amsdenj

On the topic of that tone, I suspect a lot if it is from the pickups in that guitar. It might be hard to get that tone without that guitar.

I bring two or sometimes three guitars to a gig. My main guitar is a JTV-69S with Jerry Amalfitano SVL-Daytona pickups. I always bring my Strat Deluxe which also has Jerry Amalfitano pickups, but a different model in the neck and middle position. I sometimes bring my ‘67 Les Paul which has Tom Holmes pickups, but not that often. Depends on the gig. If I use all three guitars, I use a simple A/B switch for the Strat and Les Paul into Helix guitar input, and always use the VDI cable with the Variax. Just be careful to turn the volume down on your quitar when you put it on the stand. Otherwise it can start feeding back in the middle of a song. I play in a cover band, so have to make a decision on how to cover each song. My approach, as well as the band’s approach, is to reproduce the spirit of the songs, making sure we hit all the hooks. But we don’t worry about having things be exact, and think it adds some consistency and interest to interpret the songs our own way, and within our constraints (time and talent). We try to play everything reasonably well and with good tones. We mostly play in clubs, and so our focus is keeping people in the club and on the dance floor having fun. That is, the focus is on them, more than it is on us and the specific details of the songs. I also pretty much use one patch all the time. I like having my own tone and using it as a means of interpreting the songs we play within my own style and capabilities. I just don’t have the time or patience to clone the tone and memorize the specific leads of every song. I do use four snapshots within that tone for open tuning (open G), acoustic and a somewhat complex Leslie setup. I also have a few song-specific patches if they have a different tuning or some unique effect.

An IR reproduces the time varying frequency response of a speaker, cab, and mic combination through convolution. A well captured IR should be very close to the original response of the speaker as seen from the position of the chosen mic. If you run through a good FRFR, then you should hear an accurate representation of that same frequency response. So it is generally not the case that an IR and FRFR is directly the reason for needing high cuts. Rather there are two indirect reasons. First, what the mic hears is not what you would hear from that guitar cabinet in the room. That’s simply because the mic is in a very different position than you are in the room. You’re a long ways away, very off axis, and getting a lot of room reflections. That significantly changes the response you hear, but not the response of the speaker or the IR that models it. Put your ear in the same position as that mic and you’ll quickly know why high cuts are needed. Now its certainly possible to capture an IR at the normal human listening position. This would indeed capture the sound of the amp in the room. But when you put that through a FRFR, you get the amp in the room twice since the FRFR is also in a room. This will generally not sound vary natural. But it is possible to blend and IR that captures a room mic into your IR. That could reduce the need for high cuts. The second reason high cuts are often needed is because a FRFR usually has much wider dispersion than a typical guitar speaker. So the amp in the room sound from a FRFR at the same listening position will sound brighter simply because what high frequencies that are being accurately generated by the IR are spread out more. Finally, if you close mic a speaker cabinet in an isolation booth, and capture an IR of that same speaker and mic, they will both sound pretty much the same reproduced through the same FRFR. Its likely both will require high cut in a mix.

Its because the speaker/cab impulse responses are created by close mic-ing the speaker. This is to isolate the sound of the speaker from room reflections that would otherwise be doubled when you play through the cabinet IR. Stick your head up real close to your guitar speaker and you'll easily see why you need to high and low cut. Its not a natural place to listen to a speaker. But it provides the isolation and gives a lot of high end that you can cut if you need to. This is a good compromise that provides some additional flexibility for tone shaping with mic selection and post - cab EQ. This is typical to what you would do with a mic'd cabinet live or in the studio - both usually require some post EQ. Its better to have too much and have to cut than too little and have no options. Or another way to look at it is that it's easier to EQ away what you don't need then it is to create something that isn't there.

If you can get them, Amalfitano pickups will make your Strat sound like a Strat. I have them on my Strat Deluxe and JTV-69S and they are wonderful. For me they were the difference between ok, but not inspiring tone and something that inspires me to play. The Amalfitano pickups bring the guitars to life in a way I never thought possible, especially the bridge pickup. Pickups make a huge difference.

