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Volume pedal early in the signal chain (always after noise gate) will control drive into the amp, and therefore distortion levels. Volume pedal after the amp/IR block controls the overall amp output and the input into any post amp effects. I've tried it both ways and they have very different uses. If the volume pedal is before the amp, I generally set the range pretty narrow, and it plays a role similar to the volume control on my guitar to change distortion and feel. Volume after the amp is generally used to control monitor or FOH output. If set at a very narrow range, it can act as a continuously controllable boost.

Maybe I didn't make my point very clear. Its not that FOH and monitor speakers can't accurately reproduce a tone. You're absolutely right, modern PA technology has come a long way in effective sound reproduction at a reasonable cost and convenience. But that's not the issue here. Rather its that the same speakers (EON610 monitor and EON612's for FOH for me) are being used for very different purposes. The FOH needs to be a reproduction of your guitar tone in the context of the larger room, the audience and in the mix with the rest of the band. Your monitor mix however is just for you, is a lot closer to you, is usually pointed right at you, and is for supporting your interaction with the tone, not how it is presented to the audience. My point is that the EQ for these two very different roles may be quite different, regardless of the speakers used.

I bet if you were listening to your "real" amp through a mic and a PA speaker pretty dead on, you'd be applying a bit of high cut to get what that real amp sounds like to you. That's the difference. A real amp in the room is not the same as mic'd amp through a PA speaker. Some careful mic positioning and EQ might be expected/required. That's not really a problem with modeling or IRs, its the nature of mic'ing a guitar cabinet. You can think of (subtractive) EQ as "taking things away". But you can also think of it as removing the things you don't want so you can hear the things you do want better. Glass half full view of EQ I guess.

The FOH speakers and your monitor are in different places and used for different purposes. Any guesses we make about FOH sound from behind the speakers while playing live is likely at best a guess. How you tune your monitor could be quite different and than FOH because its purpose it to support your playing, the feedback between you, your guitar and the amplifier. FOH has to be done by someone else or setup during sound check. And its for the audience and room but needs to reflect the performers concept of their tone too. Agreed.

I've been using a Variax Standard for about the last 8 months or so. After a good setup it played reasonably well, and the magnetic pickups sounded pretty good. But the models didn't really work out very well. In fact, I preferred the sound of my old Variax 300. The piezo pickups were very out of balance with the higher strings being quite a bit weaker than the low strings. And the plain stings had a kind of resonance or banjo tone that was unplesant and had a strange damping effect on the sustain and tone. I used Workbench to balance the strings and by using the Masonic Plank body model, the models improved quite a bit. But that odd resonance was still there. Oddly as I put more hours into the guitar, with quite a few outside gigs last sommer, its tone and string balance actually improved. I think the piezo pickups weren't seated well in the bridge pieces, and that may have accounted for the lost volume and odd resonance. As the guitar got used, maybe the bridge pieces settled in and the tone improved. I play in a club band that tries to keep the dancers on the floor. So there's not much time between songs, really not enough to switch guitars too often. And I like to use a lot of different styles and tones, including acoustic models to match the songs better and provide a wider range of sounds to the audience. So a Variax with my Helix is a very nice option. I found my really nice Strat and Les Paul set on the stand and didn't get used mostly because the Variax Standard was just more convenient (and lighter). So I though if I'm going to play a Variax, why not get a good one. You buy that justification don't you? So I got a JVT-69S and have to say I'm pretty pleased with the instrument. Its a nice, well designed, well constructed and good playing instrument. The magnetic pickups sound great. And the issues I had with the Variax Standard models is not there with the JVT-69S. The models sound great without making any changes in Workbench. The piezos are well balanced, the ADSR (Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release) sounds natural, and there's no odd resonance. It needed a setup, but what guitar doesn't? I also polished the frets - I like them to be pretty slick and friction free. I played it exclusively at last night gig, and really liked everything about the guitar. Here's a few things I noticed that are different or improvements over the Variax Standard in case anyone is trying to decide which one to get. The quality of the design, components and construction is significantly better. The JVT feels like a quality instrument in your hands. Not so much the Standard, its ok, but not great. I like the JVT-69S neck and jumbo frets. A fatter neck feels better in my hands and is more stable. The jumbo frets make bending easier and more accurate. The fretboard is natural wood and takes neck oil well. To me, a little neck oil makes a new guitar play nicer, almost like its broken in. Wood and oil is a good combination. The Standard seems to have some coating on the fretboard so the oil doesn't penetrate the wood well. The 5-position pickup switch is a little further away from the pickups, has a more precise feel, and takes a little more force to switch. This is great because it reduces the chance of unintentionally changing the pickup with a picking strum, something that seems to happen a lot on the Standard. There's no play in the tremolo bar. I had to use pipe thread seal tape on the Standard to eliminate play in the tremolo bar. The thread bar slot goes all the way through the bridge block, so you can't add a tremolo bar spring to eliminate the play. The tape has to be changed pretty often.

