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Try using Workbench HD to balance string levels and try different body models. If you want to bring the sparkle and spank back to the Tele and Strat models, try using the Masonic Plank body. I find this results in better sustain, and more natural Fender tones. I even use it on the Les Paul models to brighten that model up a bit. Also experiment with different picks. Piezo pickups react to pressure and tend to be very sensitive to different picks. I find lighter, smaller, less pointed picks tend to work a lot better with the modeled instruments. I love the V-Pick Tradition with mag pickups and use them almost all the time on my regular guitars. But with my Variax Standard, using the models, I found the V-Pick Euro sounds a lot better. It seems to react better with the piezo pickups, avoiding the high pressure transients that a heavier pick might produce that aren't musical, and seem to generate that dreaded "banjo" tone.

Re: climate and impact... After that somewhat expensive setup, my Variax Standard played really well. Having a wider nut made it feel more like a Strat, and the action was nearly perfect. No fret buzz, it was great. Then we played about 6 gigs in a row outside in North Carolina this summer. On one of the later ones, there was so much fret buzz that the Variax wasn't playable. I adjusted it the next day and got it playing pretty well again. My question is could heat and humidity play that big a role in changing the guitar setup over a couple of months? My Strat and Les Paul are in those same environments, and they didn't change. But they're old instruments and may have seasoned/settled. Anyone else noticed big changes in action caused by heat and humidity?

Appreciate the response thanks. Not sure if you meant my specific Variax Standard was setup when it went back for repair, or that in general all the guitars are setup from the factory and adjusted for location. I suspect the latter. When I sent mine back, I didn't mention the setup issue, and that could have been my mistake. Changing the nut width was certainly a personal preference and not something I would have expected in any case. Note that after that expensive setup, I played a bunch of outdoor gigs in North Carolina, pretty hot an humid this summer. The Variax Standard exhibited some instability under these conditions and I had to change the setup a few times to address significant fret buzz. I suspect any instrument would have similar problems. It seems that the Variax models are particularly sensitive to fret buzz through the piezo pickups. It might be best to error on the side of higher action and more neck relief for this particular guitar.

I bought mine at Guitar Center. They couldn't find the original box and after some searching, did find a plastic bag containing the missing parts. The guitar was a floor model and who knows what abuse it got. Unfortunately it would not work with the 1/4" output connected, it would only work through the VDI cable. The setup was terrible, but I assumed I could fix that myself. I sent it back, and Line6 repaired the 1/4" output, but didn't do anything about the setup. It had fret problems and I ended up spending an additional $300 to get the frets leveled and dressed properly, do the setup, and change to a wider nut. I wasn't happy about that additional cost, but it plays pretty well now. Would I do this again, given the HD models and their somewhat banjo/resonance tone? Not sure. I do gig with it regularly, and do appreciate how easy it is to get different guitar tones and open tunings. Not sure I would use it for recording or in a professional context, but for the club gigs I do its certainly adequate and convenient. I have a nice Strat Deluxe and a 50 year old (single owner) Les Paul that I could use. But the Strat doesn't have the flexibility of the Variax Standard, and I'm reluctant to take that Les Paul to club gigs. The money wasn't a huge issue for me. I can deal with the inconvenience of having to have a couple of repairs - Line6 and http://thefretking.gettimely.com. And I'm not looking for professional, vintage tone and playability from this instrument. But that was quite a cost for a mediocre instrument. Water under the bridge, I'm glad I have it. But...

So the idea of a Wet/Dry/Wet setup is: 1. Front of the amp (usually) mono effects (e.g., Wah, compressor, distortion, phasor, Uni-Vibe, maybe Flanger) to into the amp model 2. The path after the amp (and optionally cab/IR model - depending on the configuration) is split into a dry path and a wet path 3. The dry path is sent to on amplifier, often in mono, and often a guitar amp (in which case there would be no cab/IR block in this path) 4. The we path has all the (usually) stereo after amp effects (e.g., chorus, maybe flanger, delays, reverb) and is sent to a stereo FRFR amp (in which case the cab/IR would be in this path). 5. Then you mix the wet/dry outputs in the air between the two amplifiers Do I have this right? Is the purpose of this to separate the dry and wet paths into different amplifiers to spread them out, give wider depth, and to reduce mud and lost articulation that can result from mixing them in the box?

