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When Helix is used into the power amp input or effect return of a guitar amp with its own guitar speaker cabinet, you don't want to include a Helix Cab model because then you have a guitar speaker going into a guitar speaker. Although there's no rules and you should do what meets your need, this generally will not sound good at all. So typical signal paths would be: 1. Helix into a FRFR amp: Guitar > Helix guitar input > Helix front of the amp effects > Helix Amp and Cab models (or speaker IR) > Helix back of the amp effects > Helix Output > FRFR amp (or PA). See Creating a Helix Electric Guitar Patch (updated) for details. 2. Helix into guitar amp power amp and cab Guitar > Helix guitar input > Helix front of the amp effects > Helix Amp or Preamp (no Cab model or speaker IR) > Helix back of the amp effects > Helix Output > Guitar amp power amp or effects return. 3. 4CM - Allows you to use your guitar amp's preamp as a block in Helix Guitar > Helix guitar input > Helix front of the amp effects > Helix Send > Guitar amp input > Guitar amp effect send > Helix Return > Helix back of the amp effects > Helix Output > Guitar amp power amp or effects return. Note that there is no Helix Amp or Cab model in this case because your guitar amp is providing both. You are just using Helix for effects, and have flexibility about where you put effects before or after the guitar amp's preamp. A guitar amp (model) into a real guitar amp might work, but in that case you're just using two guitar preamps in series. People have done this, but its generally not needed with modern amps or Helix. Note also that other then the inclusion of your guitar amp's preamp (and therefore no Helix amp or preamp), you are still using your guitar amp's power amp and cabinet as in path 2. 4. Helix as a pedalboard in front of a guitar amp. Guitar > Helix guitar input > Helix front of the amp effects > Helix back of the amp effects > Helix Output > Guitar amp input. Again, there is no Helix preamp, amp or cab model because that's all provided by your guitar amp. Helix is only used for effects into the input of your guitar amp. This puts all the effects, tone, phase, distortion, modulation and ambient effects, into the guitar input, like you would with a traditional pedalboard. See Using Helix as an effects pedalboard for details.

If you want to go straight into the front of a clean amp, and use Helix as a digital pedalboard, see this post. Using Helix into the effects return or power amp input of your amp lets you add Helix amp models (but no Cab model) and have effects before or after the amp - your guitar amp is only used to provide the power and speakers, Helix does everything else. Using Helix with 4CM allows you to position the amp's preamp in a Helix block position, allowing you to include effects before and after the amp's preamp. Whether this is useful or not depends a lot on you amp's preamp. It may overlap with functionality you can get nearly as well in Helix already.

Yes, but if I had the effect bypass mapped to a footswitch, I wouldn't need MIDI control. This is for patches that have more independent effects functions then available footswitches. Bypass as an available Patch Edit Mode parameter would be another options, but MIDI control for bypass should be provided too. "Helix Edit just around the corner"?!

I've just completed another post on using helix as a pedalboard in front of a clean guitar amp. This worked out well for me and opens up other possibilities for Helix as well as breathing new live into my old Fender Showman amp. Showman Vibarto.hlx.txt

I've been creating the IRs specifically for Helix, using 48 kHz and 16 bit, and ensuring the IR is trimmed and cropped to 2048 samples with a short fade at the end. Most acoustic instrument impulse responses are likely to be pretty short, not like the long delays in a cathedral. So 2048 samples should be more than enough.

Based on thing I learned from Joost's SVR patch, I've updated Creating a Helix Electric Guitar Patch (updated). This version uses a Studio Tube Pre for the Drive gain stage, another for warming the tone after the amp and speaker models, and an LA Studio Comp compressor at the end of the signal chain to add its unique color. The blocks are also reorganized a bit to level the DSP load on the two paths, and to put most of the mono locks in Path 1 and stereo blocks in Path 2.

I agree with Peter, Helix makes it easier to design a patch that covers more tone variation making it less necessary to have different patches for different songs. See my blog post Creating a Helix Electric Guitar patch for a discussion on two approaches to creating patches: Stomp Mode: get the most out of each patch, Preset Mode: create a different patch for each specific purpose.

I had the opposite experience. Helix doesn't seem to like the USB 3 ports on my 2012 MacBook Pro. When I go through a USB 2.0 hub plugged into a Belkin Express Doc connected to the computer through Thunderbolt, I have no problems. The latest versions of El Capitan seem to work better too. There may still be USB and audio problem in El Capitan.