I’m in the less is more category for all effects, including reverb. I do use reverb in my goto patch, and a slightly longer than slap back echo that is on all the time. This provides an ambience to help smooth out the tone for playing as much as providing ambience for the room. I use the plate reverb, and keep the mix and duration down pretty low. Its just there to provide a bit of fill and take the up front edge off. Long reverbs in a live mix situation can quickly turn into a mess.

My band’s rehearsal setup is completely computer based. At the core is a Mac Book Pro and a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20. This supports five vocals, MIDI drums (just MIDI triggers, the drums are software inLogic), two MIDI keyboard controllers into separate Logic tracks with all software instruments, two electric guitars using FCB1010s for MIDI control and based around S-Gear, and bass using Cerberus bass amp. Everything goes through a rack headphone amp. We are thrilled with how well this works. There’s no latency, no glitches, never any OS issues. However, this was not an easy thing to design, setup and maintain. That’s the biggest issue using a computer for live music. I’m not so worried about the OS or machine capability anymore. That use to be a problem, but this seem to have improved a lot in the last 10 years or so. But with all that flexibility comes the responsibility to do a lot of things yourself. If you don’t mind putting in the effort to design and build a system, it can be very flexible, functional and rewarding. I don’t however use any of this live. Helix floor is too convenient, simple, easy to use and reliable. We do use a computer to run the PA since its an X32-Core rack unit that has no hardware interface. This has also worked out well, and serves as my backup if anything happens to Helix. My live rig consists of JTV-69S, Helix, two JBL EON610 that I run as a backline. The PA rack and computer sit on top of my 610s with the whole thing taking up a pretty small footprint.

I use Helix regularly in my acoustic band, No Worries. I use a Martin 00CAE acoustic guitar into a Helix patch which has an IR for acoustic body modeling. I also use another patch for mandolin and another for my JTV-69S. One thing I use a lot is the Teemah! block to warm up the mandolin and provide some nice sustain for more bluesy solos. I also use this when playing slid mandolin. Helix has been really great for me in this project because of the wide range of instruments and styles it supports.

I think there may be more value out of creating new digital amps inspired by analog counterparts. Litigator is a great example of the potential for Helix to model amplifiers that might be difficult or expensive to build in the analog world but are easy to implement in the digital domain. There are a lot of things that can be impacted in the power amp section: Class A vs AB and push-pull, negative feedback, bias, sag, etc. These thing have a lot of impact on the dynamics of an amp when it is pushed into clipping. Sag adds a very interesting and useful compression that happens when the amp is already clipping. Then power amps can result in some natural high-cut when they distort because the negative feedback is lost. These dynamic effects can really make a guitar amp sing. I would love to see more experimenting here, but not necessarily as separate power amps and preamps. I’d be happy to just have some new amp models that aren’t just clones of existing amps, and don’t have their compromises and limitations.

Yes, normal channels, without the bright bypass cap on the volume control, make a better pedal board platform. In this case you can use the pedals to tailor the tones you need, and the amp is just providing the foundation for the clean tone.

This is an effect we need in Helix.

The bright channels can be very useful. Typically these are done with a simple bypass capacitor on the volume or gain control. What cool about this control is that the more you turn it up, the less bright boost you get. So of you put say Drive on a footswitch with max and min values, you can get a nice bright clean sound at low values, and then the tone warms up naturally when the drive is turned up.

A similar approach might be to use the global EQ to tailor the EQ for your patch, then copy the results into the patch with a combination of cab/IR high/low cut and parametric or other EQ. Also try boosting the high frequencies to see which ones stand out as bing particularly bad, and then cut a bit at that frequency. Sometimes its easier to hear what’s bad by boosting and cut than to hear what’s good by cutting directly.

