

That night, I left my chorus pedal at home to give the guitar chorus a try in the Vocalist Live 3. I liked it much better. That was one less pedal I had to hook up too.

After the gig, I noticed that I did a bit better in tips than I usually did at that particular place. I'm not sure if it was just chance, if it was me, or if it was the Vocalist Live 3. But I DO know that I got a lot of compliments on my new equipment purchase and quite a few strange looks at what I was doing with my feet during the show.

The low down:

The Digitech Vocalist Live 3 has a street price of just $299.95 USD. That's not bad considering the Vocalist 2 is still going for only $50 USD less than that at $249.95. You can get the Vocalist Live 2 at a clearance price in some places for $199.95 USD. Not bad but for $100 USD more, you might as well get the Vocalist Live 3 in my opinion. Just look at all the things the Vocalist 3 has over the Vocalist 2. You cant go wrong with the Vocalist Live 3. Get yours today while they're hot.