A preamp voiced for acoustic guitar, acoustic guitar body IRs, a Dumble, a Two Rock, more boutique distortion pedals, especially The Royal Blue - Mad Professor, Free the Tone SOV.

Well, I looked into this a bit more, starting with using the iOS MIDI Designer Pro app to create a live, remote, touch based UI for Helix. You could create a similar UI with Apple MainStage. I created a Palm Pilot app for POD2.0 similar to this many years ago. Since Helix is USB Class Compliant, it works fine as a MIDI hardware device for any CoreMIDI app in OS X or iOS, and it worked flawlessly with MIDI Designer Pro. You do have to connect with a USB cable (no Wifi or Bluetooth wireless connection to Helix), and have to use a Camera Connection Kit for iPad, but that's not really much of an issue, and the connection is reliable in any setting. But I discovered a few issues in creating the MIDI Designer Pro UI for Helix. There are very few default MIDI controllers setup for Helix patches. There are dedicated MIDI CC messages to emulate the expression pedals and footswitches, and to control the Looper. But unlike the older POD devices, there are no fixed, dedicated MIDI controllers for any blocks or parameters in a patch. As a result, unless there's some hidden Helix API that Line 6 hasn't yet announced or published, there is no reflective way to discover what's in a patch, and the MIDI controllers have to be created for each patch. This basically means the UI to control Helix live would have to be created for each patch. I'm not sure that's all that practical or useful since it would take a lot of manual editing to setup the MIDI controllers for all the parameters of every block, and the UI would be different for every patch. I can think of a few work arounds that might help. Setting up the MIDI controllers could be done by manually editing the .hlx JSON files and copying and pasting the controller assignments from a template patch to each of the other patches. Of course the actual blocks and parameters will likely be different so this could require a lot of manual editing. But editing the JSON file is likely faster than doing the edits directly on Helix. Develop a consistent patch template that uses a common pattern for blocks and block positions within a set of related patches. This would allow the same MIDI controllers to work consistently across patches and would let you use the same UI for many similar patches. Export the patch from Helix and do the reflection and editing on the JSON file. Then Import the patch back into Helix - the is how the HD500 editor works. Its essentially batch, not live editing. Another problem I ran into is that there doesn't appear to be any way to control block bypass from Pedal Edit Mode or MIDI CC message. I think this is an oversight and hopefully something Line 6 will address in a future update. But as a result, you can't toggle bypass mode on a block in pedal edit mode, and you can't toggle bypass on a block using a MIDI controller unless the block is assigned to a footswitch (where you use MIDI to emulate the footswitch, not to toggle the block bypass). So this was pretty limiting. I was hoping to use MIDI Designer to control bypass on blocks that don't have footswitch assignments (because I ran out of footswitches). So this leads me to believe Helix is like the POD HD500, you can only create limited, MIDI controlled live editors for parameters, and they are patch specific. To create a rich UI editor, you have to use batch mode, and the editor has to be based on the .hlx JSON file. This is the idea I introduced above. Doing the Helix editor as a Web Service would have some advantages: It would require nothing to be downloaded in order to edit Helix files Should work for any browser or mobile devices Could be used to browse patches of tones in the Cloud Could upload and download through Helix making it easy to submit and audition shared patches. This is similar to BIAS FX Tone Cloud. Unfortunately I have to go back to work Monday and will have limited time to put into this. But it would be a fun app to write and I think would be very useful. If anyone at Line 6 would like to discuss this in more detail, I'd be happy to contribute.

