amsdenj

Exactly the same for me. I use a Drive switch to control gain and use studio tube pres to control voicing of the drive pre and post amp. I use Teemah! for overdrive and Minotaur for greater, more mid-focused/aggressive distortion. What I like about pedals vs. preamp or amp distortion is the flexibility for controlling the voicing. Amp models like Cartographer have the gain, but don’t yet have the pre and post distortion tone controls that most pedals have.

I’m seeing a pretty large CPU load with Helix Native in MainStage too. Patches with similar capabilities around S-Gear have much lower CPU demand.

I too use my FRFR (two JBL EON610s) behind me. I use IEMs for monitoring so the FRFR is primarily to 1) let me feel the guitar, 2) let the guitar hear the speakers for some interaction, and 3) to provide stage fill in small clubs so the dancers hear some guitar too. I tried having my vocal and guitar monitor on the floor in front of me, but it didn’t work well at all. I had to use ear plugs to control the overall band volume and the monitor didn’t sound right or provide the feel I was use to. IEMs provide just a bit of high end to complement the bleed from the FRFR behind me and the feel of real speakers in the room. I couldn’t play with a monitor in front of me without the ear plugs.

Another possibility is that mic and speaker IRs are composed into the resulting cab model to reduce the number of IRs. Its also possible that part of what Line6 did is to find a way to reduce the DSP load to do the convolution.

Sag, Bias and Bias X won’t do much unless the power amp is distorting. If the master is turned down and the gain turned up, the preamps will be contributing the distortion and Sag, Bias and Bias X won’t do much of anything. If the master is turned all the way up, the the initial distortion will be in the poweramp and then these controls will have some impact. Rather than talk about cold/hot bias, I’ll use the parameter values. Bias at 0 will make the power amp a bit cleaner, brighter (it will take more drive to make it distort) and possibly harsher. Bias at 50 will be how the amp was generally intended to run and is a good starting point. Bias at 10 will make the amp distort earlier and make it harder to clean up as you turn the drive or guitar volume down. Some amps might distort all the time if the bias is set really high. BiasX is like sag - it controls how much the bias changes as the amp is driven harder. If the power amp isn’t clipping, BiasX will have no effect. If the power amp is clipping a lot, the BiasX will have more effect. BiasX at 0 will not change the amp tone much as the power amp is driven harder. BiasX at 10 will cause the Bias to change more as the amp is driven harder. Now how that matters and effects the sound is a bit less clear to me. Here’s a guess. As the power amp is driven harder, the power supply sags under the load - plate voltages go down while the bias voltage goes up (since the bias voltage is negative). Having the bias voltage go up makes the bias hotter as the amp is driven harder. So the amp will distort a bit more. But it will also get warmer, there will be less highs and fizz as you drive the amp harder. So BiasX might act somewhat like a dynamic hi cut - as the amp is driven harder and distorts more, there’s a bit more high cut to tame the fizz. This can be very useful.

Personally I’d rather sacrifice action to avoid fret buzz, especially when using Variax models. Also, having the strings fight you a bit can have other advangates for tone and feel. And if I don’t play quite as fast or as many notes, that’s not a bad thing either.

I don’t treat the Variax as a means of reproducing the tone or multiple instruments. Rather I treat as a new instrument in its own right. It has its own feel, tones, flexibility and limitations, just like any other instrument. It is those characteristics after all that make all instruments and their contribution to music unique. Take palm muting for example. It does sound a bit different than palm muting magnetic pickups. And that does change your hand position and technique a little. But that’s not necessarily bad. The different tone produced is certainly different, but might be considered better in some context. Its finding those contexts in which one instrument contributes better than another that is worth striving for. Variax provides a pretty wide range of capabilities in a broad range of contexts. That’s almost always a good thing unless you’re looking for something very specific that isn’t there.

Really beautiful. Exceptional work.

