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This is what I used: Warmoth Specifications Style: Stratocaster® Construction: Modern Construction Orientation: Right Handed Neck Wood: Quartersawn Maple Fingerboard Wood: Ebony (Black) Nut Width: 1-11/16" Back Shape: Standard thin Fret Size: SS6105 (Stainless) Tuner Ream: Gotoh/Grover (13/32" 11/32") Radius: 10-16" Compound Scale: 25-1/2" Fret #: 22 Mounting Holes: No Mounting Holes Pre-Cut Installed String Nut: GraphTech White TUSQ XL - Standard Nut Inlays: Mother Of Pearl Dots Side Dots: White Side Dots Finish: Vint Tint Satin Nitro But I have relatively small hands and like a pretty flat fingerboard. You might have other preferences. I should have used larger frets.

Make sure you didn’t save the patch with the volume turned down.

That only works in FRFR mode when the tweeter is on.

When using Logic, or any DAW with Helix, you have to be aware of how you are monitoring the result. If you are using Helix as your audio interface, and your headphones are plugged into Helix, then you are like using Helix out 1/2 as the audio output device in Logic. You are probably also using Helix as a direct monitor - the output block in Helix is also going directly to the headphone output. If Logic is also doing input monitoring, either because you have turned input monitoring on, or are using auto input monitoring on record enable, you'll be hearing Helix twice with the latency delay in your headphones. This won't sound good. Either use direct monitoring or software monitoring, but never both.

You can use the old variax power supply with at TRS cable.

Somewhat off topic, but this post made me think of it. Logic Pro X recently released an update that includes support for Live Loops. These are cells of audio or MIDI that represent incremental pieces of sound that can be organized vertically in tracks called scenes, and horizontally on a timeline. Each cell is played in a loop. They're called live loops because you can click on cells or scenes to turn them on or off, and select what cell or scene will play next when the current scene finishes. This sound a lot like a multi-loop looper. So I thought I'd see if I could create a Logic Pro X project that supported a 5x5 live performance looper - 5 separate looper tracks by 5 different scenes. The separate tracks are useful for blending and panning the different looper parts instead of fixed overlays. The separate scenes could be used for different parts of a song: Intro, Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Outro. I used my old Apogee GiO as the MIDI controller and Helix direct into each track. The lower 5 effect buttons on the GiO were used to select the scenes, and the upper buttons used for controlling recording, playback, clear and undo. The GiO next and previous buttons were used to select the track. Well, this worked great except for one insurmountable issue. Logic expects every project to have a key and time signature. And as far as I can tell, there's no way to have a Live Loops cell have an arbitrary length, it has to be a number of measures. This makes sense for Live Loops that are pre-recorded and played in a sequence selected live or to record into the timeline. But it would mean that each scene would have to be planned for each song with the proper tempo and loop lengths. That's not really the way to do live looping. Maybe If I set the time signature 1/4 with a really fast tempo, I could make it seem to support arbitrary loop lengths. What I need to happen is for loop recording to start when I press the record button, and stop immediately, setting the loop length when I press the record button again.

What's in your HX Stomp signal path? Are you using a cab model or IR?

This is something I never thought I would do, mostly because of the hype around the Klon over the TubeScreamer. But what works in some situations doesn't work as well in others, and you have to judge tone with your ears, not your eyes. I mostly play single-coil pickups - Strat Deluxe, Tele, and Variax JTV-69S. I just like the character and brightness of these pickups. I also have a '67 Les Paul with Tom Holmes pickups and a very nice black Epiphone Sheraton Pro II. What I found is that its important to match the distortion blocks with the guitar and amp. A typical single coil pickup is going to be a bit scooped in the mids, giving it that bright and deep tone that sounds so good by itself. If you pair single coil pickups with a Fender style amp, it's even more scooped. I typically use Derailed Ingrid or Litigator both of which are Fender style amps. I think Fender might have done this because it made the guitar and amp sound really good by itself in the showroom, helping sales. But in a mix, all that scooping can make the guitar get a little lost. The Klon is high headroom, low gain, hard clipper with some mid boost at 1kHz, but not a lot. Contrast with the TubeScreamer which is lower headroom, higher gain, soft clipper with a lot of mid boost at around 720Hz. When I compared them using the JTV-69s into Derailed Ingrid, I found the Scream808 just sounded better. I think it's because that guitar and amp needs that slightly lower frequency, slightly higher mid boost, higher gain and since the pickups are already pretty bright, the soft clipper's more even order harmonics seemed to fit better with the guitar. So maybe the magic with the Klon/Minotaur happens with double coil humbucker pickups into Marshall style amps. This combination is already pretty dark with a fair amount of mid focus and high output. So the Klon's lower gain, slightly higher frequency mid boost, slightly lower mid hump and hard clipper producing more odd order harmonics works better to brighten things up a little. I also swapped out the Compulsive Drive (OCD) with the Dhyana Drive (Zendrive) for higher gain sounds. I felt like this was a better fit with my guitar and amp choices, and was a bit more controllable. I'm pretty happy with the result. It seemed to enforce the fact that different distortion pedals work better with different guitar and amp combinations. So don't pick the "best" distortion block, pick the one that works best with your guitar, amp and musical style.

