Joe Walsh’s Bob Heil Talk Box

Bob Heil developed this talk box for Joe Walsh after the two inspected an earlier version of the talk box originally made by Bill West. Joe first used this talk box on “Rocky Mountain Way” and on the Barnstorm tour around 1973/74.

I was friends with Dottie West, the country singer (…) and Dottie’s husband was Bill West, a great pedal-steel player but also an inventor. He had invented the talk box by placing a speaker driver, the back part of a speaker, in a cardboard box and connecting a piece of surgical tubing to it. So the sound came up the surgical tubing.

A guy named Pete Drake used it once in the Fifties for a song called ‘Forever,’ and then it went back in Bill West’s garage for 20 years. Bill came out of the garage and gave this thing to me.

Of course, I had to see how it was built, so I took it apart. And I was hanging out with Bob Heil at the time, and so we had a look at this thing, and Bob decided he had a good way to make ’em, so he put out his version of it. But the real one I still have — except the tube smells so horrible that nobody can use it.

Joe Walsh Discusses His Career, Gear and New Album, ‘Analog Man’ – Guitar World