amsdenj

I don't have any quantified metrics (and I should), but I can treat myself as an an anecdote (and I know a collection of anecdotes is not necessarily a trend). I think there's a general trend towards greater articulation and control, whether its warm blues or heavy metal. Single coil and single pickups tend to provide a more focused tone since the pickup is seeing the string from a single perspective, focusing on the overtones that are prominent at the point where the pickup is placed. Combined pickups see the string from multiple places at the same time, mixing the signals create by the different overtones. This creates cancellations and reinforcements depending on the pickup position, construction, etc. The further apart the pickups are, the greater the difference between the overtones captured by each pickup and the more likely there are to be more extreme cancellations and reinforcements. This is typified by the sound of a Gibson guitar with both pickups turned on since the pickups are as far apart as possible. I find the tone to be a bit nasally, scooped, and results in a tone that less distinct then the other pickup selections. When this is distorted, especially a lot, it can become even more indistinct and muddy. I've also observed that in videos that feature Les Paul, you often see mostly neck and bridge pickups these days, while in the past, the two pickup combination seemed to be more common. For example, listen to old Mike Bloomfield tunes compared to Joe Bonamassa.

EXP1. I have updated to 2.12 and as with 2.10 and 2.11, the update looses all variax snapshot open tuning parameters and model selections.

I had a freeze during rehearsal this week on a patch I use almost constantly. Nothing changed in the patch. I do have a volume pedal in the patch, and I noticed shortly before the freeze that the volume was too low. I noticed the volume pedal had been turned down (I have it set to one lower the volume of input to the amp a small range for changing the amp drive). When I pushed the volume pedal down to turn the volume back up, I noticed it had no effect. Then I noticed none of the other switches or dials did anything. I had sound, but no interaction with Helix. Had to reboot. I'm wondering if this has something to do with the volume pedal issues others have experienced. This is very concerning as I can't have this happening during a performance.

Helix accessory - I love that! I have a '57 Les Paul Deluxe - it was a gold top with the small humbuckers. But I was into changing things when I was young, so it looks more like a Standard and has Tom Holmes humbuckers with split coils and stainless steel frets. Not that guitar looks, feels, plays and sounds fantastic. But you know what, I seem to be preferring either my Strat or my Variax Standard on gigs. I like all the sounds I can get - mostly acoustic. tele, Les Paul and Strat. And three pickups just provides a lot more tone options than two - especially given that the two pickup tone of a Les Paul seems to be falling out of style. So that Les Paul sits in the case a lot. Its real heavy. and I don't really want something to happen to a 50 year old guitar.

Nice post, thanks. I haven't tried these IRs yet, bought them yesterday. You and I have similar tastes I suspect so I'm going follow some of your suggestions and see how it goes. Will probably have to wait for the weekend though.

I too would rather see focus on quality and stability over new amp modeling. My Helix froze up durning rehearsal last night. No real explanation. The display was working, but there was no response from any button or pedal. Had to reboot. First time I recall that happening on a patch that I use all the time and haven't updated recently. Still on 2.11. I'd also prefer to see more emphasis on effects and improved speaker modeling as I think these both have a greater impact on available tones than adding another amp model. Going forward, I'd also prefer to see more new Line6 amp models like Litigator with more options for distortion voicing we can change. This is tube rather than transistor stomp distortion. Its time to move beyond reproducing the compromises of the past and start building for the digital future. I'm not saying I wouldn't be interested in additional replications of existing analog amps. I'm just saying that with limited resources, that wouldn't be my preferred priority.

Those Fender Showman amps had JBL D130F's in them. Those were pretty loud and bright speakers in their day. To get that twang, you might need to get a D130F IR. I have a Fender Showman from that era, and four JBL D120Fs (the 12") but I use Celestion speakers in that amp now - when it ever get played. It is set up out in the garage as we speak though.

I tend to like the warmer IRs too.

There is no way to move Variax 300 patches to JVT or Variax Standard guitars. You'll have to write down the changes you made and try making similar changes in your JVT using Workbench HD. That may or may not produce similar tones. Could be better.

