DunedinDragon

I don't worry too much about different amp models. What's in the Helix right now is more than enough to accommodate whatever tones I'm looking for. Everything else is just icing on the cake. Remember, it's not about the amps or effects, it's about your craftsmanship and creativity in constructing signal chains.

65 here and still gigging and having an absolute blast with my Helix. All I can tell you is watch a lot of videos of how people have used the facilities of the Helix to construct patches. It's probably the best way to get a handle on things. The good thing is, at this age, the kids are grown and moved out, no wife to accommodate (if you're lucky), live in my own house with my dog (who doesn't mind if I'm playing) so I can play with the Helix day and night and never bother anyone!!!

I don't have a smallish set of presets, but I do tend to use certain "go to" models and configurations for the sounds you're looking for. Here's some ideas for you. Clean - Jazz Rivet, Solo Lead (clean), Archetype (clean) Dirty - Litigator, Matchstick, Tweed Blues Rauchy - HiWatt with Minotaur, A-30 Fawn Distorted - Brit P-75 Saturated - Panama, Archetype Generally speaking I use compressors particularly on the Clean, Dirty, and Rauchy styles. La Studio is my favorite as it's very subtle and controllable but the red squeeze is great for a more "in your face" type of compression. All generally placed at the beginning of the signal chain, but can be useful sometimes after the amp and cab.

I always get great results placing it after the amp and cab just prior to the final reverb/delay effects. This gives me a well articulated and very believable dual guitar harmony effect which I use on a number of different patches.

I think you guys are overlooking a wide range of factors that go into what constitutes the sound of a given cabinet. It's not just the speaker, it's also the design of the cabinet, the way the cabinet is constructed, the materials used in the cabinet. And although early reflections can be a factor in terms of mic placement, there are also off-axis and distance differences in tone that are part of what you're hearing and vary from speaker to speaker. The real question in all of this is, is it really worth it? Ultimately whatever sound you produce on stage is simply going to be projected to the audience via the FRFR speakers of the PA...the same as it is today whether it's a mic'd cabinet or a modeler with IRs. As I said earlier, this amp in the room thing is really only a benefit the the guy on stage. The audience won't hear it, won't notice, nor will they care. In fact in all likelihood they've never heard it. It's not present in any recorded material, or in any live concert they've listened to. How big is the market for people that would want such a thing? They can get pretty darn close with one of the many FRFR cabinets available on the market.

That really depends on the version of the Helix driver you have on the Mac. The safest thing to do is to install the driver to be sure you have the latest version.

It will ALWAYS be a FW update. How else would you fix it? There's no such thing as a "hotfix", nor is it a very good idea to have such a thing. There's one FW update process. It may be a minor FW update such as a 2.21, but it will still go through the same install process (I assume). I can understand how the volume knob issue may have been undiscovered until very late in the process, and they wanted to fulfill the promise of delivering the FW update in March. The Auto-Swell is a mystery though. It doesn't appear to be a bug but rather the way it was designed...and that's bothersome. To be honest I continue to be concerned about Line 6's QA process. That's the reason I seldom upgrade anything when if first comes out. They seem to be building something of a bad reputation in this regard. I realize they get a HUGE amount of pressure from the installed base to get these FW updates out, but maybe we (the users) might want to be a bit more patient...and they need to be a bit more diligent and both of us will benefit. Quite frankly, even it it is a minor FW update I would rather be patient and allow them the time to get it right rather than send out a FW update that fixes these issues but introduces some other bug. Even though it's a minor update they still need to go through the entire process of functional and system testing to ensure it's solid. I'll wait for that to happen.

That's the difference between a computer and a real-time device. No hard drive. Memory is pure linear memory so no fancy caching to simulate more memory than what's there. That being said, I'm still one of those superstitious types that can't help go through my sequence of shutting off power. At least if I forget to go through my sequence, I won't get all panic stricken.

No downtime or issues in the 16 months I've owned mine. Not even when I was upgrading software. But that's because I can follow instructions.... ;)

Because I'm not Tim the Toolman Taylor and I don't need a 500hp lawnmower.... I've got plenty of capability to do what I need to do. So far I haven't been hampered by the limits of two DSP chips. No matter how much you spend on equipment it won't improve your guitar playing ability.

