Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsProfessional musician with many harmony pedals...this one is the worst harmony on ANY setting
Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2021
I am so bummed to have to write this review. I'm a professional touring guitarist and singer that has been using the TC Helicon Harmony Singer for years. I loved the idea of stepping up to this new Boss VE500 pedal. The Boss pedal seems to be the most customizable and powerful harmony pedal on the market. In a sense, yes, it is very customizable and has a lot of great features. That is why I gave it the two stars.
The problem is the HARMONY. The TC Helicon is more of a set it and forget pedal. It picks the notes and intervals to sing unbelievably well. This pedal, no matter what setting you try to settle on Chord1,CHord2,Scale1,Scale2 it seems to always be a little off. It may pick the right notes for one song, but if you switch to a different type of progression it starts choosing very questionable notes. I suppose you might be able to program your own intervals for every song and have a different patch for every song to make sure the harmonies were accurate. Yikes! what a headache. But even when it seemed to be the right setting...it still was off occasionally.
Ok, I know there will be people reading this review saying "you don't know how to use the pedal! You didn't try all the settings! Something must be set wrong!". I can ASSURE you I know what all the settings do and have tried them all in various combinations. Again, I am a professional touring musician (just need to stress I'm not a newbie that can't sing), I am out of work due to Coronavirus and have lots of time on my hands to test EVERY LITTLE FUNCTION this pedal has to offer. I've spent about 3-4 hours a day tweaking the pedal and trying to discover every little bit of what it is capable of. Insane? yes. My conclusion....two stars. I am plugged directly into the pedal, it's not because something is interfering. It's not set to hybrid mode(although I tried that too). It's not set to midi control of key. Etc etc etc.
The TC Helicon automatically figures out what key and scale you are in and picks great intervals. No matter what the progression. This one, not so much. I have the key settings on instrument, auto, etc. I've tried setting the note sensitivity to high, medium, low. I've tried turning doubling to normal, deep. Hell, I've even tried using the, gasp, pitch correction to see if maybe it's me!
Ugh! I'm so disappointed to say this. But this pedal is not worth $400. Before the pedal arrived at my house I downloaded the manual and read it cover to cover twice (I always do this, and suggest you do too if you're an avid buyer of music technology equipment). I watched every review video. As soon as it arrived I dove head first into all the settings. For a few days I was loving some of the vocal effects you can assign to midi controllers or using my external boss footswitch. Hmmm...The harmonies were off...no problem, I'm sure it's just a setting that is not perfect. I'll find it. 3 days of working on it, 4 days, 5 days, 6 days, a week. Every day singing into this thing and tweaking settings! I just could not get it to pick the right harmony notes 80% of the time. That's the goal...80%!
I'd say it picks the right note about 60% of the time. Not good enough. The TC Helicon picks the right interval about 85-90% of the time. Any higher than that would probably need a real human being that knows the song. Conclusion...don't buy this pedal if you want a harmony pedal. Hopefully TC comes out with a compact stereo harmony pedal with effects. Ugh. So bummed...I'm RETURNING IT! NOooooooo