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The reason for this difference is that if the EQ is between the preamp and power amp, then it's shaping the tone out of the preamp, and into the power amp. If the power amp is not clipping, this won't make much difference. But if it is, and there's sag and bias changes, then what hits the power amp can have a lot of impact on how it distorts. That can be good or bad. The real Boogie put the EQ between the preamp and power amp because that was really the only practical choice. But with Helix, you can put the same EQ block before and/or after the amp for more tone shaping options. As a general rule, cutting bass and boosting treble before distortion and doing the opposite after distortion stages helps reduce low-end mud and high end ice pick, while providing a nice clean tone when backing off the guitar volume. With Helix, we have the flexibility to try these things that would have been difficult in the hardware domain. Of course EQ after the amp was common in studio and live sound situations, just not with the guitar amp itself as a backline.

If it sounds fine with the magnetic pickups then either the piezo pickup isn’t seated properly, is not soldered in properly, or is partially defective.

I’d re-install the firmware and reset all the models on any Variax I bought to set to factory settings. Then adjust the global string volumes to match the string outputs. Then start playing with WorkbenchHD to make model changes.

I believe you can do all these things.

Short answer: 1. https://line6.com/customtone/browse/helix/ provides lots of tones to experiment with. But don’t be afraid to create your own, its easy. 2. For beadroom guitarist, Helix floor is fine, but you might want to consider HX Stomp if that meets your needs. Its only three footswitches and 6 blocks, but provides all the same Helix models 3. You have lots of options: run Helix as a pedal board in front your amp (like a traditional pedalboard), run Helix in 4CM for effects in front of the preamp and between the preamp and power amp, or run Helix into the amp’s effects return with amp models. But for beadroom use, ditch the bing 4x12 monster and use the amp models in Helix directly into your computer monitors or headphones. 4. Connect Helix or HX Stop with USB to your computer and you have a great audio/MIDI interface. Nothing else needed.

Agree 100%

Do you have HX Stomp selected as the audio input device? Have you selected the proper input channel? Do you have input monitoring turned on?

Interesting idea. This allows you to use presets to overcome the 6 block limitation for most tones, and use snapshots to control the effects within a given patch. Since you can do anything with snapshots that you can do with stomp foots switches and more, using snapshots instead of stomp foot switches makes sense for controlling three different tones. In Snapshot mode, you can press FS1+FS2 to access the previous bank of three presets, and FS2+FS3 to access the next bank of three presets. You can't do this from stomp mode without bending down and pressing some buttons. If you press two foot switches at the same time in stomp model, this will do whatever each foot switch does at the same time - toggle two settings - just what you would expect. I wouldn't want to change that. Once you select a preset, HX stomp automatically goes back to snapshot mode in that preset, where you are able to again select three different snapshots for three different tones in that patch. FS4 and FS5 can still be used for stomp type controllers if needed, independently of the snapshots. I see three issues with this. First there's no tap tempo. You can get to the tuner by pressing ACTION and PAGE> together, but you can't tap the tempo for effects that sync to the tempo. That may not be a big problem in many cases, and is consistent with most traditional modulation and delay effects that didn't have tempo sync. I've heard many great players say that syncing the delay repeats to the song tempo isn't all that necessary in many cases. Second there's the problem of the reliability of accurately pressing the two foot switches at the same time. If you miss, you're going to pick the wrong snapshot or scroll to the wrong group of 3 patches. It takes some practice to get this right. Third, three snapshots give you three tones, one for each snapshot. Two stomp foot switches (leaving FS3 for Tap tempo) gives you 4: all possible combinations of FS1 and FS2 (2**(number of foot switches)). Three foot switches give you 8 different tonal combinations, not 3. Of course any individual patch can combine the two. You can still setup FS1 and FS2 (and FS4 and FS5) for stomp controllers, and have FS1, FS2 and FS3 do similar things with snapshots. Then no matter what mode you're in, you have reasonable and consistent control of the tone. If you only need to change patches between songs, then maybe bending down and turning the upper knob in play view to select the patch isn't that inconvenient. In my acoustic band, I mostly only change patches when I change instruments (mandolin, acoustic guitar, electric guitar). So bending down to turn the knob is fine, and something I routinely do with Helix because it was often faster than pressing the mode switch, selecting the patch, then pressing the mode switch again to get back to stomp mode. But at my age, bending down is getting harder all the time! So options are good.