I also use a JTV-69S with Helix for all gigs (my Strat Deluxe and Les Paul have become backup guitars!) and have no problems with VDI or saving models. I use snapshots for open tunings and short acoustic sections of a song. I believe the VDI cable is all digital - the magnetic pickups are converted to digital in the guitar and sent as a digital signal to the Helix. So the cable should have no impact on analog tones. The VDI cable can have connection problems at the jack on the guitar. I've used the same VDI cable for many years with no problems. However, I recently got a new one and it is very intermittent with my Variax 700 Acoustic. Works fine in three other variax guitars, but is loose in the 700. I'm guessing this is your problem. The cable isn't making good contact at the guitar. This could be bent pins in your guitar or a bad connection in the cable. I try to not step on the VDI cable too much, but its hard to avoid. Wish I could get a shorter one.

Regarding your K12 sounding differen than the PA, this could be caused by different listening positions. PA horns are pretty directional, especially vertically. If you have your K12 stage amp behind you and down low, it will sound a lot different than as a floor wedge pointed at your face in front of you, or the PA speakers up high and in your face. Regarding different guitars in the same patch: why would you want them to sound the same? Isn’t that the point of using different guitars? I also use a Variax, and occasionally bring my Les Paul to gigs along with may backup Strat. I typically play the whole gig on one patch, and love the different sounds and feel of different guitars in that patch. I sometimes end up with the “wrong†guitar in my hands as we move from song to song pretty fast to keep the dancers on the floor. By that I mean I might end up with my Les Paul on a song where I would typically use a Strat middle pickup. In those cases, I try to use the different sound to alter how I play the song a little to keep things interesting.

I have two backup solutions. Since my band uses an X32-Core for PA, we have to have a computer at gigs. We use an old 2011 13†MacBook Pro which has been totally solid. I have a very nice setup in MainStage that uses Helix Native for front of the amp effects, and S-Gear for everything else. I carry an Apogee Jam to gigs as the I/O device. I use a similar track in Logic Pro X in our studio rehearsal setup. I’m working on a blog post describing that now. More to come soon. I can also use my phone with JamUp Pro or ToneStack. These can use the same interface. Never had to do it through - Helix is been 100% reliable for the last 2 years.

For me the update was very smooth and easier than any of the others. As far as changes go, I typically touch up my basic goto patches with each update. For this one, I change compressor, Wah and my high gain patch to use Cartographer. These are not big changes that are going to significantly change my patches. Rather they are small incremental improvements over what was already just fine.

Try using a much lighter pick when playing acoustic models on light electric guitar strings. The right pick can make all the difference.

Backup and restore does retain IR ordering.

I have no problems with latest High Sierra update in a 2017 MacBook Pro (Thunderbolt 3) using an OWS Thunderbolt 3 hub. I have found earlier Macs (e.g., 2012) have USB problems with Helix and needed to go through a hub on those computers too. The industry has struggled to settle on a long-lived interface standard. Hopefully Thunderbolt 3 will last longer than Thunderbolt 2 and we can move beyond FireWire, USB 1, 2 and 3. I highly recommend that OWS hub if you’re using a new MacBook Pro.

