NerdOfTheYear

Ok, so: I've heard his name but have never listened to anything by the good Mr Zappa. I know, I know, decry the wasted musical palette of the modern millennial! May as well use this opportunity to get educated. What's a good starting point to give him a listen? Or alternatively, if you were stranded on an island and could only have one piece of work that he is associated with, which would it be?

I mean, Native has a 15 day free trial period, so you can do this for yourself. Record a DI track, and then reamp it through your helix and through the Native software. If it matches? Great. If it doesn't? Great. You're safe either way.

An eternity! I'm already digging out my dusty X3 to check my signal chain from my Big Bottom patches to see how it translates to the Badonk :P

As a user, I think I prefer you dumping it on our heads too. The first day you did this pre-announcement I was over the moon, but now... Knowing that I have to wait at least a week til February - almost certainly more - until I get my hand on all these goodies? It's taxing me. I want to be fine tuning my Obsidian settings for live shows now.

I'm intending to trade up my JTV89 for one of these bad boys. I've always loved the tech in the Variax, but I prefer playing longer scale length guitars personally and never really found the '89 very comfortable as a straight guitar. I'm hoping the Shuriken will be the fix.

The Badonk is an update of the old Big Bottom from the pod X3. It's a line6 original guitar amp, high gain. I think it was a modified Rectifier originally, but its particular suited to bass-y metal guitars. Lots of Monuments, Periphery, Meshuggah type stuff used that sim.

The most exciting/important part for me is being able to have multiple instances running at once so that I can lock in my guitar and bass tone together, before exporting them to the helix. That's monstrous!!! Additionally, my band used to do silent rehearsals. Now we can also do fully silent live tone testing!!!

This is literally everything I have been hoping for in one patch! Big Bottom + B7K + Variax Integration (I own a used 87 that didn't come with a dongle).

The thing that sold me on my JTV89 in the first place was seeing Stevic and the 12 Foot Ninja boys playing live. The tone palette they had without changing guitars was outstanding. I'm hoping this means we'll have a beautiful new toy that's even more suited to that style of music :D

I just downloaded the NAMM app and checked Line6's schedule for NAMM. Apart from the artist appearances, there were three recurring sessions from Line 6: - "Spider V - New Product Launch: Discover the new offerings in the Spider V family." - "Helix - Guiar Processor: Latest updates and new product launch." - "Variax Launch w/ Stevic MacKay: Discover Stevic Mackay's new signature Variax guitar release." All of these excite me.

Horror story: we once turned up to a gig and the sound guy said this to us. My whole band is digital, at the time it was an Axe, 2 HD500s and a keyboardist; and the sound guy has said all the guitarist needed to use amps. We'd provided - as we always do - our stage requirements weeks ahead of time, saying that we ran direct and needed 4 channels of direct sound, but apparently this guy hadn't read it and was unwilling to try and fit us in. Because he wouldn't budge we ended up having to use the gear from one of the other support acts. Needless to say, horrible gig.

Don't tease me like this, I'm already far too excited for 2017 based on the vague comments you've made about what's to come.

I mean, the Helix is running the same two SHARC DSP that the Axe-Fx II is running. There's a lot of processing power in there, it's just that not all effects are made equally. This is includes not all amps using the same amount of DSP. If your only running one instrument (guitar) thru the Helix, then there is ample processing power if you think about where in the chain you place your DSP-intensive blocks. As an example, when I'm building a patch with the intention of using multiple amps, I make sure my amp blocks are on Path 1A and 1B, and my IR/Cabs and reverbs are on path 2A + 2B. I've also started blending my IRs in MixIR2 so that I can have 1 2048 IR to use for both amps. That and a reverb fits nicely on the DSP.

This really excites me.

I managed to grab a snippet of what my car has been playing since I updated! https://www.dropbox.com/s/uxr2bjomikv5omk/Firmware%20Error%20Sound_1.mp3?dl=0

Not me unfortunately. I bought my JTV-89 second hand from a guitar centre in the US, and when it arrived here in Australia I found that it didn't include the interface device. I haven't been able to find a Interface for sale in Australia either.

For me, purchasing Freman's big pack was well worth the price of entry because it gave me workable patchs in styles of music that I otherwise would not have been in. My personal songwriting is high gain metal. For my style, I know how to dial in my cleans, my gainy patches and my bass tones and have been doing it since the Pod X3. But recently, my prog band was going through the reamping for our album and we notices that for a few bars in a couple of songs we needed a different edge-of-break up sound to round out the tone. Being able to jump to an amp that I otherwise wouldn't use, spend five minutes tweaking a patch to get it right in the pocket and reamp those few bars saved literal hours of work I would have had to do to dial in the right tone to match that particular song section from scratch.

So, something that may help you in considering the FRFR solution: You mentioned earlier that you "need a lead tone that sounds and responds like an analog setup or tube amp". The important thing about running through the Helix is that you're going to be able to get a variety of different tube amp sounds, cleans or gainier amps and switch between them. At the moment, you've mentioned that the amp blocks are sounding terrible running through your amp, and that's because essentially what you're doing from an analog perspective is: - Guitar -> Amp Head 1 -> Cabinet 1 -> Microphone -> Amp Head 2 -> Cabinet 2. If you did that in a real world context, it would sound terrible as well. The FRFR solution will let you have something closer to Guitar -> Amp Head 1 -> Cabinet -> Microphone -> PA. That means that it will sound fundmanetal different to an "amp-in-the-room" sound, but not nescessarily in a bad way. It also means if you're not a fan of the distortions in the box, you can get that gainier lead sound from a gainier tube amp and still get the tube response. I can't give you an all out solution here but if you do go down the FRFR route, then a potential signal chain could be: Guitar Input -> EQ -> Valve Driver -> Soldano Amp block -> Jazz Rivet Amp Block -> Delay -> Cab/IR block -> Reverb On Snapshot 1: Valve Driver + Soldano Block OFF, Jazz Rivet ON On Snapshot 2: Valve Driver + Soldano Block ON, Jazz Rivet OFF

I think I've voiced this elsewhere before, but for me the things I'm most excited about are L6 bringing use more things that we CAN'T get anywhere else. Like, one of my favourite amps for recording - ever - is the Big Bottom from the X3 days. In that sense, I haven't had a full time to hack into the Fatality, but I love that we're getting a few more of Line 6's take on different sounds. Sure there probably are boutique amps that we don't have yet, but I'm interested in seeing what L6 is able to make in the way of unique boutique sounds, especially given that they're modelling these amps at the component level. Exciting times.

I'm not going to get into an argument about these ridiculous comments about millenials, there is enough of that elsewhere on the internet. What I will say is that none of the stores in my town stock helix physically, so I ordered online from the nearest physical store that did. The human element still matters and influences purchasing decisions for some of us.

Haha, if it counts for anything, the Helix price here in Australia is $USD2127. I'm glad I got mine when it first came out, I was able to save a few hundred. That being said, I love my Helix and haven't regretted the purchase at all.

Oh, this I am GREATLY interest in. I haven't used my JTV 89 much lately (it's been at my parent's house for some recording my dad is doing), but I definitely feel like I'm under using it's capabilities with the Helix.

Are there more details about this? I'd definitely prefer a backpack type thing for my pedal, as I'm usually juggling 3 hand held objects with previous travel rigs.