To use Helix with Logic, you should consider first recording dry inputs for your mic and guitar. That way you can re-amp with Helix or other plugins like S-Gear or Bias FX. By default the direct guitar is set to USB 7 and the direct mic USB 8. You can change these in global settings if needed to select specific Helix inputs. Note that USB 7/8 can't be selected in a Helix Output Block, its dedicated to dry outputs for re-amping purposes. I think your problem is the outputs. Unless you need to specifically send outputs to Logic tracks outputs to specific USB inputs routed to Helix effects sends and returns, you should set the output of each Logic track to the Stereo output, then configure Mac OS and Logic to use USB 1/2 for the Stereo output - this should be the default. Helix dedicates USB input 1/2 to output from your computer, it can't be selected as an input in an Input Block, bypasses all block processing and is always active. You should now be able to play audio from your computer to USB 1/2 and hear it in the Helix headphone jack. Now we can address the inputs. You have a couple of choices. If you have your Helix output blocks set to Multi, then you will hear your processed guitar and mic signals directly from the Helix headphone output, with no latency. And USB 1/2 can be selected as inputs to a stereo track in Logic. In this case you want input monitoring off in Logic since you are already monitoring direct from Helix. This will work, but it will record the guitar and mic stereo signals into the same stereo track, so all the mixing would need to be done in Helix and can't be changed in Logic. Generally this isn't what you want, unless you want to record essentially a live performance from Helix to see exactly what your audience would hear using the same configuration. If you want to separate the guitar and mic into two stereo tracks, then you need to set the Helix output block of the guitar path to USB 3/4 and the output block of the mic path to USB 5/6. Note you can also use USB 1/2 for either the guitar or mic, but not USB 7/8, these are dedicated to dry signals. But this will only direct monitor one of your instruments, so it should be avoided. Then select the appropriate USB inputs in the Logic tracks for the guitar and mic signals. At this point you will not be able to monitor your guitar and mic from the Helix headphone output because the Helix Output blocks are set to USB 3/4 and 5/6 and so they aren't sending any output to the headphones. You can use global settings to change what the the headphones monitor: Multi (including 1/4", XLR and USB 1/2), 1/4" outputs, or XLR outputs. You want to leave it on Multi so you can monitor USB 1/2 which is the output of your computer. To monitor the tracks, all you need to do is turn input monitoring on in the Logic tracks. Latency shouldn't be a problem if you have a reasonably recent Mac computer with a reasonably recent OS. If it is, open the Logic audio preferences and reduce the buffers on the audio device. Do this until you get some digital noise and then increase the buffers a bit. At this point you should be ready to go. Note that Logic Pro X has been available for a few years and is quite an improvement in every way over the version you have as shown in your screen shot. The prices is also very reasonable. You might want to consider an update.

If you have multiple passive electric guitars to connect, use an active or passive direct box that presents a high-Z load on your guitar and lower-Z output to any of the other Helix inputs. For mandolin, i found the lower-Z Helix Aux input tends to tame the somewhat bright sound you would otherwise get from a mandolin with K&K piezo picks glued to the inside of the top. Rolloff caused by an impedance mis-match with bass probably won't cause much problem either since you usually don't need the bass to be that bright.