All speakers, and in particular guitar speakers have limited frequency range and response characteristics. These are measured using particular approaches and configurations of cabinets, mics, mic placement and room acoustics that are often not known, or follow any particular standard. Plus individual speakers can vary quite a bit and change over time. So the frequency response curve you see published for a speaker is a combination of a specific measurement technique, an aggregate for the speaker model, and marketing. An Impulse Response does capture the variable frequency response of a speaker over the audible frequency range. An IR should faithfully reproduce the response of the particular speaker that was captured, in its cabinet, with the particular mic, at the stated position, and in some room. This could be quite different than the approach used to create the published speaker response graph simply because so many of the parameters are different. The kind of mic and its position can have a profound effect on the response captured and reproduced by the IR. When you put an SM57 1†away from the cap edge of a speaker, that mic is likely not any where near where the reference mic was in the room where the response curves were captured. So its likely to have a very different response, including picking up high frequencies that come off the voice coil, but dissipate and disperse so quickly that a different mic in a different position would never detect them. This is the art of mic choice and placement in recording electric guitars. Putting the mic close, and at the cap edge will often provide the most of that the speaker can produce. You get more low end from the proximity effect, and unusual high end because the mic is so close to the edge of the voice coil. This is good because it captures frequencies that you can then play with in the mix. Its a lot easier to cut things you don’t need that to synthesize something you don’t have. This means that EQ after cab or IR models will often be a must. Its always best to start with the right speaker for the desired tone, then pick the right microphone and the right position. But expect to have to use EQ to get the sound you actually want, and be glad you have the opportunity to do so. This will not sound exactly like an amp in the room, but it will sound like a recorded amp in the room. That’s the best modelers can do.

Not sure I understand the problem you were having. Are you saying the bridge rises up and moves off the two pivot points when you remove all the strings? Or are you saying this happens when the guitar is tuned to pitch? The JTV-69S bridge is intended to float parallel to the guitar body, about 1/8†up from the body. This limits friction since there are only two pivot points touching the bridge and gives tremolo bar movement up and down. I too have noticed that the bridge pops out of position when you take all the strings off, and on my JTV-69S it pulled the pivot bolt and bushing right out of the guitar. I had to glue it back in. I tried using various wood blocks to keep the bridge in position, but I think the technique of keeping the two E strings on is a better solution. This keeps the bridge in position, keeps some tension on the neck, but still makes it easy to clean the fretboard.

I use a pair of JBL EON610’s for my stage FRFR when gigging. These work reasonably well, are light enough, don’t look too bad and aren’t that expensive. They aren’t the greatest sounding speakers, but seem to be a good compromise. Reliability is important too.

I wasn't that happy with the magnetic pickups on my JTV-69S. They sounded thing and lacked character. The mags on my JTV Standard actually sound quite a bit better. So I installed Amalfitano SVL Daytona pickups on my JTV-69S this week: http://www.amalfitanopickups.com/SVL_Daytona_strat_pickups.php. They sound fantastic and completely change the way the guitar sounds and feels. I struggled choosing new pickups for this guitar, which is my main gigging instrument. There were so may good choices, and no really good way of evaluating them. After much study and listening, I decided to trust in the experience of professionals whose tone and style I really like. Matt Schofield has become one of my favorite guitarists to just listen to. His tone is really fantastic. There's a Rig Rundown that very good, and That Pedal Show has a full interview where he covers his whole rig in detail. His guitar tech, Simon Law, designed these pickups to reproduce the tone of Matt's 61 Strat. The biggest difference was in the bridge pickup. I found myself avoiding the stock JTV-69S bridge pickup because it just didn't sing to me. The Daytonas completely changed that. The bridge pickup has that great Strat spank, a really rich tone without the typical ice pick of a bridge single coil. I'm really happy with these pickups and highly recommend them. Installation was also quite simple, took about an hour.