Many of the amp models in Helix can produce a wide range of similar sounds. There's a lot of overlap in the tones, especially when using the amp pretty clean as a pedal platform. Choice of guitar/pickups and cab model or IR choice will often have greater impact on tone. Where the amps tend be more unique is in how the distort, how much gain they have, whether the distortion is preamp or power amp, position of the tone controls in the signal chain (before or after distortion), etc. If you're looking for tone, a good place to start is with musicians you like that have a tone you like. Do some research to see what amp and pedal platforms they use and try to reproduce them in Helix. Then find a good recording with the tone you like and use it as a reference to reproduce the tone, or refine your own. I model my tone based on Matt Schofield's using this technique.

The mic level might be pretty low because the input for the return is either instrument or line, and you don't want to have to use a gain block because of the 6 block limit. You might need to use a small external mixer instead of a mic transformer.

I have, I still don't think they sound or feel like the real thing. But every guitar is different, and they do sound pretty good. I do wish I could address that sustain problem.

Hard to tell. We don't know exactly what model Bassman Line6 modeled, what channel they used (probably Normal not Bass for guitar), or if it had a bright switch and whether it was modeled on or off. It was not uncommon for Bassman Normal channel to have a bright switch across the volume control. A quick google search of Bassman schematics shows that most did. This was very typical of Fender amp designs, and most schematics I've seen of amps that didn't have bright switches had the bypass cap hard wired. Fender liked pretty scooped amps and that bright switch is a key part of Fender clean tone. Made them sell. Update: looking at the model name "Tweed Blues Brt" it's probably got the bright switch on.

Depending on the model, the Drive control(s) could impact amp tone if they have bypass caps or bright switches. These bypass caps boost highs when the control is turned down low, but have less boost as the control is turned up. Past about 1/2 way, the bypass cap doesn't do anything. This is nice because it gives a nice sparkle when the drive control is turned down and the amp is clean. But as the drive control is turned up and distortion is introduced, the high boost is removed, avoiding ice-pick. Not all amps models do this. Litigator is one that I'm pretty sure does. S-Gear has a High-Cut control in the power amp section that does the opposite. As the power amp is pushed harder and distorts, there is more high cut. When the power amp is clean, there's no high cut. This is great way of dynamically controlling brightness between clean and distorted tones and adds a nice warming feel to the way the amp responds.

Not a bad idea, and should work. QSC makes nice powered subs. But maybe Powercab isn't the best choice for bass?

Cab blocks are essentially IR blocks with some additional processing for mic placement, room sound, and efficient processing. If you use separate amp and cab blocks, you can use a dual cab block to have stereo without using parallel paths. There are (currently) no stereo IR blocks.

You can also use an aggregate audio device to use them both at the same time for recording. See Audio MIDI Setup app.

Overdrives by definition aren't linear - they achieve their tone by using non-linear clipping to add overtones. But there are different kinds of distortion: low gain/high gain, low headroom/high headroom, hard/soft clipping, symmetric/asymmetric, mid-boost/no mid-boost, device used to create the clipping (tube, diode, MSOFET, LED), silicon/germanium, etc. All these things have a significant impact on tone. is a good reference.

My standard setup is HX Effects in Helix effect loop 1. I run it mono and use it primarily for front of the amp effects. I do this not only to offload DSP in Helix, but more to have the extra switches. I like to use "stomp mode", not "snapshot mode" or "preset mode". Stomp mode is like a typical pedalboard with effects before and after the amp. You can control what's on or off in any combination, and control up to 8 parameters on each footswitch. This makes a very flexible setup that can work with almost any song. Its especially useful if you mostly use your own tone. Snapshot mode is useful if you have to change a lot of things at once in a song. I use a few snapshots in my normal patch, mostly to switch to open tunings or acoustic guitar (I use a Variax most of the time). Snapshot mode has the advantage that it can change a lot of things in very specific ways with one switch. Stomp mode has the advantage that you can easily mix and match combinations of things as needed. Preset mode is useful if the song requires a very different setup or an effect or combination of effects that wouldn't be on you "normal pedalboard". Preset mode has the advantage that you can load different blocks with a different signal chain. Using HX Effects with Helix provides lots more options because of the extra footswitches.

I was just looking at the guitars hanging on my wall. They include a modified JTV-69s (new neck, new pickups), a ‘67 Les Paul, a very nice Tele, a ‘92 Strat Deluxe with the same pickups as the JTI-69S, Amalfitano SVL Daytona and a very nice black Epiphone Sheraton-II Pro. With all those guitars, the one I pickup the most is the JTV-69s, and (until recently) was the one that got the most gig time, by far. So I thought about the reasons: The neck I added with stainless steel frets is the best fo the bunch, with the Strat Deluxe a close 2nd with the same frets Those SVL Dyatona pickups are pretty nice its the lightest of the bunch I use the models a lot, even gigging There’s no noise with the VDI cable The models don’t sound nearly as good as the real thing, but they’re a lot closer than a guitar you don’t have in a mix or live gig. The only issue I have is that the JTV-69s doesn’t have the sustain of the other guitars. In fact, I find the sustain through the VDI cable isn’t is good as through the 1/4” direct cable for the magnetic pickups. The A2D conversion In the guitar seems to loose a little while eliminating the noise. So anyway, I think its interesting that of all those guitars, the Variax is the one that tends to get the most use, but isn’t the one that gets the most appeal.