I use a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 interface. I has two Hi-Z inputs and 8 mic inputs, plus many outputs and ADAT ins and outs. Helix is great for guitar-centered recording, but for more general home recording, 8 mic inputs could be more useful.

Ambience provided by high quality reverbs and delays sound really great playing by yourself, and in carefully crafted song mixes. I agree that Helix could stand some improvements here. I use S-Gear and Logic plugins for back of the amp effects during recording. However I don't really consider Helix a recording platform, its not flexible enough. Helix Native is a better option, but in that case I still have lots of ambience options in my DAW. To me Helix is primarily a performance device, and in this context Helix ambience options are perfectly fine. Less is more for ambience in live performances because it can really make mud out of a live mix. Its the performance that's the focus, not the ambience. That may not be the case for solo artists, but for electric guitar in a typical band application, Helix reverbs and delays seem more than adequate.

Its just probably a recognition that IRs aren't just about flexibility and options, they're about marketing. Maybe the Helix cab models are even better - IR models with some additional mic, position and other options. But that really doesn't matter in the marketing world. Its all about options, image and fantasy. Anyway, marketing or not, its nice to have the flexibility in Helix to add the IRs, and its nice to have a wide variety of IRs in the marketplace to choose from. Where is this going - its just the start. We're going to see a move from focusing on an overly saturated market for speaker IRs to a whole new market for acoustic instrument IRs. 3sigma is already doing this with their acoustic guitar, mandolin and upright bass IRs. This is just the beginning. Helix is a pretty good platform for deploying these new capabilities.

Some other advantages of Helix Native: Ability to use Helix front of the amp effects with S-Gear Use Helix Native with MainStage for integrated performance rig Use Helix Native with Logic Pro X (or any DAW) as a digital mixer for full band rehearsal in a box - supporting multiple guitarists and bass player (I do this with FCB1010's and S-Gear now and it really works). Really simplifies re-amping Supports automation of Helix parameters Helix on the road with something as simple as a laptop (does anyone travel without one anymore?) and Apogee Jam. Next - Helix for iOS!

If the system between the output of the amp model and the output of the IR is essentially linear, then it may not make much difference at all. You're putting the same input signal through the same linear block transforms so they should produce similar results regardless of the order. Now convolution is not linear, so it may make some difference where it is placed in an otherwise linear signal chain. Of course any distortion in the signal chain would have a big effect since its very nonlinear.

See that Dean ABG in the background of the video? What we need is IRs that make that ABG (especially a fretless version which I have) sound like a standup base. If you already have a standup bass and can play it, its not clear these IRs add that much. But being able to have IRs that convert an electric bass or ABG into a standup bass would be very interesting.

@rbum, you may find better results keeping the impedance matched with your guitar and using cabinet or IR low and hi-pass filters to tailor the tone, or use an EQ if you needs something more flexible. That is, get the most from your guitar, then adjust from there rather than throw thing away right at the start that you can't get back. That might provide more flexibility, especially using snapshots.

You wouldn't use impedance to get equal volume levels, that's what the pad switch is for. Impedance should generally be very high for passive pickups, less critical for active pickups. However if you want to faithfully reproduce certain pedals, you need to use Auto so the impedance is set to that of the pedal. This pedal has to be the first in the signal chain after the input block through for this to be effective. Personally I use 1M all the time. It keeps the guitar loaded properly so that you don't loose high frequencies.

Litigator, but I wish it had a bright switch.

I have seen some freezes, but its almost always a patch that didn't get migrated properly. This may even be related to presets with Variax models and tunings. I have not seen freezes in an otherwise stable patch that was dependent on how long the Helix is on. That sounds heat related.

Same here. It was a real pain to fix all my Variax patches in 2.10 and again in 2.11. I'll wait too.

