amsdenj

I use IRs for mandolin and acoustic guitar. I make my own using Logic Pro's match EQ capability. I've also created a python program that will create them. At some point I'll get around to putting a UI on that and submit it to open source. However, I've found the IRs for the mandolin don't work as well as I had hoped. They tend to have a bit of an EQ spike, probably because of how I mic'd them when capturing the audio to produce the IRs. This tends to increase feedback issues. If I blend the K&K raw pickup with the IR, I can get better results.

Not sure what platform and DAW you're using, but there may be an option to using parameter automation to control Helix Native that could work for you. I use macOS and Logic, your situation may be different, but I have also done the following with Reaper. There are two quite different ways to use Helix Native in a DAW. The simplest is to put Helix Native as a plugin in an audio track, and control Helix Native using the 16 knob and switch parameters it exposes to DAW automation. That works, and it keeps everything you need to playback and control the parameters in one track. And with macOS and Logic, you can use controller assignments to control the same automation parameters to indirectly control Helix Native with MIDI. But I've found this to be unreliable, overly complicated and inconvenient. The other approach is to use two tracks for your guitar, one MIDI or software instrument track to record MIDI footswitch and expression pedal events, and another audio track to record your dry guitar signal. Put Helix Native as an AU MIDI-Controlled effect on the software instrument track. Run your guitar directly into the audio track. Set the output of the audio track to a bus and set the side-shain input of software instrument track's AU MIDI-Controlled effect to the same bus. Now Helix Native can receive MIDI directly into the plugin and there's no need to use the limited automation parameters, or deal with complex controller assignments. The MIDI events are recorded in the software instrument track where they can be easily edited later using the piano roll. Software monitoring and playback work as expected.

Not likely the problem, but check your power. These modelers can do odd things if plugged into bad power.

Helix patches are saved in JSON format. I don't know about POD GO. But if its patches are JSON too, you could develop a program to convert them pretty easily.

I have a Powercab 112+ and a Powercab 212. I rarely use them in Flat/FRFR mode other than for occasional acoustic guitar tones, and I never use the modeled guitar speakers. Rather I use them in Flat/RAW mode with no Cab or IR block, so it's essentially a powered guitar speaker. I have found the Eminence speaker in those units sounds pretty good as a guitar speaker, and is somewhat colored and limited for a FRFR. But in terms of flexibility, ease of use, reliability and great tone, I think Powerecab 112+ is a great option and I hope Line6 doesn't give up on it.

A quick followup: I used to do some amp design and construction back in the day. I still have my Fender Showman from 1968 that has had extensive modifications. So I appreciate the flexibility of the Fractal Audio amp block. There's extensive deep editing, and a lot of it is pretty subtle. But there's a few things that I use on almost any amp: input EQ, boost, bass cut, fat switch, bright switch (with customizable bypass cap), presence and depth on any amp, negative feedback control, output EQ. These allow me to really control what the amp does, providing the flexibility to make little, but significant, tweaks similar to what I did in that Showman amp. Often it's just a bit more gain without having to use a pedal to get it. This flexibility comes at a cost in complexity though, and the FM9 UX is not great. So I can see why it's not for everyone. Quad Cortex goes pretty far the other way: great UX, but quite limited flexibility. And all the amp models are effectively black box captures so the tweaking isn't an option. Helix fits right in the middle: nice, efficient UX, with some deep editing on some amp blocks.

If I remember right, Helix foot switches display the state of the last select effect when the patch was saved. Just keep touching the switch to toggle through the blocks it controls until you get to the one that should control the displayed state. Then save the patch.

I have found that when doing A/B/C comparisons while building Quad Cortex, Helix and FM9 patches, that I often find the device I last edited sounds better to me then the others. And then I start trying to adjust the patches in the others to match the first one. It doesn't seem to matter which one is the starting or reference tone. There seems to be a "last-edit" bias in tone assessments. Often when I come back the next day with fresh ears I don't find the patch was as good as I thought, or that I matched them across devices as well as I thought. The lessons I take from this are: Ear fatigue is real and has a big impact on tone creation, especially when you're doing a lot of reference comparing. Your ears get saturated with the tone and start ignoring the differences. There appears to be a preference or bias for the last edited or loudest tone All of these modelers are great and can create fantastic tones with good usability. Comparing them should be to celebrate their differences. You can't go wrong with any of them, pick one (or more), play and have fun I use all three modelers for different purposes and in different contexts. I like Quad Cortex for its simplicity, elegant design, and small size. It gets used with my acoustic band, No Worries. I like Helix for anything that needs a Variax, VDI connectivity and patch integration are great. I still have two and use them a lot. I like the FM9 for rock gigs because of the great tones and FC layouts for flexible control. An HX Stomp is my goto device when I need something quick and small. But any of them can do anything I need well.

I have compared a Powercab 212 in FRFR/RAW mode with a Celestion Cream Back speaker using the same amp model. They sounded pretty similar. I suspect the speakers in Powercab are more like guitar amp speakers than hi-fi speakers, partly for reliability, power handling, and to produce the levels for live guitar use.

https://youlean.co/youlean-loudness-meter/ is a great tool for preset leveling.

I would suspect there's something different in your monitoring signal chain when going through the HD500X, perhaps global EQ or something like that.

I still have two, JTV-69SS and Variax Acoustic. They don't get as much use anymore, but the 69S always goes to rehearsal.

