DunedinDragon

Here's the first thing to understand about modeling at this level. There are essentially two popular ways to use the Helix. One is similar to what you're doing which is to focus on getting what's referred to as an "amp in the room" sound. This is usually achieved by running the Helix through an existing amp. This gives you the big sound of an amp with the downside that the signal you then send to the mixing board will not be the same as what you're hearing on stage. If you don't normally send your instruments through a PA, then there's no problem. If you do you will either have to mic your amp (which changes the sound to the PA because of the mic and it's placement on the amp) or develop a second signal chain that sends a fully formed modeled signal direct to the PA separate from the one you send to the amp on stage. That, of course, can be somewhat hit-or-miss. In lieu of that many of us opt to leave traditional amps behind and use Full Range Flat Response (FRFR) speakers such as an Alto TS210 or Yamaha DXR10 or any number of others that respond in the same way as a PA speaker does, because they are, in essence, PA speakers. This allows us to completely form the output we want and send it both to our on stage monitor as well as a direct line of that same patch to the PA. What we hear on stage will be what the audience hears through the PA. The downside to that is that it will not be what you would typically refer to as an "amp in the room" sound. Instead it's more like the studio reference speakers in the control room of a recording studio. Bear in mind, this is more important to you than it is to your audience. You're audience rarely gets the effect of the "amp in the room" unless they're in a small room with your amp. But it is important to some guitar players who want that sound. Your audience is already used to hearing the production quality sound of the guitar because that's what they commonly listen to on the radio or on their stereos or in every concert they've ever attended. But that amp sound and feel may be important to you to inspire you. So that's kind of the lay of the land in these parts pardner.... I should mention, however, that mastering the elements in producing a full studio production quality sound takes quite a bit more knowledge and effort than simply plugging into an amp, but for a lot of us it's worth it. I view my Helix as a full recording studio environment that I take with me to live gigs, and I approach my patches in the same manner I would were I putting together the physical elements in a recording studio. I get comments every week from my band and from the audience about my sound and how real and polished it sounds. It's taken me a while to learn how to do that effectively..and I'm still learning, but now that I've accomplished it, I could never be satisfied going back to an amp.

I've had quite of line of modelers as well over the last several years. All I know that with the Helix it's the first modeler that I can precisely get the tone I'm after in my head. It sometimes takes a bit of experimentation or occasionally trying something new, but I feel I can very precisely get exactly what I'm after. But that has taken some time to develop those skills because the depth of options is so deep. On other modelers I sometimes had to settle for things because I just didn't have the variety of built-in tools and capabilities like I have now. As far as editing, I've always favored using the built-in editor on all of my modelers. I've played around with the various editors, but once I've learned the editing functions on the unit I prefer to use them. It's just faster and easier for me...especially at rehearsal or gigs. I agree, however, that a signal level meter of some sort would be an extremely nice tool to have on the Helix. It's no great crisis for me because I've got a small 4-channel mixer which I keep my Helix plugged into at home which gives me a good view of the signal strength, so I can easily normalize the signal strength across my all of my patches for live use. I'm not sure if they did provide some kind of software based metering system that I'd use it. I prefer the instant reaction time of hardware meters. Very useful for setting up compression accurately.

I think asking for subjective opinion about tone isn't really going to help much, because the only thing that matters is the tone you specifically want to hear. And that changes with everyone. I don't see any glaring issues with the tone, but it's not really a tone I would naturally prefer. But that's simply my taste. It has nothing to do with your tone being good or bad. I just prefer thicker tones on leads, but that doesn't make it right for everyone. Ultimately it all comes down to what you've heard on stage or on a recording that you like in terms of sound. Ultimately you have to go by your preferences and your ears.

Generally speaking I use IR's instead of native cabs. I typically place them after the amp, although I have tried placing a reverb after the amp, then the IR, but it didn't do anything special for me, so I've ditched that approach. Basically I keep like to keep my compressor, overdrives, and modulatation effects pre-amp, and my reverbs, delays, and harmonizers after the amp and cab/IR. If I want a more subtle compression I sometimes move that after the amp and cab/IR. What seems to work best for me in most cases is compressor -> modulation -> boost/overdrive -> amp -> IR (route to second path) -> harmonizer -> parallel reverb/delay I do this in case I need the extra DSP in the path 1 for using cabs/IRs in parallel paths. Also it isolates some of the DSP intensive effects (like reverbs) in the second path.

The fix for this varies based on which amp/cab/mic you're using. Sometimes you can fix this by simply setting the low cut on the cabinet up around 130 to 150hz, but that can sometimes affect the tone you want. If that doesn't fix it you can probably address it by putting a low cut at around 120hz and use a parametric EQ block toward the end of your chain and take out a small slice of low frequency range without affecting the overall bass tone using the following parameters. Low Freq - 160 - 200 (adjust this by ear) Low Q - 1.7 Low Gain - -2 That takes out the muddiness on many amp/cab/mic configurations.

I use the editor application only at home to restore/save patches and IRs. It's not that there's anything wrong with it, it's just faster for me to work on the Helix itself. I've had many systems that have external PC apps and I always end up just using the native interface. Primarily that's because it makes it easier to adjust things at rehearsal and gigs because I'm familiar with all of the functions and I never have to carry a laptop or notebook with me.

Probably the Litigator and Matchless for cleaner and medium gain stuff and the Archetypes for clean and high gain are the ones I see mentioned most often.

