Any one built one of these? Sonovox

[sonarchotic]

This is a clip from a campy old movie from 1940 that demonstrates the predecessor to the talk box. The Sonovox. In some ways it is way cooler than the talk box in it's ability to interact with all kinds of sound sources. Any one made one? Looks like ridiculous fun.

[cooder]

That is just unbelievably good!!!! What the heck happened to that?!?! We have to find out how to make that before Mike Matthews finds out and patents that....!

[selfdestroyer]

Looking around for info and found this

Before there was the Talk Box, however, there was the Sonovox. The idea behind these two technologies was similar: both used the shape of the mouth to modify the frequency content of a reproduced sound. With the Sonovox, instead of putting one's mouth on a tube that transmitted the sound to be modified, one pressed two loudspeakers against one's throat. In both cases, the user silently mouths words while the transmitted sound does the job of the larynx, or voice box. ("The Talk Box is an extra larynx," Frampton has said, "you shut of yours and get piped in larynx. It could be a guitar, it could be a synthesizer – anything that could be amplified and come out of the speaker and be bypassed and put through the tube.") Lucille Ball demonstrated the newly invented Sonovox in a newsreel of 1939, in which the sound she modifies comes from a recording of a train (in 1941, the Sonovox was used to impart speech to a whistle and steam for the voice of the train in Disney's Dumbo):

Like the illusion of Pepper's Ghost, the Sonovox found an early application in conjuring the dead. In the 1940 film You'll Find Out starring Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre, the Sonovox plays an important role in the performance of seances. The first seance scene features three visitors from the beyond, the first speaking through a trumpet, the second drawing a low, growling voice from unseen drums, and the third a wispy voice in the wind:

Interesting stuff.. There has to be a patent for this thing somewhere. I found one that makes mention to the Sonovox amp but not sure its the same thing. I will keep looking around since this is a fun subject for research.

Cody

[cooder]

Found this link
http://www.instructables.com/answers/How-can-I-make-an-old-school-Sonovox/
seems to be a speaker held against the throat that brings the instrument sound into the voice...

[cooder]

... and good one here:
http://www.musicofsound.co.nz/blog/sparky-the-sonovox

[timbo_93631]

If you watch the film "The Reluctant Dragon" you can see how they used one to make Casey Junior's voice on Dumbo!

[GrindCustoms]

Woah! Nice find!

[sonarchotic]

I haven't found any how to's for it. Plenty of talk box diy projects but nothing for the Sonovox yet. This just seems to beg a modern redesign that could leave the user's hands free. One commenter in one of those links mentioned his ideas for this but hadn't built or tested anything. I guess it's similar to the talk box but it uses your larynx instead of the rubber tube. That Reluctant Dragon clip mentioned by Timbo is cool and shows a little more about it.

Maybe start with a Ned type voice box?

[selfdestroyer]

sonarchotic, South Park's Ned, that was the first thing I thought of also.. The Mexican staring frog haha

"Its coming right for us!"

Cody