Many of the bugs seem to be associated with the patch rebuilding process. It seems that when the patch meta-model changes (i.e., there are new parameters added), the migration of patches on import or patch rebuild is not migrating the patches properly. This is a typical area for problems in digital systems - install, update, and data migration. I think DI has indicated there will be some major changes in the Helix upgrade process in 2017, hopefully eliminating the need to do factory reset and restore all patches and IRs on future updates. If that is the case, it might explain why some for the bugs are filtering through the 2.x releases as the development team may be focused on what's next.

I had a Strat years ago that I modified to get all pickup combinations, with and without phase switching on the middle pickup. I found in practice it wasn't worth it. The out of phase sounds were certainly different but not pleasant and I never used them. The three pickup combination was also different but not that much and tended to lose some volume. I suspect that's because the middle pickup is wound in reverse and has its magnets flipped to provide hum bucking capability in positions 2 and 5. With all three pickups on you have two pickups in one phase and one in the other. That's not going to match well. What I did like is being able to getting the bridge and neck pickup combination to get the sound of a two pickup guitar. But as guitar styles have changed, this two pickup sound seems to be used less and less. It does have a bit of a nasally tone. I find I don't use it as much anymore, but do have that capability on my go-to Strat. Its a push-pull switch on the volume control. I didn't bother creating that combination on my Variax Standard though since I didn't use it that much. I'd rather use the Tele or Les Paul model for that when I need it.

Well there's something very wrong. I would try re-flashing the variax to restore to factory settings first. Then try directly into another amp, no VDI. It does sound like there's leakage from either the magnetic pickups, or some sort of cross-talk or feedback loop between the DSPs used to model the guitars and do the pitch shifting. This could be a cable that needs to be reseated in the guitar, a short somewhere, a cold solder joint or caused by some contanimation on the circuit board. You may have to send to Line6 for repair if re-flashing doesn't fix it.

There's two basic places to put a compressor in a guitar signal chain. The first is in front of the amp, often the first or nearly the first block in the signal chain. This compressor sees the raw input of your guitar and can be used to control pick attack, provide a bit of clean sustain, and even out small variations in picking and chording for a smoother, more glued together clean tone. When placed in front of a distorted amp, the compressor mostly changes the gain into the distortion which can change the coloration of the distorted sound a bit, especially for the attack. Use slow attack and fast release for smooth, natural clean compression. Use faster attack and slower release with really distorted tones to hit the distortion stages with a more consistent signal to provide a smoother, creamier tone. The second place is after the amp, closer to the end of the signal chain. The L2A compressor model is a good choice for this situation. A compressor after a clean amp will have a similar effect as a compressor before the clean amp (since the gain stages are not distorted, i.e.: linear). The difference is the impact the compressor can have on the after the amp effects. If you put it at the end of the signal chain, it can help glue together the delays, choruses, and reverbs that provide time and frequency ambience. For a distorted amp, compression after the amp can have a similar effect as the amp sag, but the dynamics might be a bit different. So compressors can play a key role in many different tone styles, in Helix or any other context.

This thread made me think of something. When recording, we try hard to eliminate the impact of the room. This is because when things get played back in a room, the room effect is doubled and this sounds unnatural. Similarly when we mic a guitar amp into FOH, we only get one microphone. However if you run Helix into a FRFR and mic that - you get two. That's going to magnify the impact of the microphone on the overall tone. Maybe the same is true of cabinet models and IRs. No matter how accurately the model simulates any given cabinet, mic and room, then end result is going to be played through yet another speaker in a room, or at least headphones. These speakers will have their own impact on the tone, and its likely much greater than some of the details of the cabinet models. Perhaps there's an argument to be made for not modeling everything in the cabinet models because the result is going to be played through some FRFR which is another cabinet, thereby doubling the impact of what was modeled and producing a less natural tone. Certainly factors like damping factor, negative feedback, and variable impedance will be different for a guitar cabinet driven by and overdriven tube amp and a FRFR driven by a high-power solid state amp. But the impact will still be doubled. Note once the power amp clips, there's no more negative feedback (because there's no more gain) and damping factor drops significantly. This happens all of a sudden and would be something that would also have to be modeled.