TC-Helicon Harmony V100: The Acoustic Amp With a Full Vocal Suite Built In

Quick Take

What it is: A 100-watt, 2-channel acoustic combo driving a 10-inch Tannoy Dual Concentric speaker, with a built-in vocal harmony engine, pitch correction, BodyRez pickup enhancement, a looper and a 4-button footswitch.

Who it's for: Performing singer-songwriters and anyone fronting a band with an acoustic, who would otherwise be carrying a separate vocal processor.

Price: Check current price — $729.00 at Sweetwater.

The catch: It's built for small to medium rooms. If you need to fill a large venue on the amp alone, this isn't the one.

Acoustic amps with built-in effects are common. An acoustic amp with a full vocal processing suite — harmony engine, pitch correction and all — is not. That's what separates the TC-Helicon Harmony V100 from every other acoustic combo in its class, and it's why a performing singer-songwriter should look at it before buying an amp and a vocal processor separately.

TC-Helicon Harmony V100 — Fast Facts

• Power and speaker: 100 watts driving a 10-inch Tannoy Dual Concentric speaker
• Channels: 2, one for vocals and one for instrument
• Vocal harmony: Built-in processor for up to 3-part harmonies, 8 harmony effects
• Pitch correction: Basic correction to keep stray notes in tune
• Guitar enhancement: BodyRez, which adds body resonance to a piezo pickup
• Looper: Built in, with unlimited overdubs and an undo function
• Feedback control: Intelligent anti-feedback processing on each channel
• Tuner: Chromatic, on the instrument channel
• Outputs: Dual XLR plus USB for direct recording
• Included: 4-button footswitch

Why the Dual Concentric speaker matters

Because it fixes the reason most acoustic amps only sound right when you're standing directly in front of them. Tannoy first introduced the Dual Concentric design back in 1947, and it still excels at reproducing acoustic instruments and vocals — which is exactly why it's worth explaining.

Most acoustic amps pair a low- and mid-frequency woofer with a small high-frequency tweeter. Together they cover the wide frequency response of your acoustic guitar. The sonic problem is that the two drivers don't operate as a single sound source, which produces phase cancellations that make the reproduced sound less accurate — and the effect gets more noticeable as you move off-axis, to the sides or behind the amp.

Manufacturers usually deal with this by time-aligning the woofer and tweeter to bring them into phase, but that only makes the sound coherent in a narrow cone directly facing the amp. Accuracy still degrades significantly off-axis. If you've ever wondered why most acoustic amps sound “right” in only one spot, the dual-driver system is the reason.

The Dual Concentric speaker integrates the tweeter into the woofer so the two behave as a true point-source transducer — a fancy way of saying that, as far as the physics are concerned, they're one speaker. Full-range sound leaves the cabinet in all directions with true coherency, so listeners standing to the side hear the same thing as the ones directly in front. Most guitarists would want to hear an amp before judging it, and that's the point: the V100 is worth putting your ears in front of, precisely to hear what the speaker does.

The vocal harmony processor and vocal suite

The V100 removes your need for a separate vocal processor. Its harmony engine is derived from TC's long line of studio-quality vocal effects, and gives you eight harmony effects — low/high, bass/high, high/higher and so on — for up to three-part harmonies. You can also engage built-in pitch correction to keep stray notes in tune.

Once you've picked your harmony effect, you can enhance the whole vocal ensemble with chorus, reverb and echo, each with multiple modes. All of it is controllable from the included 4-button footswitch, and there's one feature live performers will appreciate immediately: a Talk function that disables the effects when you want to address the audience.

There's one more thing on the vocal channel worth calling out: TC's Adaptive Tone DSP, which applies dynamic EQ, compression, de-essing and gating from a single knob. Turn it fully counterclockwise to leave it off, then bring it up to gradually introduce the enhancement. It's effectively one knob for studio-quality vocals, and it takes the guesswork out of getting a good vocal sound in almost any room. Most discerning musicians are suspicious of one-knob, set-and-forget processing — TC-Helicon's Adaptive Tone is the exception that has proven itself.

What BodyRez does for a piezo pickup

It puts the body back in. The instrument channel starts with a chromatic tuner and anti-feedback control, and from there you can engage BodyRez to optimise the sound of your piezo. Derived from TC Electronic's acclaimed acoustic processors, BodyRez adds natural-sounding body resonance to complement the direct sound of the pickup. The result is rich acoustic tone that sounds like it was captured with a studio microphone, rather than the midrange “quack” players associate with piezos.

The onboard looper

Comprehensive enough to replace a separate loop pedal. You choose whether to loop your vocals, your guitar or both, which unlocks a lot of creative potential for singer-songwriters. There are unlimited overdubs for layered loops, and an undo function to remove the most recently recorded part on the fly. We think the onboard looper is a big bonus for any player, even if you only ever use it for practice and songwriting.

The footswitch is more customisable than it looks

The V100 ships with a rugged 4-button footswitch. The default functions — Harmony, Vocal FX, Guitar FX and Looper — are labelled on the pedals, but we were amazed at how fluid it is to change them. Hold down one of the footswitches, then press a button or turn a knob on the amp: that footswitch now controls whatever you chose. Some functions can be assigned as a group, so Reverb, Chorus and Echo can all live on one switch to toggle together, or on separate switches to toggle independently.

The customisation pays off most with the harmony processor. Hold a footswitch, press the Harmony button, then select a harmony mode, and that voicing is saved to that switch. You could put Unison on one switch and a low/high harmony on another, and move between them mid-song. We've used a lot of amps with footswitches, and this one rates highly for customisability.

Your all-in-one performance companion?

We highly recommend the TC-Helicon Harmony V100 to any acoustic performer who needs a capable amplifier for small- to medium-sized rooms. TC were wise to build an acoustic amp around Tannoy's Dual Concentric speaker, because it delivers natural, spacious tone without the beaming that most acoustic amps suffer from. The vocal processing is the headline: the harmony engine sounds as good as anything TC-Helicon has put in a dedicated processor, and Adaptive Tone is genuinely effective for any vocalist. We came to the Harmony V100 to understand its vocal processing — what we found was a highly capable performance amplifier for any acoustic musician.