I use an EON610 with Helix for live monitor, but its mostly for the rest of the band as I use IEMs - gives great tone and protects my ears at the same time. I have also had excellent results using a Roland AC90. This is an acoustic guitar amp with two channels, one for a vocal mic and one for acoustic guitar. But it also has stereo line inputs in the back and these work great at medium volume levels with Helix. Its a very flexible amp and I use it a lot for jams, and sometimes for rehearsal.

I have tried it, but find that Helix global EQ is more convenient and easier to change. In my case, our band uses EON610s for monitors and EON612s for FOH top (we has subs too). So the EQ I do for my monitor also applies pretty well to FOH. I also like to get the sound as close as possible in the IR/cabinet model by choosing the mic and mic position. This is followed by the low and high-cut in the IR/cab block, and last by EQ later in the signal chain. Where EQ in the EON610 would be most useful is if your Helix output is going to more than one FRFR and they have significantly different EQ needs. This would be a good case for adjusting the EQ in the speaker itself. People have found issues with the EON Connect app. It may introduce some inconvenience and reliability issues in your signal chain. I try to avoid depending on it.

Now this is strange. My Variax Standard is less than a year old. When I first got it, it really needed some fret leveling and a good setup. Also the model string volumes were way off. Those things addressed it became a reasonably playable instrument, and the magnetic pickups were surprisingly nice. However, the models I used most were not that satisfying. I mostly use the Tele, Strat and Les Paul models. None off these models had the brightness, twang or spank of the real thing - I have all three. But by changing the body models, I could fix that pretty well. But an issue remained. I was getting an odd resonance, like a banjo tone on these models, mostly on the G, B and high E strings. It was OK, but just didn't sound quite right. But I put some real hours in this guitar practicing at home and quite a fiew gigs. And you know what? That banjo resonance seems to be mostly gone! What I think might be happening is that the piezo elements need to settle into the bridge pieces and make solid and consistent contact. When the guitar is new and hasn't been played much, maybe the pickups aren't quite seated properly or settled in. Play the guitar for a while and maybe they seat better providing more consistent and expected tone. What gave me this idea is the JVT theread on "piezo plank" where the fix in some instances was to reseat the piezo pickup. Not sure, but I'm happy the guitar is sounding better. By the way, I have a JVT-69S on the way, should be here Friday. I'm committed to Variax, and think it might be worth it to have a somewhat higher quality instrument. I'll let you know how it works out.

Checkout the mic position in this very nice video. Hear that nice warm tone. The mic is positioned very close to the cone edge.

This is very well said and very important. Its not just the volume you want to change, but the tone, feel, expression, etc. A few other things to consider: 1. Start with a -3dB cut for your non-lead tone, then set to 0dB for lead - this helps ensure there's no digital clipping. 2. Use the output volume to avoid having to use a block just for changing volume. 3. Consider changing more than just the output volume. You can also change amp gain, and low and high cut (in a tube preamp, a cab model or IR). Instead of just turning the volume up, add a bit of extra amp gain to get a bit more distortion. This will add more dynamics to the tone. As the volume and gain go up, you might want to do a bit more bass and treble cut to get a more mid focused tone. This will keep your guitar from overlapping with other instruments in the mix when your turn up.