In my somewhat limited experience, coaxial speakers that have the tweeter in front of the cone, vs. those that have the horn driver screwed into the back of the speaker magnet have very different dispersion characteristics. In the case where the driver is screwed on the back of the speaker magnet, you can have a much larger driver that can handle wider frequencies and more power. That’s a good option for musical instrument applications. But the driver is loaded first by the depth of the voice coil, a small cylinder, and then by the round speaker cone. The impact on dispersion depends on the depth and width of the voice coil and the wavelength of the frequencies the driver is responsible for delivering. I find the dispersion of Powercab, to be quite different than a PA speaker horn because the PA horn doesn’t have the voice coil cylinder, and often isn’t round, dispersing more horizontally than vertically. But it would be nice if Line6 published the dispersion characteristics of Powercab, like most PA and and high end HI-Fi speakers to. Otherwise we’re mostly guessing by ear.

Unless you're using an acoustic guitar, yes. A significant part of an electric guitar tone comes from the pickups and the speaker. It's the things that touch the air that have the biggest impact on tone.

Ok, now let's throw Powercab into the mix (no pun intended). Powercab is a key part of the Line6 ecosystem, and how it fits into this discussion may be why. Powercab has a number of options for getting amp in the room tone that might be better than Helix through a traditional FRFR like a PA speaker or monitor. The first option is Flat, LF Raw. This like a guitar cabinet in the room because that's exactly what it is. LF Raw is just the Powercab speaker, no tweeter, no mic model, no processing of any kind. And that speaker is a guitar speaker. Powercab speaker model takes this a step further by using EQ profiles to tailor the LF Flat equalized mode to model different speakers, but still no mic model. I don't know the details of how this is done, but I suspect LF Flat is an EQ applied to the actual speaker used in Powercab to establish a normalized platform for adding the EQ for the different speaker models. That way Powercab could eventually use a different speaker, change the LF Flat EQ, and all the EQ profiles for the other speaker models would work without change. So LF Raw and Speaker modes using Powercab as a traditional backline is going to sound and feel a lot like a regular guitar amp. That's because it mostly is. The speaker is going to behave, and have the same dispersion characteristics as any other 1x12 or 2x12 ported guitar cabinet. But Powercab in User IR mode, or in Flat FRFR mode with IRs or cab models in Helix, is still going to sound more like an amp in the room, and behave more like a traditional guitar amp backline than a PA speaker. The reason is the use of coaxial speakers. The coaxial speaker in Powercab is a guitar speaker with a hole in the middle of the magnet. A tweeter horn driver is screwed into this hole to cover the high frequencies which some out through the center of the woofer. The reason this is going to feel and sound more like a guitar amp is because of the dispersion characteristics of a coaxial speaker. Because the high frequencies are coming through a hole in the middle of the speaker, they will be more focused and direct than a typical horn loaded configuration designed to increase dispersion. So the off-axis taming of FRFR high end will still happen somewhat naturally with Powercab, even in FRFR mode. In this case, a challenging characteristic of coaxial speakers is actually helpful! So a Powercab might be a nice way to deal with overly bright FRFR tones that don't feel like amp in the room, because they're not.

I you need to turn off direct monitoring for HX Stomp into an app like JamKazam, you have to pull the last block in the signal chain to path B, set the split node to 100% B so nothing goes out the main output. Then choose USB 3/4 in your app instead of USB 1/2. This is because you can't change the output of path A.

I might be the one who proposed this a while back. Basically a mic’d guitar amp will sound just like putting your ear up to that cone, not a pleasant experience. But it gets something the mix or live sound engineer can work with. It easier to cut too much highs then it is to create them if they’re not there. A typical FRFR will have a lot wider dispersion than a guitar speaker which tends to put the highs out into a very narrow cylinder. That’s why a FRFR doesn’t sound like a guitar amp in the room - because it isn’t. So we adjust to account for the fact that the brightness picked up by the mic used to create the IR is heard over a wider area.

On MacOS 10.15.5, Helix Native 1.93 causes Logic Pro X 10.5.1, Reaper 6.12c and JamKazam to periodically crash if the project contains Helix Native as a plugin. This doesn't always happen. And when it does, you can retry a few times and Logic Pro X will finally come up and the Helix Native plugin seems to work fine. In Reaper and JamKazam, the plug UI comes up and works ok, unless you load certain patches - then it crashes. I've been using Helix Native in Logic Pro X for a long time without any problem. I'd guess the issue was the Logic 10.5.1 update if it weren't for the Reaper and JamKazam crashing too. I have tried a clean re-install, tried updating all the patches to select different IRs. But still crashes. It looks to be sensitive's to the patch, maybe patches that have an IR that was purchased from Line6 store. But its not consistent. I've created a support ticket. Just wondered if anyone else has seen this.