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What did Jeffrey Dahmer say to Lorena Bobbit? . … . . You gonna eat that?

Go with 1/4" Out -> GI100 -> FOH to block the board's phantom power.

That is true - or rather not relevant as you'd typically feed a DI box with the 1/4 out anyway. Whatever, what I was doing back in my HX Floor days (apart from using a phantom power blocker at first, but that was annoying as it actually required phantom power to work, for whatever reasons...) was using the XLR out to feed my monitor while sending the 1/4 out the FOH way, running into a DI box first. Fortunately, these days I don't have to deal with questionable XLR outs anymore...

AFAIK, DI boxes are designed to BLOCK phantom power from the board to the connected gear: https://gearspace.com/board/audio-student-engineering-production-question-zone/929317-di-measure-protection-phantom-power.html

Hm, but the sound folks have better EQs themselves and actual control of the FOH sound. That's exactly what I'd recommend as well.

Helix allows you to add Global EQ to 1/4", XLR or both outputs. When building presets, forget that Global EQ exists. Make it sound good coming out of mixing monitors. An intended way to use your modeller is to send XLR L/R to FOH, and use 1/4" for stage volume, to be able to hear yourself. Or use in-ears. In order to hear themselves on stage, many people use an FRFR, a power amp + cab, or go into an effects loop of an amp + cab. In all 3 cases (with some exceptions), there is no way to adjust your EQ. So. If you go direct to FOH, then: Global EQ is meant to be able to adjust your on-stage sound and nothing else. Sometimes you go to play a show and the stage is super-resonant, and it keeps rattling when you play a certain note or chord. Or the stage is surrounded by ceramic tile, and your ears are hurting because everything is loud and shrill. Global EQ to the rescue! Unlike your typical amp high/mid/low, Global EQ is extremely flexible. When I toured, I mostly left the Global EQ off for the on-stage amp. However, since the clubs I played were not all huge, sometimes the on-stage sound would interfere with the overall mix. That's when the sound guy would ask me to adjust my sound a certain way. Or sometimes, the stage is too boomy, and I would have to make the adjustment myself so I would not sound like one of those cars with a giant subwoofer in the trunk! In summary: Leave the direct FOH mix to the sound guy. Don't add any Global EQ to the XLR outs. Sound guys can apply whatever EQ they want to what you are sending them. Use Global EQ to compensate for the unforeseen stage acoustics. And nothing else. Every room is different. Even if you play with the same exact lineup, same exact club, same exact sound guy several days in a row, the room may sound different on any day due to: humidity, temperature, number of people, where people are, how worn out your strings are.

I'm astonished that there's not a publicly available HX Stomp preset for the clean intro and outro on Nothing Else Matters. I'll try to upload a decent one later today. In order to build the preset I did some research, and discovered that the amp used by Metallica was a Boss Jazz Chorus, which has a Boss CE-1 chorus built in. Eureka! Also it helps if you can crank up the treble on your neck humbucker. The active pickups used by the band are very bright. I have a 2015 Les Paul Classic with a built in boost/buffer circuit that eliminates tone suck caused by distributed capacitance in the instrument cable, which really brightens up the 57 Classic pickups. They are so bright that I put metal covers on the pickups to reduce the treble a bit. You can also boost the treble on the amp model or add an EQ block if needed.

Slight correction to @rd2rk's list: Global Settings -> Footswitches -> FS3 = TAP/TUNER In Command Center set a FS to SNAPSHOT. The DEFAULT settings cycle 1-2-3-1-2-3. In CommandCenter set a FS to LOOPER. Use Bypass Assign for the 1 SwitchLooper. (otherwise you can only use partial functions of the Looper)

Is your HX Stomp powered directly by the Line 6 power supply it came with? Is that connection secure? If not I would look at power supply rather than heat as the issue.

Again, check your levels to make sure you're not trying to fix something that you can avoid with a proper gain staging. To exclude Helix from your signal chain but still be able to use your pedals you need an additional switcher with three or more fx loops: Loop 1: Helix IN -> Send 1 Loop 2: pedals Loop 3: Helix Return 1 -> 1/4" Out If you just engage Loop 2 you exclude Helix. If you use Loop 1, 2 and 3 you have the Helix setup like you have now. You wouldn't even need to change your Helix patch.