^^^^^ This ^^^^^^^ You can bet if I was going to be doing a big arena tour I'd make sure I had a Helix LT sitting there with all the presets loaded, ready to fill in at a moment's notice. But if I was doing a big arena tour, I woudn't think have to think twice about the money that might cost me.

Modeling is about simulating the behavioral characteristics of actual amps, cabinets, mics and effects. What you would likely achieve would be close to the same effect as plugging the acoustic into an actual guitar amp and turning up the drive to get an overdriven sound. The result of the sound would be dependent to some degree on the type of pickup being used on the acoustic (piezo or electro-magnetic).

If this were a common occurrence with a Helix there'd be quite a number of discussions going on about it. It's possible it's a manufacturing flaw in that particular unit which will happen whether it's a Helix or a Kemper. Until Line 6 is able to examine it, it's hard to say. But it doesn't appear to be a commonplace occurrence.

I think it might be passable in the context of a full band, but I think some of the characteristics of a solid body limit the amount of depth the sound has. It makes me wonder how it might sound with a hollow body electric.

I can put it this way, the Helix has the potential to sound better, but in practice it doesn't always. The price of the Helix is representative of the amount of features and capabilities that are offered and the dual DSP chips which allow for much more processing intensive tasks. The issue is that many of the effects in the Helix at this point were simply ported over from the HD series. Over time this will change and has been changing. Most of what Line 6 has been investing in with the Helix tends to be more toward the amp modeling and cabinet features. There have been some improvements and additions to the effects, but the core of Helix is really all about top end modeling. The good news with the Helix is it has a very flexible architecture for incorporating external effects pretty much anywhere in the signal chain. That's why many Helix users opt to use outboard effects. This is more true of the Helix than the Helix LT by the way. I'm not trying to discourage you from going to the Helix, but I would rather you go there with your eyes wide open. The real value of the Helix is if you think at some point you want to incorporate the modeling capabilities into your stage rig because that's really where all the advanced and flexible design characteristics come into play. And that's by and large what the Helix users tends to ask for. That's also why I cringe when someone refers to the Helix as a Multi-effects unit. It for sure isn't that.....

If you're just looking for effects I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time looking at the more advanced units like Helix because it doesn't appear you have much of a need for the modeling aspects which is really at the core of what these units are used for. I have a hard time even thinking of them as a multi-effects unit given where most of the development time is being spent. The Firehawk FX may be a lot closer to what you need since it's really marketed as a multi-effects unit. It also has some modeling components, but It's clearly targeted toward the effects market.

I'm assuming the Helix was set up to use the proper current/voltage in Ireland, or there was a transformer that changed the current/voltage to what the Helix expects???

My take on all of this is that certain groups have a very hard time moving on toward something different than what they've always known. Change is hard, but as Frank Zappa said, "change isn't just inevitable, it's necessary". Guitar players and drummers seem to be that the top of the list for such things...drummers probably even moreso than guitar players. And there may be some truth to the idea of a tactile visceral thing going on in both cases. I can't say I've ever experienced it, and maybe that's why i've never been put off by actually seeking a more "studio" sound than "amp" sound in live gigs. What drives and excites me is achieving a really well articulated, precision sound in a live environment...one that competes pretty effectively with a polished studio sound. But I do agree that's a pretty scary leap for some people which makes it hard for them to embrace it. I do think we're just at the beginning of performers at the upper end of entertainment echelon making that transition, which will probably help alleviate the fear of it from people in the trenches. It's interesting to me to note how many of the drum kits used in big name bands are really driven by triggers through sampling machines nowdays, and we're even seeing the beginnings of this same type of transition with some bigger name bands and guitar players. In those cases they've pretty much had to do it in order to have a competitive sound with the bands that have embraced it...and in the end that may have been what Uncle Frank was referring to as being necessary.

My, my...how soon we forget overdriven Hammond B3's as a staple of music in the late 60's and 70's..... ;) But they still get it, just digitally through FRFR's nowdays..