Now that I'm (hopefully) understanding this better, I would add two additional points. First, its possibly better to choose an IR that provides the tone you want before using high-cut to tailor the output. For me that means choosing IRs that use ribbon microphones, close mic'd and positioned at cone and cone edge, staying away from the bright cap or cap edge I typically used. This is actually how many sound engineers mic up electric guitars live. They often start with the mic at the cone edge then go out in the room and listen while the guitar player plays various different settings. Then they have an assistant gradually move the mic closer to the cap until the high end is about right, a balancing act for sure. This approach uses mic choice and positioning as the primary means of getting the desired tone result (getting it right at the source), and then using EQ to make smaller adjustments as needed. The second point is I don't really mind the apparently very gradual slope of the IR high-cut on Helix. I feel like this helps dial in a sort of high-resolution high-cut that's gradual and smooth, doing what needs to be done while having a minimal overal impact on the IR. 6dB is pretty gradual too, so is 12. Much higher than that can start to sound unnatural and have resonance peaks. Bottom line, I don't really care where I have to set the high-cut knob as long as it does the job. For me, it seems to pretty well. My original issue was that I didn't understand that the high-cut was needed at all, or why.

I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that its not the IR's that's making things too bright and boomy, and its not the specific frequency response of the FRFR (if its reasonably flat). Rather I think its how we're listening and how a mic'd guitar cabinet sounds through a PA vs. how it sounds "in the room". Guitar cabinets have limited frequency response and the high frequencies are very directional. We generally listen to guitar amps very off axis and so we don't get hit with all those high frequencies coming out of a very narrow band from the center of the speaker. But that changes when you stick a mic in front of a cabinet, or use an IR with a similarly positioned mic. The mic is going to hear exactly what you would hear if you put your ear right into the middle of that speaker. That's going to be very bright as you're hearing all the high frequencies the speaker is able to reproduce. This will not sound natural, so we shouldn't necessarily expect a mic positioned in the same place to sound natural. When a Helix amp model is played through an IR, the IR does indeed reproduce quite well the dynamic frequency response of the modeled cabinet, just like if you had that cabinet and stuck the same mic at the same position in front of it. What's different is the FRFR. Typically these have much wider high-end dispersion due to horns or tweeters. So you'll hear a lot more of that high end over a much wider range of positions. It is that phenomena that we need to compensate for with high cut. We're essentially using the high cut to reproduce the amp "in the room" sound that we're use to because of the directionality and narrow dispersion of the high frequency response of a guitar speaker.

These old ears are indeed not that great, I have what's called shooter's notch around 4K. But that's for low volume stuff and may not effect electric guitar all that much. I disagree with your first statement. If you listen to a guitar cabinet with your ear 1" away from the speaker cone, its going to sound harsh. Listening to Helix with a cab model or IR with an SM57 positioned at cap, 1" away through headphones will sound quite a bit like listening to the cabinet with your ear in the speaker. That's not going to sound like an amp in the room, ever. An amp in the room sounds like it does because of the room reflections and where you are in the room relative to the speaker. If you're not listening to the speaker pretty directly, then there's going to be significant high loss because of the directionality of the guitar speakers. So we might think of that high-cut a lot of us tend to put on cab models and IRs as taming that direct capture of the speaker to make it sound more like where we might be hearing it in the room. I'm not at all surprised that would require some high cut.