Impulse responses depend lot depends on the selection of the speaker and cabinet to capture, the technique and gear used to do the capture, and the ear of the person doing the capturing. For example, S-Gear comes with a number of carefully chosen Redwirez IRs. In a recent update, Mike Scuffham created a few of his own IRs, some using similar speaker models to what was available from Redwirez. I think Mike has an amazing ear for guitar and it shows in these speaker models. To me, its hard to tell sometimes which IR model is "better", in many cases they're just different. You can waste a lot of time trying to pick the best one, only of find the next time you try you'll get a different result. Here's some guidelines to consider: Use only 16 bit, 48 kHz IRs for Helix (don't depend on Helix to convert them) Pick a small set of speaker IRs to audition based on what's typically used in the amp your using, for your style of music, and your guitar (single or double coil pickups make a big difference). I started with Robben Ford and Matt Schofield's live rigs because I love the tone they get. Get the speaker choice right first, or at least a very small set, using a Neumann U87, CapEdge and 2" for a relatively neutral, uncolored mic. Then zero in on the mic and mic position For the very small set of chosen speakers, pick a small set of mics: an SM57, Neumann U87, and Royer R121 will sound quite different, the other choices can be pretty subtle. For each mic, pick a small set of mic positions, CapEdge being the most typical For each mic position, pick a small set of distances from the cabinet: from say 0" to 4" with 2" a good starting point Import the IRs into Helix using some unused or expendable IR index slots Audition in a typical live setting. What works well at low volumes by yourself might not work at all in a gig situation, a lot depends on volume level, feel and how the speaker fits in the mix. Audition by using pedal edit mode to increment and decrement the IR block while playing. Try a range of songs, pickup combinations, effects, etc. Get a feeling for the whole, not just one specific thing. Keep notes on each IR, how it sounded, how it felt, whether it was muddy, fizzy, scooped, articulate, etc. so you can remember how they compared. Use a table in Evernote to capture your notes If you still can't decide which IR to use, try this simple selection process: Select an IR Compare it with each other IR until you find one you like better Replace the first IR with that IR and repeat the process until there are no IRs that sound better. You now have your favorite - but possibly only for that situation. Getting the right IR can have a big effect on tone and feel, perhaps nearly as important as the guitar. But much of the variability between IR models will be lost in the mix, and imperceptible to your audience. So don't worry too much if you can't decide which one you like best, probably may choices are good and are just different. And don't worry too much if you keep changing the IR in your goto patch, its likely the change will be subtle.

I've create a blog post on creating a Helix acoustic guitar patch. This shows the potential Helix has for acoustic instruments through creative use of Impulse Response blocks. Taylor 314ce - Soundelux E.wav Acoustic G-XT.hlx.txt

I am trying to create a MIDI remote controller for Helix using the iOS MIDI Designer Pro app. I Can get Helix connected, and can send CC messages just fine. My issue is that like the Pedal Edit Mode, there doesn't appear to be any way to control a Block's bypass state. The only parameters that are selectable to map to a MIDI controller are the block parameters, bypass is not available. Is there some trick to map a MIDI CC to a block bypass?

Amazing Slowdowner from Roni Music is an iOS and Mac OS X app that's been around for a very long time. There's a Windows version too. It lets you slow down or speed up almost any kind of audio file without changing the pitch. You can also change the pitch up and down if the track isn't in tune with your guitar. You can set start and end points for looping making it easier to learn phrases. IRs are stored wherever you put them. However, they are not exported in index order. As a result, after you do a Helix factory reset, and loose all the IRs, you have to import them all back in in the same order or your patches will have the wrong IR index. This is because the patch Impulse Responce block only stores the IR index, not a location independent link to the IR (like the IR name). You can load the IRs above into any index position, then go edit the patch to change the IR block to the block number where you imported them. This will be correct for your system until you have to reload and possibly reorder all you IR blocks again.

By the way, that patch has Channel Volume set pretty low to match my mandolin and acoustic guitar patches. You might need to adjust for your setup.

JazzInc, thanks for the very nice and interesting patch. After giving it a listen, I noticed some interesting ideas in the patch that I thought might be useful to write down. I started just capturing these in my own notes (Evernote) but then decided to share at Analyzing JazzInc's SRV Little Wing Patch. I hope you don't mind. Feel free to correct anything I got wrong or missed. And again, thanks for your great contributions.

Is the clipping coming through the XLR outs too? Where is the headphone volume set? Try a factory clean patch and make sure its not something wrong with the gain staging in the patch you're using. Disable all blocks in the patch and see if that's still distorting. If its only through the headphone output, then there's likely something wrong with the headphone amplifier. If its coming out of everything, try a different input.

The stock Cab models are IRs, but have additional processing including mic choice, distance, low cut, high cut and early reflections. Its likely some of those choices are implemented using different impulse responses for the same speaker, possibly by merging IRs as the parameters are changed. Probably not the low cut, high cut though, but I'm just guessing. With IR blocks, these choices have to be included in the Impulse Response itself, and cannot be changed without using a different IR block. To some extent, 3rd party IRs are just different. They may have different speakers, more speaker model choices, different cabinets, more or different mics, more placement choices, different room, different IR capture process, etc. That's not better or worse, just different. Sometimes those little differences can make a big difference in tone. Its also possible to use IR utilities on a Mac or PC to blend different speaker, cabinet, mic, mic positions, EQ curves, impedance curves and room mic IRs into a single blended IR that can be loaded into Helix. That is how the JOOSTALNICO-G12M-R121-U67 IR JazzInc provided, and that I used in the blog post patch, was created. In my case, I was looking for a warmer tone for my Strat to better fit with our bands overall sound. The use of ribbon and condenser mics, positioned close to the speaker to emphasize proximity effect that JazzInc used created just what I was looking for. I really appreciate the effort he put into exploring all those speaker and mic combinations to come up with such a nice IR.