Very good point. This escalating volume war is all too common. Modern stage systems can make it worse. There's three basic stage configurations: with stage amps, without stage amps but with stage monitors, and IEMs. They all present different challenges. Stage amps provide good individual feedback, each musician has local control of their stage volume, and can adjust it to meet their playing needs. Interaction with other musicians is possible to some extent because everyone can hear everything on the stage locally pretty well. Add vocal stage monitors and you have a pretty controllable situation where musicians can interact dynamically pretty well. But there's a downside. First is the amount of gear you have to setup and manage. Then there's stage footprint which gets pretty important in small clubs. But most of all is stage volume. 100W Marshall guitar amps and 300W SVT bass amps create a lot of sound. It a small club, its nearly impossible to balance that sound with a good FOH mix since the stage volume will be so loud that the mains can't be brought up enough to take sonic precedence. Instead they make something that is already too loud louder. So we tried to eliminate stage amps and just use stage monitors. This points the sound at us instead of out to the audience, so its a little easier to get the FOH to overcome the stage volume. We each have or own stage monitor and everyone has their own stage mix so they can hear themselves well enough to provide the feedback they need to perform. But there's a downside. The stage monitors are also subject to volume wars since as soon as one person turns their monitor up, everyone else follows, especially the drummer since all the monitors are pointed right at him! And the stage monitors often reflect off the wall behind the band right back out to compete with FOH with an odd, reflective, out of phase sound. IEMs largely eliminate the sage volume, except for the acoustic drums. But there's a downside. The IEMs tend to isolate you from the audience, make it harder to hear people talking to you on and off the stage, are often in mono and don't provide good position separation, and don't interact with the instruments physically. That is, guitars respond differently when the strings are reinforced by the speaker output. This gives better sustain and more live dynamics. But all of these suffer from a disconnect between what each individual musician needs to hear for their personal needs, and what's actually going out FOH. As musicians, we need to hear what's on the stage, or our individual monitor mixes in order to play. But the dynamics to the audience is in the FOH which we can't hear. So this is a case where the sound man is actually another member of the band, dealing with the live dynamics that the musicians on the stage can't do themselves. And this is not an EQ or compression issue, you have to ride the faders. Now our band doesn't have a sound man, so frankly its almost anybody's guess what's going out those FOH speakers at any point in time. This is a big problem for us and I'd appreciate any insight more experienced people might have.

I use a a JBL EON610 as my floor monitor for Helix and vocals - no stage amp anymore. It needs to be warmed up a little with some additional high cut on the IR. It sounds OK, but not all that inspiring I guess. But since I wear ear plugs, nothing's going to be that great sounding to me. My ears ring like crazy if I don't wear the ear plugs, and it only takes a song or two.

The answer to this question has multiple facets. The first is physical inputs. Helix only has one Hi-Z guitar input, so the main, or lead guitar with passive pickups needs to use this input. The Aux and four effects returns can be used for other instrument inputs, and work well with instruments that have Lo-Z outputs, or guitars with active pickups. There's also the mic, Variax and SPID/IF inputs that can support other instruments. The next facet is the patch. Helix has two paths: 1 and 2, and each path can be split into 1A and 1B or 2A and 2B. Each of these four paths can have its own input and output, as well as effect blocks. So you can independently process up to four instruments with Helix - subject to block and DSP limits. Paths 1A, 1B, 2A and 2B can only have 8 blocks. And you're likely to run out of DSP if you try to make those paths very complicated. Then there are issues with the number of footswitches that would be able to control all those blocks with all those instruments. It's pretty practical to support two instruments with Helix. I do it all the time during rehearsal with electric guitar and bass into the same FRFR cabinet. Acoustic guitar and vocal is another common pattern. But much more common is to have multiple instruments connect to Helix, but use different patches for each instrument and only play them one at a time. I have an acoustic band I play in where I play mandolin, acoustic guitar (Variax 700 acoustic), and electric guitar. This is very convenient and makes it very easy to change instruments.

I think its a mistake to rely on the sound man to be the focal point of mixing live sound. He can play a role, but the first thing that has to be addressed is the performance itself. If everyone is playing full out throughout the whole song, then there's not going to be a lot of sonic room for the sound guy to work with. The best place to start is to focus first on the arrangement and performance. One way to think about this is similar to the concept of subtractive EQ - you cut what you don't want rather than boost what you do want. That makes better use of available headroom. The same thing applies first to the arrangement. To make your solos stand out, you need a 3dB cut on the other instruments, not a 3dB boost on yours. So attack this issue first by exploring what everyone else is playing during your solos. Make sure they know to leave some space for whatever the most important contribution is. For rock, that's almost always the vocals, leads, then rhythm section (drums, especially kick and snare, and bass). Pad instruments should be lowered to make room, rather than attempting to boost volume or mids to make the important instruments stand out.