There may be a relatively simple explaination for the need for that high-cut we all seem to apply. Let's assume for a moment that Helix faithfully reproduces the sound of a guitar speaker captured with an IR (either a commercial IR, one you created yourself, or one used in a Line6 cab model). Recall from some of my previous posts that initially I didn't think that was the case, that the IR block was too bright. But with further testing, I believe Helix does indeed process IRs properly/accurately, and that the vendors creating IRs are properly capturing the dynamic frequency response of the speakers. There must be something else going on that requires that high cut. Here's a possibility: A guitar speaker is by nature very directional. If you're listening to it behind you and pointing at the back of your legs, or you're in the audience and a bit off axis, it will sound pretty warm because the high frequencies are in a fairly narrow beam and get absorbed quickly. But if you put your ear down next to the speaker, or position it in front of you pointed directly at you, or if you're in the audience and are looking directly at that guitar speaker, I guarantee it will be VERY bright, uncomfortably bright. This is often called the ice-pick of guitar tone. That's essentially what's happening with Helix and cab models and IRs. The mics are usually pretty close to cap, cap-edge, or only slightly off access so they can pick up everything the speaker is capable of producing. So the mic is going to pick up that very bright tone. If you reproduce that in a FRFR like a typical higher end PA speaker, then the horn on that speaker is going to disperse those high frequencies a lot wider both horizontally and vertically than a guitar speaker will. So the FRFR is going to sound a lot brighter to you simply because your virtual position relative to the modeled cabinet is a lot closer to the narrow dispersion cone of that original guitar speaker. I think its very reasonable for us to have to compensate for that as part of the full signal chain from guitar string to our ears in the context of the models and the FRFR and I no longer worry about the value of that high-cut. I just listen for the tone I'm looking for. I actually think it is good that the IRs and cab models are overly bright, possibly simply because of better dispersion of the high frequencies that we usually wouldn't hear. Its a lot easier to remove these high frequencies with a low-pass/high-cut filter than it is to recreate them if they're not there. So don't worry about the high-cut value, expect to have to use high-cut on many IRs, and just get the tone you want.

Joost, Are the IR Select indexes in the IR blocks in the patches linked to the IRs in the folder sorted in alphabetical order and indexed at 1? Want to make sure I'm using the correct IR for the patch.

They're all a bit different, not necessarily better or worse. HD500 lost some things X3 had, and gained some others. I generally thought the HD500 sounded better on most things than the X3. But there are still some tones on the old POD 2.0 that are worthwhile and hard to reproduce on anything else. That said, I'm happy with Helix and am glad to have less hardware choices.

I use one EON610 as my stage monitor. It's not great, but perfectly OK. Its light, flexible and not overly expensive.

I have the Redwirez BigBox IR set, and find them quite good. Mike Scuffham selected a few choice Redwirez IRs for S-Gear, and I really trust Mike's ears a lot more than my own. There's a lot of variables that impact the IRs: recording technique, room, specific mics (not just types), exact mic positions, how much of the cabinet is captured, post processing and IR mixing, etc. But I suspect the most significant difference is the cabinets and speakers themselves. They're all different. Even different speakers of the same model in the same cabinet will sound different. For example, I have IRs from a number of vendors that are close or nearly exactly modeling the 2x12 Fender closed back cabinet I have loaded with Celestion G12-65s. Just for fun I tried creating my own IR of that cabinet using Logic's Impulse Response Utility. I used two mics, an SM57 and AT4047. I then loading that IR into Helix along with similar ones from Redwirez and Celestion and setup two outputs from helix going into diffent channels of the same power amp, one with the IR block going into my FRFR, and the other with no IR or cab model going into the G12-65 cabinet. Perhaps not surprisingly my own IR was much closer to matching the actual cabinet than either the Redwirez or Celestion IRs. They all sounded good, just different. So I think the point is that although speaker choice has a great impact on amp tone, its probably not productive to obsess over finding the optimal cab or IR model. Its probably better to pick one that's close enough and just play. The subtile differences won't be that apparent in a live gig situation.

I'm also an HD500X convert (and POD2.0, XTLive, X3Live), and I really tried to make it work. But I always felt one small tweak away from something that would work, but could never get there. With Helix its the opposite. There's a wide range of things that are just different but work just fine. And I'm way beyond you guys in age - late 60's. But I run almost every day and can keep up pretty well. My message to you all is that there's always hope. I'm a cancer survivor, and had a pulmonary embolism late last year caused by unprovoked blood clots in my left leg that I wasn't remotely aware of. Seeing my running speeds drop off saved my life. Here I am at this late age having the time of my life: still working full time, playing in two bands, a new grandchild, and having the time of my life. Keep kicking!