See blog post Creating a Helix Electric Guitar Patch for an in depth look at approaches to designing patches and the details of my goto electric guitar patch. The patch and the IR are attached The patch ends in .txt to get it to upload/download. Remove this extension before attempting to import into Helix. This patch may not be that useful for you. But the thought process for how the patch was designed, the effects chosen, their configuration, and their order in the signal chain might be useful in helping you design your own patches. There's also an explanation of the Mod/Chorus Echo Scale and Spread parameters which are not documented in the Helix manual. At least this is how I think they work. Electric Guitar.hlx.txt

Me too! My Variax Acoustic 700 would be great with Helix if I could turn off its models and use IR body images as IRs in Helix. I sent in a support request to Line 6 to see if this was possible. The answer was predictably no for these discontinued products. I suggested the open source the software for discontinued products like the Variax 700 Acoustic so we can make these modifications ourselves. Let's see what happens.

What I mean is that setting a patch at 85 dB will scale up or down in volume in a live situation without changing tone too drastically. I should have said that's the level at which I finalize the patch.

HonestOpinion, you didn't say what guitar or pickup you are using. Some acoustic guitars that have Fishman pickups already have body images for that guitar in the electronics. That might be the case for your guitar, and would explain 1) why it sounds good right off the pickup and 2) why adding a second body sounds a lot worse. You wouldn't want the sound of the guitar body (say off a mic) going into another guitar body. Same with a speaker IR going into another speaker IR.

All those failed updates are likely leaving Helix in a bad state. I don't know how the updates are done, but I would guess that there is no writing to Helix memory until the whole image has been downloaded from USB since that would be the most unreliable link in the update chain. You would think there would also be some checksum at least to verify that the image was downloaded without error. But if something was causing Helix to crash while updating its internal memory, say a faulty unit or turning the power off, then this might cause Helix to be unable to boot. I'd guess Line 6 has a way of restoring such units, but there may be nothing us users can do if a unit gets in this state. So far I've had no problems updating - done it 3 times now.

You could use a iPhone or iPad with the AudioTools app and a Send block in Helix to add metering and wave form analysis anywhere in the Helix signal chain. That wouldn't provide metering for compressors though that would show how many db of compression you're getting.

I bought this amp when I was a Freshman in college, 1968 I think. Earlier this yer I dug it out of the attic and tried to use my POD HD500X to create a digital pedal board into this amp. It sounded awful and I quickly gave up. There were a few problems in the amp - needed new power tubes, the filter capacitors in the power supply needed to be replaced, and the pots needed cleaning. But the worst problem was the Fender CTS 137 speakers in an old 2x12 Bassman cabinet. These speakers just don't sound good, too much bass, flabby sounding, no articulation and an odd color. I got them out of an old Fender Pro that I replace with Celestion Greenbacks. Well, I had the parts ordered to fix this amp a couple of years ago, thinking it would be a labor of love, and bring it back to life. I did the repairs, and replace the CTS 137 speakers with Celestion G12-65s. Now that old amp was sounding pretty good. So I created a traditional front-of-the-amp pedalboard in Helix including: Fassel Wah Deluxe Comp Compressor Low and High Cut EQ to use a high-pass filter to reduce bass into the gain/drive stages Vermin Dist - for Drive: just the edge of distortion as that Showman is super clean. Vermin Dist cleans up well with Drive about 1.9, Filter at 8.0 and Level at 8.3. Turn it on and the amp just starts to get gritty and cleans up nicely by rolling back the guitar volume control Valve Driver - for Overdrive: gives a bit more control on the bass and treble cut for a somewhat more overdrive sound Compulsive Drive - for Distortion: this is a very smooth, musical distortion. I'm really glad Line 6 included this model Script Mod Phase Ubiquitous Vibe Gray Flanger 60s Bias Trem Chorus - sounds great, even in mono Simple Delay - slap-back 125 milliseconds, no repeats Transistor Tape - for 500 millisecond delay '63 Spring 145 Rotary Looper This setup sounds fantastic and has breathed new live into a old amp that means a lot to me. Helix makes a great pedalboard.