Clint, you gave up on S-Gear? I went with Helix too. But would like Amplifier as a rehearsal and backup option. Its a little expensive for that though. I've been using Bias FX for rehearsal, but its not that inspiring. I suspect I'll give whatever Mike at scuffhamamps.com produces, but Helix meets my needs pretty well, especially since I also use a Variax Standard.

You're not alone, others including myself have also noticed this sort of banjo tone on all the Variax Standard models. I suspect its a resonance resulting from how Line6 captured and combined the impulse responses of the Variax piezo pickups, the modeled guitar's magnetic pickups and the models of the guitar bodies. This tends to sound exaggerated after listening to a model that actually has those resonances. There are however a few things you can do about it. 1. Using Workbench and your DAW as a metering system, level the volume of the modeled pickups for each string. You will likely find a huge variation in string volume for every pickup of every model. These all have to be adjusted as the typical setup for magnetic pickups should give pretty uniform volume on all strings and all pickup setting. The reason for this variation is likely variation in the piezo pickups, and variation caused by the different pressures from the heavy wound vs. light plain strings. So your guitar might be quite different than anyone else's. You'll find that once you do a few pickups, there'll be a volume pattern on the strings that will be pretty consistent across all the pickup models. Write these numbers down and apply them to all the other models. Leveling the pickup volumes will make a huge difference in the tone of the guitar, providing more balance and allowing the higher harmonics to come through. 2. Try experimenting with different guitar bodies. Experience from my old Variax 300 seemed to apply equally to the Variax Standard models. The Masonic Plank body sounds a lot better to me on most guitar models. Its brighter, richer, has more sustain and sounds more natural, with less banjo resonance. I use it on the Tele, Strat and Les Paul models. To me it really made my Variax Standard a lot more useful. 3. Try different picks. I found that heavier picks seem to have more impact on the pressure sensitive piezo pickups, causing that odd banjo sound as well as a somewhat unnatural fast decay of the pick attack tone. Lighter, softer, rounder picks sound better to me. I prefer VPick Tradition picks, they're thick, hard, and easy to control. But these picks don't work well at all on acoustic guitars, or the Variax Standard and those piezo pickups. However the VPick Euro sounds fantastic. Picking a little lighter can help too. 4. Of course how you set the tone and EQ on your amp can also make a difference. It can't get rid of the banjo tone as that sounds like a 2nd order resonance. But certain mid boosts can accentuate it and make it worse. Use a 9dB boost at high-Q and sweep around to find the bad banjo frequency. Then cut a little there with a wider Q. 5. Use heavier strings, or the heaviest strings you can get away with and still play the way you want to play. Heavier strings will sound better, last longer, have better sustain, and are less prone to being over bent causing notes to go sharp or out of tune on chords. Heavier strings will couple better with pressure sensitive piezo pickups.

There are two facets of this discussion - the physical and conceptual longevity of devices like Helix. From the physical perspective, I have an old Fender Showman amp I bought in'67. It has lots of problems although I've re-cap'd the power supply and replaced the tubes. Talk about obsolesce, its getting harder and harder to get good tubes at a reasonable price. Obsolesce happens, its not necessarily a bad thing. The good news is there's nothing in it I can't easily fix myself. I doubt that's the case with Helix. From a conceptual perspective, I have a Les Paul I bought in '68 and still use it on gigs. I've modified it a few times, but its a vintage instrument that is impossible to describe in how it feels and sounds. I really doubt my 3 Variax guitars will ever have any vintage appeal. Perhaps the same with Helix, after all its modeling existing amplifiers, not designing that many new amplifiers. But I'm ok with this. Helix is a great tool for what I need it to do. It makes rehearsals and gigging so much easier and flexible than the past. No it doesn't sound as good as an great tube amp and real guitar speakers. No a variax guitar isn't really all that close in playability or tone to the real thing. But its good enough for the gigs I do and very convenient and usable. It its absolute in 5-8 years, like all the other Line6 products I've bought, then I feel like I would have gotten my value out of it and be ready to try the new thing. That's a part of change I like.