The interaction between a power amp and speaker is actually quite complicated. A guitar speaker has a nominal impedance usually specified as 4, 8 or 16 Ohms. However, the actual impedance of the speaker depends on how it is mounted in a cabinet, the design of the cabinet (open back, closed back, ported, etc.), the loudness of the sound, and the input frequency. As the speaker voice coil moves in its magnet field, the inductance changes based on the excursion and elasticity of the cone. The impedance variance can be quite dramatic, and is reflected back to the output of the poweramp. How much it effects the power amp depends on the amplifier's damping factor. Larger output transformers with more iron in their cores, power supplies with more filtering, etc. help improve the damping factor - the ability of the amplifier to control the movement of the speaker in the face of its changing impedance and inertia. Amplifier designers attempt to address this issue with negative feedback. This is another complex parameter. Adding negative feedback will allow the amplifier to have a higher damping factor, smoother frequency response, less noise and less distortion. These are generally good things in an amplifier, but not necessarily for a guitar amplifier. The issue is that when an amp with lots of negative feedback and a high damping factor reaches saturation, the transition from clean to distorted can be quite abrupt, not smooth and warm. For this reason, some guitar amps don't use any negative feedback. To make things even more complicated, the presence control in most amplifiers removes negative feedback for high frequencies. This changes the damping factor at higher frequencies and tends to make the amp sound brighter when its not distorted, but looses the high boost when the amp is distorted (negative feedback is eliminated when an amp distorts since it has no remaining headroom). This also works nicely for guitar amplification since the clean guitar is brighter, but when the power amp distorts, the high boost is lost and so you don't get the fizz. If you're getting fizz from Helix, try playing with the presence control along with a high cut. Increasing the presence while also adding more high cut could keep the overall clean tone bright, but not introduce fizz when the amp is distorted since the presence high boost is lost when the amp distorts. Note also that none of this applies to using preamp distortion into a clean power amp. In this case the distortion has to be controlled by the EQ voicing before clipping (often low cut, high boost) and after clipping (often low boost, high cut). This is the art form of modern overdrive and distortion pedals. What these distortion pedals often loose is that high boost/high cut that happens when a power amp with a presence control goes from clean to dirty. S-Gear has a Hi-Cut control in the power amp section that nicely captures this amplifier dynamic. You can set the gain and amp drive up pretty high, and set the high cut high. Then when the volume control is turned down on your guitar, you get a nice bright clean tone since the hi-cut only comes into play when the amp distorts. Turn the guitar volume up and you get a nice warm, fizz-free distortion from the power amp as the hi-cut takes effect. Hopefully future Line6 amps will include this dynamic hi-cut in the poweramp section to help tame fizz.

This needs updating, but its the basis of what I use: https://jimamsden.wordpress.com/2015/12/29/creating-a-helix-electric-guitar-patch/ The basic changes would be: Litigator, Timah!, OCD, different delays, snapshots for open tunings, acoustic (Variax) and parallel Leslie path.

Agreed. I use a Strat Deluxe, Les Paul and JTV-69S at most gigs, and I use them all into the same patch. Its the differences in these guitars I'm looking for to provide a different tonal texture to the songs for the audience. I don't want the Helix patches to make them sound closer to the same, that would defeat the purpose of using different guitars. My issue is finding time between songs to be able to switch guitars. We like to keep the dancers on the floor. As a result, that JTV-69S is getting a lot of playing time.

Yes, the mag pickups do sound better than the similar models. But sounding the same or similar isn't the only point. On a gig, I could use those magnetic pickups all night and I'd be getting the best tone the guitar can produce. But it would be a small range of tones. If I were a professional with my own signature tone, then that's exactly what I'd want to do. Matt Schofield comes to mind for example. He has a signature tone, its fantastic, and he uses it well. People will pay lots of money to hear that tone and what he does with it. That's not me. I'm a professional software developer who plays weekend club gigs as a hobby. I don't have a tone of my own. The band does mostly covers. So my JTV-69S and Helix make a perfect combination to create a lot of different tones that help the band connect to the songs for our audience. I put my own stamp on it, but the audience is there to hear the familiar tunes and have fun, not to listen to me. I'm fine with that, its a lot of fun. If I were a professional like Matt Schofield, I probably wouldn't use a Variax or digital amp models. But I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to use them for my limited purposes. The tones I can get from those guitar and amp models are a lot better than tone's I can't get from guitars and amps a don't own and will never get to use.