I agree with jbuhajla. You will have a hard time getting any IEM to sound and feel like a guitar amp or good FRFR with Helix. What you need to do is focus on what you're feeding to FOH, and make your IEM tolerable and sufficient to provide you the feedback that supports real-time performance. This can be much improved if you have a mixer capable of providing individual mixes for each IEM user. Our PA (X-32 Core) does this, and I try to provide each performer with their own monitor mix. But its very difficult to control all that while you are also performing, which many of us do. Good patches created in realistic rehearsal environments is a must. I have found that we can adapt to a lot more than we might expect. I hated IEMs at first. I was getting FOH in my IEMs since I run the PA for the band while also performing. Using a FOH mix I just couldn't hear my guitar the way I needed to in order to perform well. But once we used a similar setup at rehearsal (all through headphones), I got use to it and now prefer to hear myself in the mix instead of standing out. So it takes some practice and patience, like a lot of things in life.

These acoustic IRs are created by essentially taking the difference between the impulse response of the piezo pickup and the body of the guitar. When the piezo pickup is played through the acoustic IR, the contribution of the tone from the pickup is subtracted out, leaving only the contribution from the body of the instrument. This works reasonably well because a lot of piezo pickups sound pretty similar on a lot of different guitars. If you put a different input into the same acoustic IR, it won't work because the signal from the Variax or an electric guitar pickup is not the same as a piezo pickup. So the result will be incorrect. You'll essentially get Input source - piezo + acoustic body. This is probably not going to sound good because Input source - piezo is not zero.

What about tone matching just the cabinets? The Line 6 amp models are pretty good. Its the cabinets that seem to make a big difference.

Well, I'm the first to admit when I'm wrong. I did a more thorough test tonight of the Helix IR block and mixIR2, LAConvolver, Logic Pro X Space Designer, NadIR Convolver and S-Gear Pro Convolver, all using the same IR. I created a patch in Helix that uses the Archetype Clean amp with default settings except for Presence=5.0 and Bright=On (to put a little more high end into the cabs and IRs. The amp output is routed to USB 1/2. The output of the amp is also routed to another parallel path that has a Line6 Dual Cab (1x12 Celest 12-H) that is output to USB 3/4, and a third parallel path has thhe IR block with G12-65 212 C R-121 Balanced Celestion IR that is output to USB 5/6. In Logic Pro X I created three tracks: 1. Helix Cab with input from USB 3/4 - Helix: Archetype Clean > Dual Cab with 1x12 Celest 12-H > USB 3/4 2. Helix IR with input from USB 5/6 - Helix: Archetype Clean > IR block with G12-65 212 C R-121 Balanced Celestion > USB 5/6 3. Helix Amp with input from USB 1/2 - Helix: Archetype Clean > USB 1/2 (raw amp) I recorded a bit of my Variax Standard on the magnetic neck pickup on all three tracks at the same time. I then copied the Helix Amp track and added each of the convolution plugins above, all configured with the same G12-65 212 C R-121 Balanced Celestion IR. After carefully setting the gain of all tracks so they had the same output level, I compared all the tracks with the convolution plugins with the recording of the output of the Helix IR block simply using Option-Click on the track Solo button. I could not detect any difference between any of the renderings of the IR blocks. As expected, the Helix Cab track did sound different as its a different speaker. I'm not sure why I got the results I got before. I checked the original recordings before I started this test and they still sounded different. I must have had something wrong in the setup. So I apologize to everyone, and especially Line6, for the distraction resulting from sloppy testing. However, it is nice to know that the Helix IR block is working as expected. Now back to why my patches sound so bright into my EON610 monitor compared to a reference amp with the same Celestion G12-65 speakers. It may be simply where I was sitting, getting too much direct sound from that horn. I'm going to go back and do those references again this weekend and see what else I can learn. This time I'll reference just the speakers against the IRs using Helix amp model directly into a power amp into the reference speakers. That will eliminate any differences caused by going through my Showman tube amp.

This is great news and very helpful. This means that something else must explain what I observed - including the possibility that I observed incorrectly for some reason! I'll study this some more tonight with some additional tests and capture some recordings.

What you observed isn't crosstalk between the piezo pickups, its that the output of the Variax is mono - all the pickups are run through the signal processor and then to the output. So any strings sounded will be seen by a tuner whether is plugged into the guitar electrically or with a physical tuner attached to the headstock.