A recording isn't designed to reproduce the amp-in-the-room sound either. In fact, other than standing near a live guitar amp you won't ever hear the amp-in-the-room sound and likely never will. It's just something you get used to when you play through an amp and take it for granted. That's why it's really only a special sound to the guitar player. Chances are much greater that what comes out of a Helix into a typical FRFR speaker is exactly what your audience is more used to hearing in their headphones or stereos or even in concerts. The oddity in all of this is that keyboard players don't seem to care so much about it. They're perfectly fine with a studio based sound rather than a stage based sound. But then they've had many more years working with modeled and sampled sounds than have guitar players, so they've just adapted. We seem to be about the last ones to the party (other than drummers of course). For a lot of us it's not a big deal, particularly if we're used to working in recording studios. For some it's just something they can't live without when they play. Fortunately the Helix provides ways of addressing it by going through a regular amp and cab if that's what you really want.

This is a great metaphor for the difference between PA style FRFR speakers and cabinet based speakers. First, that thump in your chest feel at concerts isn't coming from the stage. It's coming from the FRFR speakers at the FOH. The stage sound from the amps and cabinets on stage likely barely reaches the first row in the concert. The thump in your chest at a concert typically comes from the high volume and, of course, the massive sub woofers. As for the flashlight and lantern the analogy works because they are designed to do the exact same things as speakers versus cabinets. A lantern is designed to throw light in all direction as is a cabinet. It's not really designed to throw light a long distance in one direction, like a flashlight or a PA style speaker. The analogy falls apart a bit when talking about the specific characteristics of cabinets and speakers in that cabinets radiate in all directions, but mostly forward unless it's an open back cabinet. By all directions I mean forward, but evenly both vertical and horizontal. The reason this doesn't work so well for PA's is because sound energy gets wasted going into the ceiling and floors. Speakers conserve this energy by having a very wide horizontal beam, but a relatively narrow vertical beam. This is the concept behind line array systems. The reason those speakers form something of a semi-circle when mounted at a concert is because the top most speaker focuses it's sound energy toward the back of the concert hall, and the lower most focus their sound energy progressively toward the front of the audience which allows a more even distribution across the entire audience. The other artifact of speakers versus cabinets that's different is that the sound tends to disperse frequency ranges differently at different angles (off axis) from the center a cabinet, whereas PA speakers are designed to have an even distribution of frequency ranges at off-axis angles from the speakers. This is why your cabinet sounds different if you stand off to the side rather than straight in front of it. It's possible that some FRFR cabinets incorporate these types of compensations, but I can't say for sure whether they do or not.

No, not what I mean at all. I normalize the volume of all my patches at home. When I get to the gig during sound check and gain staging we set our stage mix volumes to blend correctly all the instruments and voices, and that's when I use the master volume to set the appropriate level for that stage to get the right stage blend before we do a final gain staging for the FOH at the mixer. That's when I don't want it stairstepping become sometimes those can be very minor corrections.

Well, that pretty much settles it...no upgrade for me. I'll wait until the next one, or the one after that until this gets fixed. At first it didn't sound too bad from the release notes. But like you I manage my volume with the master volume control, and that's an extremely important part of getting my patches normalized to the same volume. I just assumed the stepping was an artifact only when playing, but apparently it's a bug in the master volume adjustment...period. There is no smooth transition of volume from what you're saying. I guess the most disappointing aspect of this is how they would think this is an "okay" bug to go ahead and release the FW upgrade. It's starting to become a trend. I always hold off on upgrades to ensure there's not some major problem. So far I didn't bother with 2.11 and at this point I won't be bothering with 2.20 either. There's just simply not enough value in the upgrade to accept the penalty of having to deal with this bug. Not a very good way to impress your customers Line 6!!!! Your FW upgrades are appearing to be about as solid as Jell-o.....

You might experiment with combining IRs. I know OwnHammer in particular provides IR's that capture both the front and rear of open back cabinets. You can combine those in parallel paths and adjust the level of split between the two to maybe get close to what you're wanting. I suspect, however, that what your ears are tuning into are the reflections from around the room which are reaching your ears at slightly different times. There may be a good formula someone has found to get this effect, but I've never really tried.

I would second the idea that you'll probably come closer to what you want with the compressor at the beginning the the signal chain. No matter what you do it's going to be a bit tricky because you'll need to gain stage the compressor pretty carefully so that it really doesn't compress very much and leaves a bit of uncompressed signal when you turn up the volume on the guitar. The only one that I would trust for this would be the LA compressor as it tends to have a better set of controls for managing such things.