Note that choice of pick can make more difference on a Variax using models than on a regular guitar using magnetic pickups. This is because the piezo pickups are sensitive to pressure on the bridge, and more directly sense the effect of pick attack. I found that heavy picks like the V-Pick Tradition work well with Variax Standard magnetic pickups, but do not sound good at all with the guitar models. The pick attack caused by that pick's, thickness, material, point shape and bevel cause an odd attack tone with models that makes the resonance/banjo tone worse, especially on the plain strings. I recommend experimenting with picks as much or more than strings. Picks that are medium thickness, have smooth bevels, and rounded, not sharp points seem to work better with piezo pickups. By the way, I love V-Picks, they're worth giving a try. The V-Pick Euro works great with Variax models.

The reason the 1/4" cable needs to be plugged in is that the Workbench HD interface can't provide power to the Variax through the Ethernet cable like a Helix or HD500 can. You will also therefore have to have a charged battery installed or your guitar won't be powered and won't connect to Workbench HD. Eventually Line6 will allow Helix to connect a Variax to your computer directly through the VDI cable and eliminate the Workbench HD interface and the need to use the 1/4" plug and internal battery to power the guitar. Hopefully this will be available soon as it will make it much easier to edit Variax models.

Any IR, whether in Helix or a Fishman Aura spectrum or any other acoustic processor can, and is often designed specifically to, utilize the direct output off piezo pickups. These pickups are pressure sensitive, generating a small voltage proportional to the pressure changes caused by a vibrating string. The Variax guitars could provide a model bypass mode where the modeling is turned off and the direct piezo outputs are available. These can then be processed by outboard processors using acoustic guitar body image IRs like Helix.

I have a Variax 300, Standard and 700 Acoustic. And I use a Martin 00C with a piezo pickup into Helix with the 3sigma acoustic IRs. To my ears the tone an flexibility in priority order would be: 1-Variax 700 Acoustic, and it plays like an acoustic, 2-3sigma Its with almost any piezo pickup, Variax 300 acoustic, Variax Standard (and JVT, it has the same models). The models in the Variax 700 acoustic are pretty nice, and are always dependable. And since it is an acoustic guitar, it feels and plays like an acoustic, something that is necessary for any significant acoustic playing. The 3sigma IRs are quite good, as are others that are available. These are worth giving a try for your application. My real disappointment is in the Variax Standard. To me the acoustic models in this instrument are barely usable. They, as well as many of the other Variax 2.0 models, seem to have an odd resonance that makes especially the plain strings have a banjo tone that isn't pleasing. I really wish my Variax guitars had a direct piezo out model so I could use these IRs. Please Line6, this is the simplest, most flexible thing you could do with almost no development to breathe new life into any Variax guitar and help sell more Helix units too. Don't give up on us or the Variax technology, just open it up a bit.

Delay can provide ambient depth without filling in the sound as much as reverb which can sometimes cause muddy, less articulate tone.