There hasn’t been much new for us Variax users for quite some time. That’ a pity because there’s nothing on the marker that can do what a Variax does for a gigging musician. Variax is so close to being fantastic, its too bad it hasn’t gotten incremental improvements to push the technology over the top they way Helix did with the HD500 series of amp modelers. So here’a a fiew ideas on what a next generation Variax might look like. Hopefully this will generate some discussion and customer demand that will help Line6 justify some new development in the Variax line. Miniaturization: Use HX Stomp engineering to significantly reduce the hardware footprint of the Variax while increasing its DSP capacity. Leverage this new hardware component to make it very easy to install Variax hardware in almost any existing guitar. This might require some routing and a new back plate, but I think we all prefer the flexibility of Variax in our own favorite instruments. Stick to the four knob layout of the Variax Standard to fit on guitars that typically have four knobs (volume, tone, model selector, tuning selector) On guitars with two knobs, use a mode switch on the knobs to change between volume/model selector and tone/tuning selector - this will take some engineering on the control, but would simplify functional layout on the guitar. Ensure VDI and 1/4” outputs sound the same and VDI faithfully reproduces the magnetic pickups into Helix Support option for VDI guitar impedance modeling and simulate treble rolloff for different lengths of cable and different cable capacitance. Support more customization slots, or better yet, just treat all blocks in the guitar the same way and use presets to load whatever block the user needs into whatever switch position they want. Allow Impulse Responses for guitar models. These can include IRs for body, pickup, acoustic bodies, mandolin, acoustic bass, etc. There’s a growing market for instrument IRs Variax should be able to leverage this. Include a model that provides access to the raw piezo pickups so that Variax can leverage IR blocks in the Helix line as well as other models for additional flexibility Support Line6 marketplace for purchasing guitar models and guitar IRs Expand the models available from Line6 (and maybe others from the marketplace) and let users choose which ones to load into their guitars. This allows the existing model to be retained for backward compatibility while opening up the possibility for new models. Its ok to have more models than what can fit into the guitar at one time. Allow additional guitar models to be loaded as part of Helix presets (just like different blocks in Helix). This will require much faster model load time that is currently available from Workbench. And finally, and most important, improve the body, pickup and acoustic models to make them “HX” quality. Do this by expanding the models available in while retaining the current 1.9 and 2.0 models if anyone wants to use these. There’s no reason to not have the choice to retain what was while opening up new opportunities. These models should just be Variax “blocks” that can be loaded as presets from Helix or Workbench HX.

All excellent points. But there are also a lot of people who use Helix the same way they would use a pedalboard in front of a traditional guitar amp and cabinet, with some studio effects in the PA. This might be especially true of performers that have a signature tone. Presets are great, and preset per song is certainly a valid way to go. But I don’t work that way. I try to have a signature tone and use a consistent set of effects to augment that tone in different situations. So I tend to use a single, somewhat complex patch that looks a lot like a traditional pedalboard into an amp. This is real easy to use live. I don’t have to hunt around for a special preset if the set list changes, I just play and use the effect I need. The biggest issues with presets are: Audio gaps and loss of tails when switching presets making With HX Stomp, likely the need to bend down to change the preset Redundancy in settings and high overhead for making the same change in all configured presets Again, the key point is that just two extra blocks goes a long way to enabling HX Stomp to be used this way, without adding much additional complexity. Its that flexibility I’m looking for. Helix allows 16 blocks on Path 1, for path A and B. I’m not looking for that, just 8 total. Note: one way #3 above could be addressed is if Line6 allowed presets to have block references to blocks in some other patch (or block template). Then a change in that block would be inherited in all presets that reference it. You change the block parameters in one place and it updates all presets. Today you have to do that by editing the JSON files.

Presets are certainly a good solution. No, I don’t need chorus (for example) on every song, nor do I need a lot of modulation effects on at the same time. I have setup presets with the different effects I need and this works fine. But its not that convenient since you have to plan out the songs and patches ahead of time, and we try to keep gigs flexible, playing to the crowd at the moment rather than following rigid set lists. If you’re using a Mission Line6 pedal to control one of the stomps, then there’s no way to use FS4 or FS5 to control the footswitch mode. So you’d have to bend down to select a different patch. You could use a MIDI controller, but that’s getting pretty complicated, better to just bring the Helix. There will always be a compromise and collaboration between the music demands and hardware capability. This just seems like a case where a couple more blocks adds a lot of musical flexibility with pretty minimal additional hardware complexity.

