mbenigni

Interesting discussion. I just received my Standard a couple of nights ago, having wanted to upgrade to a JTV for years now. I assumed there would be a night and day improvement in the modeled guitars vs. the old 300/500/700 tech, but out of the box it was the other way around: my old 500 (a transplant actually) sounded worlds better than the Standard. I'd almost made up my mind to send the new guitar back, but finally loaded up Workbench and noticed that increasing the level 4db brought "Spank" back to life. Some of the other models still sound weird and phasy to me, even having made similar adjustments, but it's early going. I'll have to see what else I can coax out of them in Workbench. Biggest takeaway is that variances in piezo output must be pretty wide, and their preamps aren't properly calibrated vs. the modeling algorithms on some of these guitars. Mine wasn't even ballpark... I hope by the time I'm done the Standard comes around to sounding like an upgrade. I'm still fighting for apples and apples here.

Wow - great work! Def. hearing a Vai influence, and a lesser known player from the ca. 1990 heyday of shred, Rocky George (Suicidal Tendencies.) And the intro had me thinking Tool for a little while. Anyway, love it.

Thank you, HonestOpinion! It is a challenge finding a title and succinct explanation that's clear for both users and the potential developers (Line 6.) From a development/ implementation perspective I wanted to keep it as straightforward as possible: a setting that will make a DSP chip ignore a patch change event. From there, a lot of different applications emerge, addressing a bunch of seemingly unrelated requests if users are creative with it. P.S. I changed the title (max length is tight) and updated the description a bit. Let me know if you have any recommendations.

Here's a more general-purpose idea that can be used to address this issue (and a bunch of others!) Please consider voting: http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Global-setting-to-Hold-DSP-path-2-on-preset-change/799158-23508

Sacrificing the $$$ is one thing, and sacrificing the elegance is another. If I'm going to add another processor, another power cable, a bunch of audio (or spdif) cables, hassle with getting one unit to control the other over MIDI... the difference in tone would have to be so drastic as to imply the Helix itself just made random cartoon noises when I played guitar. I know some guys will go to any lengths and all that, but I put a premium on simplicity - which is why the Helix is so attractive in the first place. Now if Kemper would license the technology and let you guys put a KPR loading block in your OS, that would be another story... :)

Alas, it will have been months since I've heard a Kemper by then. I'll basically be able to post whether I'm happy or not, for whatever that's worth. I'll probably compare it directly with Bias Amps and offer my opinions there. As for the ease/difficulty of a Kemper, it depends on how you intend to use it. If you're just running one signal path (4 stomps, 1 amp, and some post effects) and using a footcontroller to select presets, it will deliver. And yes it sounds amazing and can be made to sound like just about anything you want through the acquisition of new profiles. I need a few things that 95% of guitarists have no interest in, which made me the token malcontent amongst Kemper-owners LOL. But the KPA might serve you very well. If, on the other hand, you want real flexibility with effects, routing, expression pedal assignments, USB integration, multiple amps, etc... then the Kemper may fall short regardless of how good it sounds.

I don't know what's going on with all of the various retailers concerning this Helix roll out. It's a little painful to watch. I'm hoping to see mine in about a week - which is a perfectly reasonable time frame - but the feedback everyone is getting in terms of availability and shipping dates is all over the map, from "we have far more units than pre-orders and can ship immediately", to "late November" (which is crazy IMO.)

Regarding that list of endorsees, most of those players can be seen playing all sorts of different products. Not to take anything away from the effectiveness of Fractal; more to say, "so what?" Those players are not big boys on account of their toys. If only it were so easy.

"You have reached your quota of negative votes for the day."

As per the old Police song, It Would Be OK on Any Other Day. We are too close to the release date for this lollipop/ popsicle/ etc.

Me too! A modeled Dyna Comp that actually feels like a Dyna Comp would be gold. I use compression all the time. Univibe, once in a blue moon. (Granted, I'd use a Univibe much more often if there weren't alternatives I prefer, e.g. rotary sim.)

"You have reached your quota of positive votes for the day." :)

This topic alone completely crushes all of the "Helix is too expensive" nonsense IMO.

Thanks for the clarification, drew_fx. I'm now wondering whether on/off state is a parameter like any other for a given effect. If so, based on what phil_m writes above, it should be possible to get the behaviour you're looking for by setting both min and max to "on" or "off" as required.

This is much better news. So am I missing something or is the post I quoted a moment ago essentially inaccurate? Will know for sure once I start digging in myself; anyway it sounds like there are ways of getting things done.

That's a drag, and really surprising. DI, can you confirm that this is true? I suppose there are workarounds, e.g. using two instances of a given effect in the same preset, set to different parameter values, then toggling one on and the other off, and vice-versa. But this approach often results in audible volume anomalies while switching.

Oh, OK. I think I've finally got it. :)

Agreed, this is getting confusing. If I'm not mistaken, DI's most recent reply contradicts Phil_M's most recent reply. Safe to say DI's is accurate? Having separate messages for press and release definitely seems like the more versatile implementation.

I may have misquoted Kemper with regard to the MIDI spec (can't find the original email.) Point is, they are only willing to support on/off states, no toggle command. I would have been just as happy with alternate CC addresses that responded to toggle requests. Anything to get an effect to respond regardless of its default state in a given preset. Oddly, Kemper does expose one CC which toggles ALL pre-amp stomps simultaneously, regardless of their initial states, but it's kind of a hamfisted feature; not very useful in real applications. I'm not really sure why they were willing to include that one but remained so adamantly opposed to toggling effects individually - you know, like guitarists actually do on occasion.

But what he has never said is: ship to whom? You and I, or the retailers, or some distribution facility, or what? The only thing we've heard so far is that no one, including DI, knows. And in my experience, when no one knows, that means it's late.

Gotcha. That makes sense to me.

This is interesting to me, since I got into a long discussion with Kemper about the fact that they only support distinct CC on and off messages, and I really wanted them to add a value for toggle. Their position is that the MIDI spec indicates MIDI off (0) and MIDI on (non-zero). My position was that the device (in this case Kemper) already holds state information for any given effect, whereas an outboard controller in most cases will not, so there should be a way to simply ask that an effect be toggled. Believe it or not, this was the main reason (though not the only reason) I wound up selling my Kemper! :o It just became a massive PITA to make a small, affordable footcontroller turn effects on and off, especially if you are also navigating between presets ("rigs" in Kemper-land.) In my opinion (MIDI spec be damned) the OS/firmware should support both. There's plenty of bandwidth in the range of 255 values. I.e. 0 for off, 1 for on, anything else for toggle. Easy to implement, easy to remember, everybody's happy.

Although typically when nobody knows, it's not because it's going to be early. Just my daily dose of glass-half-empty realism....

That is an estimate. It may be accurate as a matter of pure coincidence, but in general MF/GC are the last people I'd trust for an accurate release date.

BigRalph, check out this video, and in particular the Divided by 13 tone used through much of it. I've been concerned as to whether the Helix could cop the cleanish Marshalls as well as the Kemper does - and oddly enough none of the alleged Marshall tones I've heard from Helix have convinced me. But the Div by 13 tells me that the tech is well up to the task.