Not all FRFRs are FRFR. Some require more EQ than others, especially those created for PA or monitor use having horns. Also there's a wide range of tastes on how to mic an amp and how to EQ the resulting tracks when recording. A lot of this depends on the song, instrument, pick, player style, room and production. A little high and low cut on an IR or cab model provides a really simple way to deal with some of these variables without using up another block, or having to deal with more complex EQ. Generally its better to cut than boost, so the impulse responses and cabinet models may be captured a little bright to make them more flexible. Not sure if this is the case, but it makes some sense. I haven't followed this whole thread. But if you're getting a "nasty sound" from Helix there's probably a few places to look: Start with the source - the guitar. Is there a buzz someplace on the bridge, behind the nut, a bad tone cap, dirty volume pot, microphonic pickups, microphonic cable? Try a different guitar and cable. If this is all good, move to the destination - the speaker. Is there a bad speaker in the FRFR (damaged speakers can work a long time and make lots of buzzing noises)? Is there a problem with your power amp? Speaker cables OK? Make sure by trying headphones, if the nasty sound is still there, and not coming from your guitar, then its in Helix Start with the input. Are you using the guitar input? Is the impedance high or auto? Is the jack making a good connection? Are you overdriving the input? Digital clipping will never sound good. Try the input pad. If the input is ok and the pad doesn't fix it, then its in the patch. Start with a very simple patch using a Fender Twin and nothing else. Make sure the inputs and outputs are set properly and there's no gain boost anywhere. Turning the amp block off and on should be about the same overall level - unity gain through Helix input and output. If this is still bad, make sure you're not clipping the input of the amp Helix is connected to. Although if this is the problem, it wouldn't show up in headphones unless you're using headphones that don't work well with Helix. There's lots of threads covering this. If all this checks out and you still have the problem, then I suspect there's an issue with your Helix. Your issue may be uncommon, but it's perhaps not unique. There are lots of things that can cause issues in such a complex signal chain. Here's an experience I had to provide additional perspective. I was testing the Helix mic input to see if mine was one of the instances that had issues with the mic pres. I plugged in a Rode NT5 that I leave on a stand for recording acoustic guitar. Sure enough I get a brief amount of crackling and then no sound. I unplug the NT5, turn off phantom power and plug in a Beta58. No sound. I must have one of the bad units/ So I box it up and send it back to Line6 for repair. They get it and send me an note saying there's nothing wrong with the unit. What gives?! Line6 sends it back with no repair. I get the Helix back, do the same test, sure enough, no sound. But this time I rebooted Helix and tried again in reverse order, the Beta58 first. And it worked fine. Plug in the NT5 and the sound buzzes a bit then dies. Reboot again and try a different condenser mic, and it works fine. Turns out there's something about that particular NT5, or maybe all NT5's that the Helix mic input doesn't like. Wow knows, maybe you've found some similar unique combination that has issues.

For a more comprehensive looping solution, Helix makes a very nice audio interface and MIDI controller for Apple MainStage 3 which has excellent looping capabilities. This would eliminate the loop length issues, provide stereo loops, supports multiple independent loops that can be panned and mixed, and has additional features for play once, and fade out on stop.

I submitted this: Provide Variax direct Piezo output to use acoustic IRs in Helix

1. Yes, you can use a mix block in front of the looper to mix to mono. However anything that is input to the looper is summed to mono if the looper is set to mono. In your case, you're already mixing two things, so you already have the mix block. 2. Although a looper overdub is stored in separate memory (in order to support one-level Undo), this has no impact on the memory required for multiple overdubs. The memory used is established by the first recording, which establishes the loop length. All other overdubs are simply mixed with this content. 3. The looper has no stop and fade out mode, but you could simulate that with an expression pedal controller on the looper playback level parameter. You might find the blog posting helpful: Using a Looper for Solo Gigs

I still go through a USB 2.0 hub when using my 2012 MacBook Pro with Helix app. It seems to work flawlessly, and I still have trouble connecting Helix directly through the computer's USB 3.0 ports.

Helix is designed to handle a pretty wide range of inputs. The Guitar input should handle anything you give it unless you have an unusual active setup. There is a Pad switch you can use for high output guitars. But other than that, there's no input gain control that you could use meters or not. Helix output is a different matter. You don't need meters on Helix output because likely any FOH PA you plug it into will have input gain controls and its own meters. That's where you'd want to do the metering anyway. As far as gain staging blocks in your patch, I prefer to keep each block pretty close to unity gain unless its a specific lead boost patch. That makes sure there's now accumulation of gain buildup that could be resulting in digital clipping between blocks, or at the output. It also ensures that each block is seeing an input that's near its input design point or sweet spot. Effects tend to depend largely on the level of signal they receive as input and are usually designed for a specific input range. This will also avoid clipping the outputs or their converters.