amsdenj

My HX Effects is stored at the moment, but HX Stomp may be similar. HX Stomp has a L/R input, like HX Effects. In order to get two separate inputs, you use a split block first in the signal chain, and set the L and R levels hard left and right so the signal is split between the two paths.

They could be like the split and merge blocks, in between blocks, not blocks in their own right. This would be useful on HX Effects and HX Stomp because of the limited number of blocks.

If everything seems ok, I'd suspect power fluctuations.

I like running stereo, so I'd need two Powercabs - a bit too expensive and a bit too heavy. I'm currently using two JBL EON610s for gigging. I can't say these are stellar and wonderful, but they certainly get the job done. I've used them in different configurations depending on how much stage space I get (often not much in small pubs): side by side, stacked, and only one/mono. I think you can get good results from a lot of different FRFR options. But you'll need to create your patches for your FRFR, no matter what it is.

Acoustic body IRs work great, but they make a lot of assumptions and compromises. The IRs are essentially the subtraction of the piezo IR and the body IR with the same impulse. This is often done by using a bass drum foot pedal or other device to tap the body of the guitar and record the output of the piezo and mic's body at the same time. Then the body IR is convolution of the subtraction of these two signals. So the reason an IR might not sound right for your guitar is that your piezo pickup might not be the same as the one used to create the composite IR. You can try different body IRs in this case. Don't expect the body models to sound as you would expect because you are feeding them a different input then what they used on generation. You'll just have to listen and find one that works for you. Its best to keep the tone controls on your guitar piezo pickup as flat as possible when going into an acoustic body IR. This helps ensure your feeding the IR a similar signal to the one used to create it. Doing all the tone shaping after the IR instead of before might provide more predictable results as you're feeding the IR a signal closer to what was used to create it.

There's also a case for placing the looper in the "middle" especially for HX Stomp. Summarizing: 1. All looped parts go through the same signal path: place the looper first in the signal chain, and run it mono. The problem with this is you can't use any distortion because every loop part goes through the same distortion and the loudest part will duck all the others and you'll get a lot of intermodulation distortion between the parts. This is only useful for very clean tones. This is best for using the looper while adjusting patch parameters. 2. All looped parts have their own signal path: place the looper at the end of the signal chain. This makes sure all the parts are independent and can have their own distortion and effects. The only down side is you need to use a stereo looper to retain stereo effects, so the loop tine is cut in half. 3. Looped parts use different front of the amp effects, and distortion, but the same after the amp effects (modulation, delay, reverb, etc.): place the looper right after the amp, cab or IR block and run the looper in mono. This is a great compromise because it keeps the loop length longer, and everything in front of the looper is controllable for each loop. Each loop part shares the same after the amp effects and retains stereo. That's probably ok for delay and reverb, but might not be great for modulation effects. But its another option.

I do the same thing. The exp pedal has two purposes, one is to control the wah (in those patches that have that block) and the other to control max and min drive. This gives me two gain stages with one distortion/overdrive block. This isn't quite a flexible as two distortion blocks because the drive control doesn't have any voicing or tone control to adjust for different levels of distortion. But it works pretty well.

Right: as long as 1) the boost is really a clean boost and doesn't have a tone of its own and 2) the amp drive has enough gain to meet your needs. The need for clean boost pedals stems partly from Fender amps like a Twin or Super Reverb, or especially a Showman, that didn't have that much gain. I have a HX Effects that I use in front of may old Showman amp and it works great. That amp really needs a clean boost.

I'd actually recommend the opposite of this. Start with the guitar pickup and its tone set neutral/flat. Then go into Helix with just the IR block, nothing else. Then find the IR that best suites your guitar, playing style and FRFR. This provides the basic guitar tone starting point. You'd do something pretty similar if you were recording an acoustic guitar. You'd start with the right guitar for the song, with good setup and strings. Then you'd find the best mic position that fits the song and the role the acoustic guitar track plays. This again provides the basic starting point. In both cases, you're "getting it right at the source" before doing any other tweaking. Now think about compression, EQ, distortion/exciter, and other effects as required to tailor the basic tone to craft what you need. This is similar to what you would do when mixing an already recorded acoustic guitar. These changes further adjust how the guitar fits in the context with the rest of the parts, and is similar to playing in a live situation. You can of course repeat this process. If you can't get what you need from compression, ET, distortion, etc, then go back and adjust the IR or pickup preamp controls. The point is, the "source" of an acoustic guitar is the guitar pickup + body IR as the IR is attempting to convert the piezo pickup output into what the guitar body would have sounded like mic'd. You want to get this source as close as possible before making other changes. You may find the result will sound more natural this was as you are minimizing processing after the basic guitar tone.