Maybe this explaination will help. Gain controls distortion in the preamp section, Master controls distortion in the power amp section. Both control volume up to the point that clipping occurs, then distortion amount and character after that. Say you start with Gain and Master very low. The amp will likely be clean and low volume. Now turn up Gain, leaving Master very low until you start to hear some distortion, then back off a little so that the amp still sounds clean. The only difference will be the amp is louder. Go back to low Gain and low Master and turn the master up until the amp starts to distort, then back off a little (likely you’ll get all the way to 10 without any distortion). Again, the amp will still be clean and only sound louder. That is, Gain and Master have pretty much the same effect as long as there’s no distortion - the amp remains clean and gets louder. Now when we add some distortion into the picture, things get interesting and complicated. Start with low Gain and low Master again. Again, turn up the Gain until you hear some distortion and then back off until the amp remains clean. So far, the amp is just louder, but still clean. Let’s call this the baseline - the Gain is as high as you can get without introducing any preamp distortion. Note this point as it is the place where the amp is the most dynamic and on the edge of clipping. Now start turning up the Master. At some point the amp will likely start distorting, and this will be power amp distortion. Power amp distortion is unique in many ways: - In most cases (except Class A power amps), clipping will be symmetric and quite sharp, with a lot of 3rd order harmonics resulting from tube cutoff (not saturation). This will sound aggressive and a bit harsh. - Sag will be maximized since the demand on the power supply is maximized - Presence and Depth will decrease since there’s no gain left in the power amp for the negative feedback. - Amp volume (ignoring channel volume and post amp effects) will be maximum - turning the Master up anymore will only result in more distortion - more harmonics being generated Go back to the baseline - low Gain, low Master. Start turning up the Gain. At some point the amp will start distorting and this will be preamp distortion. Preamp distortion is typically quite different than power amp distortion: - Distortion will be somewhat asymmetric with tubes reaching cutoff on one half of the signal, and saturation on the the other. This will have more even order harmonics as saturation is more gradual and less sharp than cutoff. - There will be no sag effect - Presence and Depth controls in the power amp negative feedback loop continue to work, and can be used to change the voicing of the preamp distortion, regardless of the position of the amp’s tone controls in the signal chain. - The position of the amp’s tone controls in the signal chain will have a profound impact on the preamp distortion. If the tone controls are before the distortion stage, treble will have limited impact, but lowering bass will remove muddy distortion. If the tone controls are after distortion, the bass control won’t do much to clean up mud, but the treble control will have a lot of impact on the fizz/buzz of the harmonics created by the distortion. If you now start turning up the Master with the Gain control already creating preamp distortion, the amp will get louder until the power amp starts distorting, then you’ll have a combination of preamp and power amp distortion. The primary challenge with amp distortion, preamp and/or power amp, is control of the voicing. Its often desirable to have tone controls before and after distortion as they do different things. Bass cut before distortion and treble cut after distortion is typically needed to control mud and fizz/ice-pick. Some amps provide this based on where the tone controls are in the circuit - between the gain stages or just before the power amp phase inverter. Bass, mid and treble shift switches are often used to control voicing in the preamps. Presence and Depth control the distortion tone in the power amp, as long as its not clipping. But many amps don’t have these controls. Using overdrive pedals in front of a clean amp can provide more flexibility in that case because they usually provide additional tone controls in the clipping circuit to control overdrive voicing.

Option to view block images instead of block type images in order to make the signal path clearer.

I’d like an option to show the actual device icons in the block position instead of the block type icons. That would make it easier to understanding the routing at a glance. The current routing view makes it hard to distinguish blocks that are the same type, but have quite different devices. For example, most of my patches had multiple distortion blocks for different gain staging purposes. I can’t easily distinguish them in the UI since they all look the same. Same for mod blocks.

Cartographer has also become my high gain amp of choice. I like the flexibility of the gain staging. I jumped between Park75 and Archetype Drive. Park75 has a nice Marshall tone, but its too scooped for my needs and has too much flub in the bass. Archetype Drive is the opposite - really tight and smooth. But I don’t feel it provides the gain and distortion voicing control I need. Cartographer comes in the middle. It brings back some of the low end and scoop of the Park75, but has similar tightness as Archetype Drive, not quite as tight, but pretty close. What I like is that Cartographer provides the two drive controls to get better control of the gain staging. What I’d still like to see is more distortion voicing control between the preamp gain stages. Maybe just bass, mid and treble shift switches to control what’s going into the distortion stages. The bass, middle and treble controls already handle post distortion tone. I like to hit the front of the distortion with bass cut and treble boost so that I can balance that with bass boost and treble cut after the distortion. This way when I turn the guitar volume down and the amp cleans up, I get a pretty useful clean tone with the pre and post voicings kind of cancelling out. I can get this with an EQ block before the amp and using snapshots to do the voicing between distortion levels. But it might be nice to have it built into the amp, and in between the distortion gain stages. Litigator is still my goto amp though. It just hits the sweet spot for me. Interesting the two amps I use most are both hand crafted by Ben and not models of existing amps. I’m hoping to seem more of this in the future. Helix doesn’t need to be limited by the past.

