Vocoder used as part of a combi?

[Shutoku]

So one of my band classes is going to play "Mr. Blue Sky" by ELO for our year end concert.

My keyboard player will be doing a lot on this, and all of the sounds will be coming from the kross. He will be playing the sounds from a combination of the Kross' own keyboard, and a Korg sp250 via midi

Here is the combi:
Kross: layer of cellos and violins on the lower 2/3 of the keyboard. Vocoder on upper 1/3
SP 250: Piano for the bottom 2/3 and a mix of choirs on the top.

Anyone familiar with the song will know for one keyboardist there is a lot to juggle here covering the piano and vocoder, as well as string and choir bits, but it is do-able.

Here is the problem. How does one get the vocoder to behave like a vocoder in a combi?
In program mode it is no problem...turn the mic input on, go to one of the vocoder sounds in drums/fx and voila!
But in a combi, it is not so simple. I discovered the vocoder in the ifx section, but I am having very limited success there. I set up the vocoder sound and run it through the vocoder effect with input on, but at best there is a hint of an effect from the mic and certainly in the context of the rest of the band, it won't be audible.

Right now to work around this I am just assigning the combi to one favorite slot and the vocoder in program mode in another favorite slot, but with the keyboard parts being so involved, I'd really like to not have the poor kid worrying about switching favorites in the middle of the song as well.

So simply....how does one make the vocoder sound in a combi like this, the same as it sounds in program mode?

[Shutoku]

I'll reply to myself !
So I found a Kross combi that had vocoder in it. I painstakingly wrote down every parameter I could see and tried to apply it to the combi I was making. No success. So instead I took the combi that already had vocoder and used it as a template to build the combi I wanted.
That worked perfectly. I still don't know what I"m missing on the first combi though. oh well.
In the end it didn't matter, because the mic is of course only working with the vocoder and the student needs to sing normally in other parts of the song, so it works better with him using two favourites to do it.

[RedKross2014]

Very interesting. I am new at the Kross, but I would like to try the vocoder. Could you tell me, which combi you have used.
Many thanks in advance
Klaus

[Shutoku]

I think I accidentally over-wrote it so I don't know what it is called, but it was combi 006 in the drums/sfx section.

You can also go into the programs in that same section and find some vocoder set ups.