I want a Jeff Lynne alike vocals, any tips?

Going purely from memory (so what follows will be utter cobblers), Jeff Lynne vocals have a fair dose of reverb, slap-back delay, heavy compression & high-pass eq.

@ Rev. Jem
thanks a lot, I will try that (in any combination).

@Roflcopter
nice info though, thanks for the link. I guess I'll have to tickle Richard Dodd until he gives away his settings ;-)

Second question, if I may: I have the Sonar tutorial files of course, but is there somewhere a .cwp file available with vocals on it. Just to see how a basic setting works?

That's great, Rev. Jem

I understand that very clear. I guess everybody would need some basic input like this. I've tried very many settings, but it's about the whole idea, the main composition, right?

A little strupid question, though: what's the point of sending the output to the master bus? Is this better than sending all output directly to my soundcard? What does the master bus do? I'm really sorry if this is like page one of the manual. I'm visual bound ;-)

Ah, right.
The bus-thing is an eye-opener for me.
A small step for Cakewalk, a major step for me ;-)

I use Sonar LE, by the way, so I have to figure out all FX-options that you mention. There is Reverb and there is Reverb, right?
I'm not gifted with a beautiful voice, so I have to have it engineered ;-)
Not to mention that I want to add some close harmony vocals (I've added a vocal bus in order to balance that bit), but this is like climbing on mountain on bare feet: Doable, but it hurts ;-)

just to jump in here... on top of the already solid responses given...

Beyond the technical side, you also want to consider the actual arrangment of these backing vocals.

Lynne is very fond of serious vocal stacking; and from what I've heard, on some occasions, he's not only doubling the backup vocals but even tripling them.

I also hear quite a bit of octave vocal work in the backing vox. So along with the "typical" 1/3/5 harmonies, there is also the the upper octave added as well. Some of these were likely done by a female vocalist, but could have been done by Lynne in a falsetto, too.

This appears evident in some older ELO stuff, like Sweet Talkin' Woman, Strange Magic, Do Ya, Telephone Line etc.

Also, consider that he was probably using the favorite "go to" processors of the time, and of the location.

UK recordings in the sixties and seventies implemented quite a bit of Fairchild gain reduction, and this would have certainly added its own texture as well.

But I think if you start by dissecting his actual vocal parts, and what he was doing, it would help you get to where you want to be.

FWIW

have copied the leadvocal track, but -of course- nothing happened until I added effects.

this is best achieved by what you suspected, and that is to actually sing each part of the harmony a number of different times. You'd be surprised at how little effect you really need when you finish this up, because as you mentioned..it's the little fluctuations and tonal differences that actually create their own effect.

That is about close harmony, but is this doable by pitching

again, best results are by actually singing the harmonies as opposed to using a pitch shift.

Fairchild gain reduction
That is a tube limiter, right

The Fairchild (model 670 for example) was a very popular, tube driven, gain reduction device used during the golden age of classic rock (and even dating back to the early '50's.) I was not suggesting you run out and find one... LOL... first of all, you probably can't, and second of all, if you do, they're running around 25 grand...
I was merely pointing out that this may have been a bit of the sound you were analyzing.

Favorite "go to" processors

Again, something along the lines of what was popular in control rooms during that time period; LA2's, 1176's, etc.

Not to mention various high dollar Neumann, (U series) AKG (C-12's, 24's) or Telefunken mics.

But none of this should inhibit you. Experiment with real time vocal stacking, slight compression (on mix, not during tracking) as well as various EQ adjustments per voc to give a sense of variance between all the parts.

have fun, good luck.

Too bad, it comes only in the color black. Doesn't match on my wall.