Updated on a 2017 MacBook Pro using a OWS Thunderbolt 3 hub with no problems. I backed everything up with Helix.app first just to be sure, then installed HX Edit.app and did a full backup with that. This covers global settings IRs and all patches in one step - wonderful! Also HX Edit is a resizable window so now I can see all the parameters for any block without scrolling. This appears to be a wonderful update. I'm looking forward to trying the Kinky Boost and Derailed Ingrid amp model. Things I noticed: Rebuilding presets seems a bit faster than I remember it Its great to have the global setting backed up and restored. Don't have to keep a list anymore Restore does not rebuild the presets as needed for the new firmware, you need to reboot after restore to let them rebuild and for the global setting updates to take effect Resizable display is a great convenience for editing blocks that have a lot of parameters Foot switches that haver multiple assignments with different bypass states now remember which block controls the light state. I no longer have to touch to get the right block selected and re-save the patch. My very complex Mid-Gain goto patch updated flawlessly. Great thanks to Line6 for a quality update.

If you’re a professional guitarist with your own distinct tone, you’re going to want to stick with your guitar amp and cabinet as these are the core source of your tone. Helix in this case provide a convenient and flexible effects platform either front of the amp, or 4CM. If on the other hand you want to have lots of different tones in order to cover other guitarists, then Helix into a FRFR is the best approach as it gives the flexibility for lots of amp and cab/IR models. If you’re in between these - i.e., an amateur but having your own distinct style and tone, then Helix can be a great platform for conveniently delivering that tone. This is where I tend to sit. I use Helix as a convenient platform for building my preferred tone. I use FRFR because that maximizes the convenience. But I tend to use Helix like you would a typical pedalboard and guitar amp. That is, I use pretty much one patch for everything with stomp and snapshots to control effects in that patch. The I focus on the guitar and what I play to provide different sounds. Helix provides the hardware and software routing flexibility to support any of these approaches.

No problems with High Sierra. But changing from that 2012 MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3 to a new 2017 MacBook Pro with only Thunderbolt 3 proved to be quite difficult. One thing to try is to delet all your audio preferences and restart. Sometimes the preferences had parameters that don’t work properly when changing interface technologies. Best to start over. I did this and finally got my Saffire Pro 40 FireWire working again. Wasn’t easy or cheap through.

I had better luck with a 2012 MacBook Pro going through a USB 2.0 hub. Also Sierra seems to have fixed some USB issues. My Apogee Gio was very unreliable with that MacBook Pro, but its working nicely since I updated.

Although there are no rules, there might be some useful conventions for preset, snapshot and stomp configurations. Presets: useful when there are significant changes in the configuration needed for a particular genre, set, or song. Presets can use different blocks and block configurations. Basically you can change anything. But loading presets takes some time. You can have 4 to 8 presets selectable at a time without pressing the bank buttons. There is some delay in switching presets and no effect tails. So use them between songs or within songs that have distinct sections that don’t require fast switching. Snapshots: useful when there are significant changes to many prameters of blocks in a preset for a particular guitar model, tuning, or section of a song. You can’t change the content or layout of the blocks, but you can change their parameters. There are 4 to 8 snapshots directly available from footswitches within a preset. Use the Mode button to get to snapshot mode. Snapshots change immediately and retain effect tails. So use them within a song for different sections that require immediate changes. Stomp: useful when there are a limited number of block states or min/max values that need to be change, usually to control effects within a snapshot or patch. You can have 4, 8 or 10 stomp switches at a time. Changes are immediate and tails are retained. Use them to control effects or tones like amp channel switching within a song section.

I polished the frets on my 69S, did a good setup and got it playing really well. The neck is big, but its not bigger than my Les Paul neck and feels fine to me: and I have small hands. The thicker necks tend to be more stable and can sound better, with more sustain. My Variax Standard neck is much thinner, and tends to move a lot with temperature and weather changes. I have stainless steel frets on my Strat Deluxe and Les Paul. Love them. There silky smooth and never wear. But they're expensive since they're more work to install and dress.