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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?

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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.

Ian C.
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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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    A 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: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocoder – Ian C. Feb 04 '11 at 15:47
  • 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. –  Feb 04 '11 at 17:20
  • 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. –  Feb 05 '11 at 01:44
  • It has nothing to do with how they sound but based on the physical and mathematical principles. You can have to things that work very differently sound similar and two things that work very similar sound completely different. For example, AM radio and FM radio, by your definition, would give two completely different results. Yet they are based on the same mathematical principles(almost identical actually). The only difference is one modulates the frequency of a carrier wave and the other modulates the amplitude. –  Feb 05 '11 at 05:06
  • Both have to do with modulation and all modulation effects have a simple mathematical representation. For me, I see them all as different colors of the same thing because they are all represented in the same mathematical way. Now I can understand it will be difficult for you to understand this if you have trouble abstracting and see the mathematical nature of things but it doesn't mean your right. Now maybe I am generalizing a bit too much for this forum but the reason I did that is that if the original poster understands modulation(has experience with it in other areas) he should easily –  Feb 05 '11 at 05:10
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    I 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. – yossarian Feb 05 '11 at 14:18
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    I'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. – yossarian Feb 05 '11 at 14:19
  • Math is a **tool** to help us understand physical phenomenon, math itself does not **create** anything physical. Yes, the same mathematical tools can be used to create transfer functions that attempt to describe what is happening in a vocoder, a transistor, and a talkbox. The tools however are imperfect. They do not represent physical phenomenon perfectly and, more importantly, they fail to describe the fundamentally **huge** differences in the four physical object's implementation and use. (con't...) – Ian C. Feb 05 '11 at 18:43
  • (...con't) And really, that is what the OP is asking about. How is it *physically* implemented and used. So math is not the complete answer, though it could be some part of it. Your answer in particular is so vague it could be dropped in verbatim for any "How does effect X work?" It says nothing really. If you want to answer with math, I suggest you at least answer with the *specific* transfer function that describes the behaviour of the effect. – Ian C. Feb 05 '11 at 18:43
  • Um, Math and physics go hand and hand. Quantum Mechanics requires that physically observable "things" have corresponding hermitian operators. Mathematics isn't a "tool" unless you think "thinking" is a tool. Mathematics is a very precise descriptive language. I never once said math created things. But the concept of modulation is pretty accurately understood as a mathematical construction. Only people that do not have the mathematics background can be confused by that. –  Feb 13 '11 at 16:45
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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.