If you have upgraded the firmware recently you will likely have a complete system backup file. That is a mandatory part of the upgrade process. You can use the editor’s Restore from Backup feature (under the File menu) to determine this. If a backup file is available it will be listed when you invoke that feature.

How would it know that you don't want to go to Snapshot Mode? A Global Setting? Maybe you only want that SOMETIMES? A per preset setting? Per Snapshot? Thing is, if you hang around here (or any gear forum) long enough you realize that everybody has something they think it's crazy that the device they bought doesn't do by default. Nothing does everything that everybody wants it to do. That's life! Time to start saving for the gadget that does more of what you want (need?) it to do. FWIW - my Helix Floor does everything I want/need, and more. Just sayin'... sounds GREAT too!

I'm not sure I understand everything that you are asking, but here goes: 1) First, the FX Loop should be set to INSTRUMENT Level in Global settings. Second, IMO, dirt pedals don't sound good when used in FX Loops. By the time the guitar signal hits the pedal it has already undergone two digital conversions AD at Helix Input and DA at FX Loop SEND, then another AD returning to the main signal chain and another DA when exiting Helix to the power amp/speaker. Add another complete DA/AD conversion if there's a second FX Loop involved. Something gets lost in translation when using dirt pedals. Also, there's a small amount of noise in the FX Loops which is amplified by the dirt pedal. It's not much, but all things considered, your dirt pedals are better off placed between your guitar and the Helix Input. Someone is bound to jump in here and say "It sounds fine to me!" and all I can say is try both methods and judge for yourself. Note that placing any pedal between guitar and Helix that's not TRUE BYPASS will load the guitar's pickups to the pedal's Input (usually 1M) and negate the benefit of the Auto Impedance function of your Helix. This only matters if you're using Helix FX that are other than 1M, such as certain Fuzzes. You can get a pdf which shows the impedances (and much more) of Helix FX here (THANKS to @PerSfor this excellent resource!): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/3ye2g1okvx18ypsww746w/Line6-Helix-Model-and-DSP-Summary-3.80.pdf?rlkey=8ygh0iqax8ewds0i3yn0nxc86&e=1&dl=0 2) If you're asking about switching between your amp's preamp section in 4cm and bypassing it to use Helix Amp Sims, place the FX Loop Block next to the Helix Amp Sim in the signal chain. Assign both to the same FS and SAVE the preset with one ON and the other OFF. Each press of the FS will bypass one or the other.

Using these three for examples: I would put a tuner before the volume pedal. WHY? Because I can turn my volume off and still tune. There's some more technical reasons, like a volume pedal amplifying certain frequencies that may or may not drive the tuner bonkers. But muting to tune is the primary reason. And noise gate???? I wouldn't put it before a volume pedal because when the gate activates and shuts off sound, if you have the volume pedal up, it will be a much more noticeable hard break. That doesn't make them wrong. And I am certainly not wrong. But it shows how rules aren't rules as much as they are suggestions. The different ways one uses a NG or VP can alter where you place them.

Separate post, not a continuation of the first A lot of new users (myself included) get lost because they look at 1000 options in the unit and they feel overwhelmed. But instead, to become familiar with the concept of virtual amps/fx/etc, you should be comparing it to the physical amps/fx/etc. Try to recreate your physical rig using a virtual rig. If you never used a "Tron Up", don't use it now. If you never used a Peavey 5150, don't use it now. If your 1983 rig was guitar-wah-distortion-amp, your virtual rig should be guitar-wah-distortion-amp. This brings down the drama to something more manageable. You are familiar with physical X, use virtual X. The 1000 options in the unit can be thought of as "The Music Store". In the physical world, we stress over which of the 1000 options to buy, but only buy a handful. In the modeling world, you have the 1000 options from the store (the device), but only need to buy a couple (patch design). Once you get the hang of that, then you can start with "what if I add this" or "what if I Switch that" and the always famous GAS - I never owned a Fender Twin, nows my chance to use one.