Convolution is linear, so it should have the same effect on overall tone anywhere in a series signal chain, as long as there's no distortion in the chain. For example, an exciter would behave differently before or after an IR since it's actually generating frequencies. So mono effects before or after the IR block shouldn't matter that much. And therefore putting stereo blocks after the IR shouldn't effect their contribution that much. You want to be sure any blocks after the amp have sufficient headroom that they don't cause additional unwanted distortion. The Leslie and delay blocks that have a headroom parameter are designed for front of the amp use. If you use them after the amp, consider setting the amp channel volume for unity gain and/or increase the headroom on these blocks to ensure they aren't adding unwanted distortion. Hummm, now that I think about it, maybe an exciter block in Helix would be, well, exciting...

Agree Peter. But my point was that two more blocks, to match a single Helix path, wouldn't make HX Stomp that much more complicated, but would add a lot of flexibility: I could fit in that one extra front of the amp effect, and separate the amp and cab model for example. Big change in tone possibilities without hardly any additional complexity.

It's possible that Line6 is phase aligning the cabinets in the dual cabinet block, but they are not exactly phase aligned when in separate blocks. You should be able to see this in Logic.

I understand the design motivation for limiting HX Stomp to 6 blocks: Keeping the UI elegant, simple and easy to use Focus on adding a stomp box in an existing pedalboard to compliment an existing setup with HX capabilities Consistency between the number of blocks and DSP capacity Anticipating future blocks that may utilize significantly more DSP resources Limited number of foot switches to control blocks Essentially this means HX Stomp is intended to provide Helix capabilities, with minimum footprint, to existing pedalboard and amp setups, not to be all things Helix in a tiny box. I get that, and these are all good design decisions, although these design decisions also sound appropriate for HX Effects. But let's look at how HX Stomp might be used in a gigging situation by itself to see if 6 blocks is enough. This might be for rehearsal, as a backup to Helix, as a convenient fly rig, or just because something so small is so useful. Consider a typical guitar signal chain that uses front and back of the amp effects (| means or): Input > Wah > Compressor > Drive > Overdrive > UniVibe | Phasor | Flanger | etc. > Amp > Cab | IR > Chorus > Delay > Reverb > Output This it my typical gigging Helix patch. I use 10 Stomp mode and pretty much stick with the same patch all night, using snapshots for open tunings, acoustic, and Leslie. This is 10 blocks, and clearly requires more foot switches than HX Stomp can provide. If you need patches like this or more complicated, you need Helix or Helix LT. Trimming this down to 8 blocks, we get something like: Input > Wah > Compressor > Overdrive > UniVibe | Phasor | Flanger | etc. > Amp+Cab > Chorus > Delay > Reverb > Output If you leave the Drive, Amp+Cab, Delay and Reverb on all the time, and you have a Line6 Mission pedal (if you don't, get one, it makes HX Stomp is a lot more useful), then you need foot switches to control Wah, Overdrive, UniVib, and Chorus. If you configure FS3 in global settings for Stomp, then you have the four foot switches you need. This seems like an ideal setup for HX Stomp by itself and is something I would be happy to gig with. To trim this down to 6 blocks, we get something like: Input > Wah > Drive > Amp+Cab > Chorus > Delay > Reverb > Output This is still pretty good, but looses the front of the amp modulation effect, something I use quite a bit. The work around is to create a patch template that covers the common blocks, then create a different preset for each front of the amp effect you need. That can work since you generally only need one of these at a time. But it means creating and maintaining a lot of patches that differ in only one block, and the potential need to change presets in the middle of a song to get different front of the amp effects. This is probably not practical. So I vote for 8 blocks, full Helix Path 1 capability, and let us users deal with balancing blocks and DSP capacity, just like we do with Helix. Two more blocks is actually a lot of additional flexibility without much additional complexity. This said, I'm pretty happy with HX Stomp just as it is and would highly recommend one as an entry point into the Helix ecosystem, as a Helix backup, or as a stomp box to add Helix blocks to an existing rig.