Today's Generative AI and Machine Learning is mostly recreating things that already existed as captured in their training sets. That's great for making this content more readily available and reusable, pending IP rights issues. The AI models can possibly produce some interesting new results based on validation errors and hallucinations. But AI can't currently create Line 6 Litigator, one of the best amp models in Helix. So an interesting question to explore might be: How can AI help someone like Ben Adrian be more creative, innovative and productive to produce the next new products that could be fed into future training sets to progress the industry? Or will AI just reduce the need for creative engineering while the product owners maximize profits from products of the past, saturating the market with the same things over and over?

Helix cab models and IRs typically model close mic'd speaker cabinets. What the mic is hearing is very different than what you would hear in the room because you don't have your ear right up next to the middle of the speaker cone. At least let's hope not! In the studio, this was the only option for capturing a guitar amp and works well because it gives the mix engineer lots of additional frequencies they can play with to fit the guitar in the mix. This almost always requires significant high and low cuts for focus the guitar in the mids and keep it out of the way of other tracks. The same is true with live mixing in FOH, but is often much more difficult to control. So if you give the FOH engineer this wider frequency range, then they have the flexibility to adjust as needed to fit in the mix and address room characteristics. But this puts additional responsibility on the FOH engineer and they often have a lot of other things to deal with. So you might want to give the FOH mix what you think is your best tone so if they do nothing with the EQ, it will sound ok. Different situations may call for different approaches.

Your initial diagnosis may be correct, the overall volume is going down because of phase cancellation. That would show on the mixer meters and in your IEMs if your backline is out of phase with your FHO speakers. Flip the phase in Helix or at the mixing desk and see if the problem goes away.

As far as I know this is not published. But I think the woofer is an Eminence coaxial speaker that has a frequency response typical of a guitar speaker. At least in my experience LF Raw sounds pretty similar to a Celestion Creamback. Frequency response is likely somewhere around 70 to 5K Hz

Not sure why you want to try to make Natural sound like Raw, why not just use Raw? But if you did want to do that, you could record a loop in Helix, then play back and record the output in a DAW with the Natural and the Raw in separate tracks. Phase align the tracks, then use a tone matching plugin like the EQ in Logic Pro to help you find the EQ curve.

Amps with two drive controls and a master give more control of your clean and distortion tones. Amp configurations are different, but it is often the case that the first drive control will have a bypass cap. Keeping that control on lower settings and getting the gain from the 2nd control will give a brighter tone. Keeping the 1st drive higher and the second drive lower will give the same amount of gain and distortion, but will sound darker. Keeping the master lower and the combinations of the two drives higher will give preamp distortion instead of power amp distortion which generally will sound more compressed and can be more complex with even and odd harmonics caused by asymmetric preamp distortion. With modelers, you get get power amp distortion at any volume level using the amp level control. So that's more flexible than you can do with a real amp unless you use an isolation or load box. Try this: Set the master all the way up and adjust level for consistent output level. Turn up drive one to get the tone you want. Then turn drive 2 up to get the amount of distortion you want. This will be power amp distortion. Then switch to lower master and higher level to get the same overall output and again use drive 2 to get the amount of distortion you want. This will be preamp distortion. Then decide which one you like better. Of course, you can mix them. But the downstream power amp distortion will dominate the tone with the up stream preamp distortion just adding more saturation, exactly like stacking distortion pedals.

A good input level into a digital interface is between -12 and -18 dB. The key is to avoid digital clipping on peaks. So -20 dB with a single coil pickup is probably fine.

Sounds like you don't have input monitoring turned on in the track. So you only heard sound when armed for recording.

Cab blocks or speaker models using FRFR can sound harsh. The reason is they are captured using close mining techniques on the speaker, often close to the cap or cap edge. If you put your ear up close to the middle of a speaker cone, you'll find it sound pretty harsh. What we're use to hearing is something much further away and off axis. But far-field speaker captures don't work well because when you play then back through a FRFR in a room, you hear the room twice. The solution is to use EQ to adjust the tone of the mic'd cab. This is why the default hi-cut for cab models is 8kHz. This takes the unnatural edge of the speaker IR. So this isn't a modeling error, or an issue with Helix or its cab blocks. Its just the nature of how speaker IRs are captured. Attempting to model how a speaker works without using ML or IR captures would be extremely difficult to do because of the complexity of the physical aspects of the speaker. Maybe someday.

Try turning off the cab model and use Flat/RAW. Then Powercab is just a powered guitar speaker. I find this gives a natural sounding 2x12 guitar speaker.

I use two outputs, one goes through a cab block to FOH and IEMs, the other no cab block into Powercab 112+ or 212 (depending on the gig) always in Flat/RAW. I find I really like the sound of the Eminence speaker. So I treat Powercab as a 1x12 or 2x12 powered guitar speaker in a closed back cabinet. I don't try to make it sound like something it isn't. That's speaker configuration works well for me in a gigging situation. Powercab is a really great platform for use with any modeler. I find it convenient, reliable, easy to use, very flexible, and sounds great. It's perhaps not the best FRFR since the speaker is a guitar speaker, not HI-Fi, and the tweeter is coaxial which limits the high frequency dispersion a bit. I wouldn't use it for bass for example. It could probably be used for keys, but might not be that great.

I got one from https://warmoth.com/guitar-necks for my JTV69S. It worked great. Really improved the guitar. I play it every day.

Onboard IRs are more significant with HX Stomp where saving the block is more important. If you put non-linear blocks after the IR block, say Retro Reel, or a compressor, then there will be a difference if these come after the IR in Helix, or before the IR in Powercab.