IR and cabinet choice should start with what you're trying to accomplish. We all have our favorite pro guitarist within the context of the styles of music we like. You can start there by exploring what these musicians use to get their tone and use that as a starting point for speaker and cabinet selection. From there its a question of whether you like warm and full, or bright and thin. This is highly influenced by the mic choice followed by mic position. Once you select a good starting point, then next question is to ask what's missing? If there's no problem, then you're done. If you can't identify what's missing, then searching for it through all the available IRs is not going to be a fun or efficient process.

A Vox AC30, Fender Super Reverb and Marshall all sound different too. So do all the different boost, overdrive and distortion pedals on the market. And how these amps take pedals is also entirely different. Differences are good, they give us choice, variety and different sounds that inspire creativity in performers and interest for listeners. Helix meets my needs, and that's great. But I also celebrate the AX8, Kemper, AmpliFire, and S-Gear options. Its wonder that we have so many great options to choose from and use to make music.

Just remember there are no rules. Yes, typical acoustic instruments, horns, etc., will sound better without a cab or IR model. However, I have found that sometimes things work out differently than you would expect. For example, I sometimes use a cab/IR to warm up my mandolin. It thickens the tone and removes that overly bright penetrating tone (that my wife says covers the whole house). I also found that Timah! works really well with mandolin to give sweet sustain, especially when playing slide (yes, I do play some slide mandolin). So, just like a guitar speaker turns a magnetic pickup into something we really like, maybe the same could be true for other situations. Might be worth a try with that bassoon.

I did an interesting test today, compairing my Variax Standard vs. my JTV-69S against my Strat Deluxe with Tom Anderson stacked humbuckers (in single coil mode). What I found was a bit surprising. The Tom Anderson pickups certainly sound better than either Variax mag pickups. The tone is richer, thicker in the midrange, and generally a bit warmer while still having a lot of high end. I had expected that as I have some experience playing live with all these guitars. But it was nice to be able to compare them more closely. What was surprising is that the Variax Standard pickups sounded much closer to the Tom Andersons than the JTV-69S pickups. The bridge and neck pickup were pretty close while the bridge pickup was just a bit thinner and didn't have the warmth and richness. The JTV-69S pickups were somewhat of a disappointment by comparison. They sounded thin in the mids, and didn't have the warmth or sustain. However the models were just the opposite. The Variax Standard Spank model exhibits some high-end artifacts on the models, I suspect a bit of clang tone. This is especially noticeable on the single pickup positions. That guitar also seemed to pickup more of the pick noise and doesn't seem to like a V-pick Tradition - my preferred pick. The JTV-69S models actually sounded quite good. There was no sign of any artifacts or clang tone. It took the V-pick just fine, no noticeable or odd pick noise. The Spank model stood up well against the Tom Andersons and provided a nice, different and usable Strat tone. I suspect that the piezo pickups fit into JTV-69S bridge pieces better and this transfers more energy from the string into the pickup and reduces any artifacts from pickup not making good contact in the bridge piece. I think my Variax Standard has actually improved over time. The bridge pieces may be settling in and making better contact as the guitar is played. But overall, the models sound much better in the JTV-69S. I'm changing the magnetic pickups in my JTV-69S to http://www.amalfitanopickups.com/SVL_Daytona_strat_pickups.php (I'm a big Matt Schofield fan). I think this will be a significant improvement in the guitar and a good investment since it is becoming my main gigging guitar.