This is in the release notes for HX Stomp 2.70.0: HX Stomp only—Shortcut: Press ACTION andPreferences > Snapshot Edits value. Looks like this is missing some text and should be: HX Stomp only—Shortcut: Press ACTION and <PAGE to quickly switch Preferences > Snapshot Edit behavior between RECALL (gray) and DISCARD (red). This makes it easier to edit and save different snapshots. When performing, you generally want Snapshot Edit behavior to be set to DISCARD so that when you switch from snapshot to snapshot, you go to what was last saved, a predictable, consistent setting. However when editing snapshots, it is convenient to switch to RECALL so that you can change parameters in any snapshot, switch to the snapshot that should be selected when the patch is selected, press ACTION+<PAGE to switch back to DISCARD, and then press SAVE only once to save all the snapshot updates.

You should setup your tones for you audience first, then for your own monitoring needs. That means tweak the tones for the PA you’re running into and the FRFR you might be using for a stage amp since your audience will hear that too, especially those close to the stage/band. For IEMs, its best to use your own monitor mix if the PA can support it. Most modern digital PAs do this easily. If you have any backline, either FRFR or 4CM, then your IEMs can take that into consideration and just fill in around the bleed to provide the missing high end. The primary purpose for IEMs should be first to protect your ears, then to help you play in context. This requires a challenging balance. If your digital PA supports it, use your phone to control your own monitor mix so that you don’t have to rely on the sound guy.

Putting stereo blocks before any mono block will be mixed to mono, and therefore pretty much wastes DSP cycles. If you want stereo, put all the blocks after your last mono block, usually the amp/cab/IR block in stereo. Everything before the amp should be mono.

Well, I’m happy Line6 is investing in technical architecture and removing technical debt from the Helix family. That means we’ll keep getting updates and new features, and our Helix investment won’t be obsolete quite so soon. Regarding new amp models, I’d love to see Line6 partner with Mike Scuffham to put S-Gear Duke in Helix. Maybe that would be a way to scale the amp development resources. Go listen to Jerry’s samples at https://www.scuffhamamps.com/product/amplifiers/the-duke. And can’t Jerry play!?

Certain modulation effects, delay and reverb are best placed after the amp (or after any distortion), either in the Helix patch, or physically when using external pedals. You just have to make sure the gain staging is correct so that you don’t overdrive a pedal that’s designed for guitar input levels with high output amps. Placing these effects in front of a distorted amp was always a compromise in the past. However, its a compromise we’re use to hearing and might like anyway. Remember, there’s no accounting for taste.

Got my Warmoth neck installed on my JTV-69S this week. Its a big improvement for me. Stainless steel frets and a standard thin neck that fits my hands better made a big difference. Between the SVL Daytona pickups, the Warmoth neck and the setup, I have over $1100 additional invested in that JTV, might be more than I paid for the original instrument on eBay. That's probably more than is reasonable for that guitar. But I really like it for gigging, and its nice to make modifications that make it my own.

If you mean Helix, because the input and output blocks are never off, and there's processing required for VDI input. If you mean Helix FX, although the input and output blocks aren't visible, they're probably still there, and just don't consume UI space. So true bypass requires specific user input - although Helix FX automatically goes into true bypass if you remove power.

I’ve used two JBL EON610s for my gigging FRFR with Helix for the last three years. Never a problem and never an issue. You may want to use the Monitor setting if they’re placed on the floor. Otherwise there’s too much bass. Gets worse if you’re stuck into a corner which I often am in small clubs.

Try lowering and balancing the global string volumes. If they're too loud, they could be triggering some odd reaction in the models. I seem to recall others have had some success getting the sustain back doing this, but I could be remembering wrong.

As has been stated above, Helix Native and Helix algorithms are the same, so we would expect them to sound the same. The differences would be primarily latency and the influence of the audio interface. Latency isn’t much of an issue with modern computers, good DAWs, and fast communication protocols. It could be noticeably worse than Helix hardware, but stepping a few meters away from the speaker would have the same effect. I wouldn’t worry too much about latency. The audio interface however could have significant impact on results with Helix Native. You need to be sure to have a high-Z input or you’re going to loose dynamics and high end. Most audio interfaces don’t have variable impedance, so the impact of the first block in the signal chain will no longer be heard. The other issue is gain staging. Helix hardware does have an input pad switch, but you don’t know where the gain on your audio interface corresponds to pad switch on or off. So you may not be hitting the blocks in Helix Native with the same amount of signal, and that will effect the tone and distortion. So the same patchas from Helix hardware may not sound exactly the same in Helix Native, simply because your audio interface isn’t providing the same input impedance to your guitar and the same gain and dynamic range into the Helix Native blocks.