Here we go again - if Line 6 have anything in development, they never reveal it until it’s ready to hit the streets. People comment that Helix is almost 10 years old, but that’s just the external hardware - see the video with Digital_Igloo below. Plus, people seem to forget that even though the Helix is approaching 10 years old, it actually started development way back in 2008. A little history from Eric on the 5th anniversary of the Helix launch, below. Hope this helps/makes sense.

Go to The Gear Page>Digital and Modeling Gear. Search for posts by Digital Igloo. He is THE BOSS (aka Eric Klein - Chief Product Design Architect). He has repeatedly said "Not this year. Probably not next year either." That's the best you're going to get on the subject. Buy what you want now. You might not be here tomorrow.

Here's another video of mine where I go through some more of my gimmicks.

I updated a new version of this patch on 1/22/2025. It has a 10 band EQ instead of a compression block. Enable the EQ to add treble to the tone. You can try a little less boost at 8 and 16 kHz to tame too much sizzle. Now if only I could remove the earlier patch to avoid confusion...

I'm quite happy with the result, let me know what you think of the tones! https://g-red-music.bandcamp.com/album/traces

I opened a ticket when it first happened, I have not had much in the way of help so far, other than what I considered to be fairly generic responses. (eg. it's a server issue, IT are working on it) I've worked as a tech in IT, and server issues don't normally run into several days, let alone weeks. At the time of the original post, I had received no reply for over 2 weeks and was very frustrated that I was not getting any replies when I had made further enquires on the ticket. After I posted here I went back to the support ticket, posted another comment, and after that I received a reply fairly quickly about a possible monkey workaround, the "Making Line 6 Monkey Work" post. This workaround has done nothing for my issue, or monkey, as still neither detect my 500X. I'm not really concerned with Monkey though. It seems the issue is with license manager, however they may be related because after looking in the Monkey log, it has basically the same errors and licence manager mentions Monkey device. In that reply I was told that licence manager would come "later." I have asked if there is any estimated time frame but I am yet to receive a reply back from that. I am trying to be patient about this but when you buy something and are unable to even activate it for several weeks, it wears rather thin.