I use the VDI cable with my JTV-69S and Helix all the time. Yes, I do think it's a little brighter than the 1/4" output, but that's probably because VDI is digital from the guitar to Helix and therefore doesn't have the high end drop from cable capacitance. I compensate by turning the presence down a little, or adjust the high cut on the IR. That is, I don't really care that the VDI and 1/4" sound different. I just adjust to produce the tone I need, just like you would with any gear. I'm not hung up on things being the same.

Fender amps have quite a bit of mid scoop. The bass and treble controls are all boost, turn them all the way down and turn the middle all the way up and you have a mostly flat tone. That's how you can get rid of that mid scoop - keep bass and treble down, keep mid up. But that still won't provide bass and treble rolloff, the mid control really just sets the flat set-point above which the base and treble controls can boost. This is why Tube Screamers work well with Fender amps. They provide an actual mid boost that helps compliment the mid scoop of the amp.

Depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Putting boost before distortion lets the boost help shape the saturation and sustain from the distortion. Putting boost after distortion provides a volume boost, but doesn't otherwise change the tone (assuming its going into a clean amp - otherwise its just part of a multi-part gain staging).

I have some footswitches that act up a little once in a while, mostly with multiple activations on a single press. These can get dirty with a lot of use. But they are self cleaning if you just press straight up and down a few times. This usually fixes the problem. My Helix has gotten a lot of club use in the last 3 years and its never had any problems in live use. I’ve come to really trust it, but I do have backup - Helix Native in the computer that runs our PA, or HX Stomp.

Try this: https://jimamsden.wordpress.com/2016/01/04/using-helix-as-an-effects-pedal-board/

Variax models, volume, tone, and string tunings are all parameters of the input block. Like any other parameter, these can be assigned to controllers: buttons, expression pedals, snapshots, MIDI messages, etc. So for example, you can use a footswitch to control the tuning of the B string to create a B-bender effect. I addition, Variax volume and tone can be used as controllers for other Helix parameters. The Variax is a fantastic gigging concept. If Line6 did two things, it would be much better: 1) allow the creation of a Variax model that exposes the raw piezo pickups so we can leverage instrument IRs in Helix with Variax and 2) create HX versions of the models with more instrument choices to improve the quality and variety of instruments available.

In theory, an IR could turn an acoustic guitar into a banjo. However, variation the source (guitar construction, pickups, etc.) don't provide a standard acoustic guitar tone that the IR could use as a consistent source. So in practice, this would be difficult. A Variax is your best option.

There is no input gain adjustment on HX Stomp, and no pad switch as on Helix. However, the HX Stomp input is designed to take a pretty wide range of guitar outputs without clipping. If you have a guitar with really hot active pickups, this might be a problem. But its likely a typical double-coil pickup with typical output specs isn't going to need a pad on HX Stomp.

The advantage of IRs is that you can have a completely different IR for mic position and distance. Helix cab models appear to have no support for mic position and appear to emulate mic distance by modifying a single IR with EQ. But moving the mic to cap, cap-edge, cone, cone-edge can have a huge impact on the tone. Helix cabs seem to be pretty bright, perhaps because they used a cap IR in order to get the most high end, and then rely on high-cuts to adjust. This is not the same as cap-edge or cone mic positions, or off axis. The cab models also have early reflections which add some room to the tone. Redwirez has IRs for room mics which you can use mixIR to blend with other IRs to get a similar effect. It's really all about the tone you need. IRs provide a lot of flexibility, but at the cost of constructing and auditioning a lot of different choices, many of which make pretty subtle differences. If you can get a tone you like using Helix cab models, then don't fret too much about what you might be missing from some optimized IR. Focus instead on playing more. That said, I use IRs for all my patches as I simply prefer them over the cab models.

This is supported in recent Helix versions, except for Variax firmware updates. That still requires the VDI interface.

You could also consider JamOrigin's MIDI Guitar 2 which does not require any hardware on the guitar.

Here's a picture of the patch and how to set the A/B split to separate the L and R inputs: You can drag the merge block down to create a separate output, but you can't drag the split block down to create a separate input.

If I remember right, this doesn't work on HX Stomp. Rather its has a L/R Input that feeds the stereo path. When you move a block down to path B, you can move the split block to the beginning and the merge block to the end of the path. Then you adjust the A/B split volumes to control which input goes to with path. I use this to run guitar and mandolin into HX stomp at the same time.

If you have Helix and HX Stomp, then you can have two HX Edit windows open at the same time and can use one of them as the source for copying you template blocks into your target without having to switch patches. Helix and Helix Native will work this way too.

I use DAW or Orban Loudness Meter over USB. You can also use a dB meter on your phone with your FRFR. Works great and is very simple and easy to use.

This identifies the core missing capability - the ability for a preset to reference some other preset, and override only certain blocks. Then we could build a generic preset that gets reused in many different variants, but update the reused blocks in only one place and have all those changes appear in all other presets through references. You can do this today, but you need to do it by manually editing the JSON files.