LOL! Well, that's why I suggested you don't buy IR's. Whether an IR is 'good' is wholly subjective. One buyer might think an IR is fantastic, another will think it's awful. A lot of folk who've spent time with IR's have come to the conclusion that they'd just rather stick with the stock cabs. IR's a rabbit hole you can get lost in. If you're expecting a magical solution there really isn't one - but try this one free IR to get you started, as it's pretty decent: https://www.dropbox.com/s/m4fwk8jx6m08hse/ML Sound Lab's BEST IR IN THE WORLD.zip?dl=0 So, are IR's really better than the stock cabs in Pod Go? Better is a highly subjective word, but they can be 'different'. Why do I say 'can be' - that's because the stock cabs are actually pretty good and you'll often be able to tweak these to sound pretty much the same as a lot of IR's. But I honestly think you need to start from the basics and learn a bit about what the stock cabs & mics etc can do. So, just concentrate on ONE cab to begin with. Use that to decide what you like and don't like. for example, I play classic rock so I like Marshall/Marshall type amps. A 4x12 25w Celestion cab is pretty classic. So I picked that cab to start with. I increased the output level by 3-5dB because I found it gives a fuller tone (a big reason why IR's can sound 'bigger' is just that most are set with more Cab output) plus it more clearly highlights the tonal differences from adjustments. I found through experimentation that, generally, I prefer the mic 2.5"-4" away which gives an airier more amp in the room feel without overdoing it. Adding 25% early relic gave me just a tad more 'bouyancy/fullness' to the sound, again without overdoing it. Re the mics, I quickly found that there were only a few favourites that 'did it' for me. No surprises in that these were the three big industry standards. There are really only 3 main MIC types - dynamic, ribbon, and condenser. See here: https://www.musicianonamission.com/types-of-microphones/ For me, I generally mostly go for: SM57 dynamic - this is modelled on the Shure SM57 which is probably the most used mic in recording and micing up amps 160 Ribbon (Bayerdynamic M160) - very expensive studio mic in the real world! I like the 121 too. Occasionally I'll go condenser - typically the 414 Condenser (AKG C414 TL11 The SM57 is very much 'in your face' and will usually sound louder, but the Ribbon mics & Condenser mics pick up different nuances that are more sensitive to touch playing. There's no right or wrong here' it's just what you like. Once you've found a few favourites it makes setting your cab much easier. But it's really easy to go through them all in a minute as a check in case a different mic happens to give a tone you like or are trying to match. Re high & low cut, these are essentially EQ - slide all the way to the left and the right to hear what these do. A common approach is to set these as per the real speaker specs. Look up a 25w Celestion greenback specs and you'll probably see a frequency response range from 70Hz to 5,000 Hz. So setting the low cut to 70Hz and high cut to 5000 Hz pretty much replicates the real thing. But unlike the real thing, you can 'cheat'. Sometimes I'll slide the low cut all the way to the left, and the high cut all the way to the right (off). You'll quickly find what your ears prefer and follow that for other cabs too. Mix - I leave it at 100% generally, just like in the real world. Once you've found a few favourite stock cabs that work for you (and generally I'll go for a Marshall cab with a Marshall, a Fender cab with a Fender amp etc) and set these as you like, THEN it's time to compare with some IR's of those cabs & see if you like the difference, or whether you can actually match the tone pretty much with some minor tweaks and don't need to load the IR anyway. Some IR's you won't be able to match eg they've used multicabs/mics or a cab version that's a bit rare. Think of it like choosing a car - before you buy you need to decide what makes you like - Ford, Mercedes, BMW etc (akin to Marshall, Fender, Vox etc), how many doors (3,4, 5 - akin to 1x12, 2x12, 4x12 speaker) then the specific model (eg Vox 2x12 Blues, Silver, greenbacks), then how does it feel to drive ie how does the cab sound to you? What you're hoping for is that someone can just recommend an IR for you akin to recommending a car for you. I'm afraid me old china that you really need to invest some time in to learn about all this, at least the basics. Although it's a much simpler avenue to Helix modelling than a Helix, the Pod Go is not a plug n play MFX. If you're not prepared to invest some time to learn to walk before you can run, I'm afraid you've just got the wrong unit for your needs. But I promise you, once you get a feel for the basics, it's all actually a lot more straightforward than you think - and learning about tone is a really enjoyable part of the journey because you can make some great discoveries that can transform your tone & your playing enjoyment. But don't get overly hung up on all the permutations - because it honestly doesn't work that way. Hope all this is of some help (others will have different views re approach etc, which is fine). It's a journey, so enjoy it - otherwise you could easily keep ending up at the wrong destination with no understanding as to why!

Because piezos are in actual physical contact with the strings, they're way more affected by string vibration characteristics than magnetic pickups. Longitudinal string vibration, fret buzz, pick attack can all produce sound artifacts with piezos... much more so than with magnetics. I agree that string gauge, tension, set-up (action), and winding all have more effect on piezo sound characteristics than they do on magnetics. Flat-wound strings sound warmer, "flatter" and have less sustain; round-wound strings sound brighter, are more responsive and have more sustain. These round-wound characteristics increase with string gauge, but also depend on composition (chrome being warmer-sounding than nickel-plated steel, for example). I've tried lots of brands, gauges and compositions and have settled on my preferences. But in general I find lighter gauges sound quirkier, especially with a longer neck. In the end, it's a compromise... Let your ears be your guide.

As said above, if you've stripped the head of the screw, a new hex key won't help you, but many times in a pinch, when a hex-head screw got stripped, I've used a star-key instead. Most multi-head screwdriver sets will have a few of these, along with the usual flat head, Phillips, and hex options... you'll just have to see which size fits. Chances are one of them will grab just fine, unless the hex head is so mangled that it's completely rounded out. Should be able to find a set for $10-$15... they're good to have around. No need to spend big $$ for heavy duty stuff... you're not working on a motorcycle, and the screws in question shouldn't be torqued to a million ft-lbs anyway. An inexpensive set will do just fine.

The tiny set screws can be very tight, especially if you forget to loosen the strings first. If you don't, the hex key can strip the screw head slightly, and a new key won't fix the problem. I know... it happened to me. Now I use a slotted jeweller's screwdriver, small enough to fit diagonally across the hex pattern. It digs into the screw head and works well. But if you go that route, be very careful not to scratch your guitar. It's either that... or replace the screws.