Thanks for the heads up on this one. I was struggling with one of my patches and plugged this in and it was perfect!!!!

Actually the Behringer's aren't bad really. They don't have all the DSP equalizing type things that the upper end units have, but they're a very useable speaker. Until recently I owned a couple of 212B's and they did just fine for playing music in a smaller venue. You may have to tweak the EQ on the speaker to get what you want, but just start off flat and work from there. In your case I might place it behind me in the monitor position so you and the band can hear it well and it should project okay into the audience. If that's not sufficient put it on a vertical stand to get more projection into the audience but give yourself at least 4 feet of distance as it will likely sound pretty harsh any closer than that. Eventually you may want to step up to a more modern design, but given your circumstances there's no need to rush it.

I think the Soldano and the HiWatt are the two most underrated amps in the bunch given their versatility.

The reason there is a delay in patches and not in snapshots is because the blocks and the signal path get unloaded then re-loaded when you switch patches whereas with a snapshot (or multiple footswitch assignments) you are manipulating the blocks in a single patch. That's going to be a normal artifact of any unit that's switching patches because patches are always loaded from scratch. And yes, you are exactly right, you can assign multiple actions to a specific footswitch both on the HD500X and on the Helix. Snapshots is simply an extension of that idea with a more robust and simple implementation to simplify setup and management with a few more options. You are still ultimately limited by the DSP in any given patch. It's been a while since I used my HD500X so I'm not sure, but the Helix does allow you to do more than just turn blocks on and off with either the snapshots or assignments. You can also modify the settings of any block. I'm not sure why this would be any more convoluted to accomplish with what you need to achieve. In essence your effects loop isn't affected when you switch between snapshots because it's the same patch with all the same blocks.

There certainly are big pedalboard people out there using the Helix, but there's an awful lot of us that are pretty minimalistic when it comes to effects. Most of my patches may have maybe three or four effects and that's about it, and I play lead. So don't feel like you'll be on the outside of some party going on. The good news is you can get a lot of mileage just out of the basics on the Helix with different amps, cabs, reverbs, choruses, and tremelos. But I'd agree with others here. You sound like a Helix LT guy with a smaller FRFR speaker like a DXR10. You'd probably never outgrow that.

My concern continues to be that what I don't want is a FAT Helix...in the same way the Windows and most other full-fledged OS's have become. The Helix at this point is a pretty responsive and stable system and that's because it's not a big fat OS with lots of underlying functions. It's a simple dedicated real-time system with most of it's processing dedicated to the business at hand which is modeling components and routing signal paths, which makes it responsive and pretty darn stable. Unfortunately people have gotten used to the ease and capabilities of larger, full operating system and tend to want to incorporate those visual interface ease of use functions into the Helix due to the advanced interface Helix has which has many functional similarities to these type of systems. There's a reason why people choose dedicated real-time hardware solutions to PC or Mac based platforms that could do the same thing as Helix...and that's for the stability and responsiveness that comes from a streamlined real-time system. Especially when there is no memory or CPU upgrade path save a whole new piece of hardware. Given the hazards of a FAT Helix, I'd personally prefer to simply remember to hit my save button more often than add a bunch of code that has to be built from the ground up (since there are no underlying API layers you can depend on) and potentially introduce instability and slow responsiveness. I'm all for better functionality as it relates to what the Helix is used for...such as more robust stock cabinets, or better IR management, etc. I can't get too excited about ease of use stuff. Given the competition, Helix holds it's own quite well in that regard.

Although I've had my share of problems inadvertantly turning the joystick when I try to move it, I'm not sure there's a fix other than disabling turning that's going to work for everyone. First off, I'm sure there's a lot of people like myself that browse blocks in order to audition them as we roll through the options. Even though this changes the patch, you can always undo anything by simply a different patch then returning to the patch you're working on as long as you haven't saved anything. I suppose an UNDO operation could easily be implemented that would incorporate the same kind of action as just loading the last saved version. But I'm not sure an action like you outlined in 5) would feel natural. Just a simple UNDO operation that restores the last saved version would be the least intrusive option.

You definitely need to have the same Helix application and Updater that matches your Helix Firmware. I believe the correct device driver gets downloaded with the Helix app. They're all available in the support section going back to the first releases.

I believe the Helix uses the 44.1, but you can load any of them and the Helix downgrades it to what it can use. I normally just load 48 and let Helix do what it wants with them.

I've had this happen to me a couple of times. Each time I later found out it had to do with mistakes I'd made when setting things up, not with the Helix. In one case I had come out of the L/Mono 1/4" on the Helix but had plugged into the R input on the DXR12 rather than the L/Mono input. Another case the volume level on the DXR12 had gotten turned down. Sometimes it's just simple goofups in setting things up. However, since you just upgraded and reset your globals, I'd say to go and review all your global settings and make sure there isn't something there that you may have forgotten to change. If everything sounded good to you after the upgrade when you were practicing, it's probably not something in the Helix.

Actually, the tone shaping is what makes most of these speakers more flat than if you don't use it. In many cases these speakers have a significant bump on the low end which gets flattened out when you engage the contour shaping. Without the shaping they tend to have some big bumps at the lower ends to support bass guitars, kick drums and the low end of keyboards. The reality is no speaker is absolutely flat across the entire range. They all have some areas that slightly bump or dip at certain points. The best you can say is the term FRFR really means they have a reasonably flat profile across the entire response range. It's not like there's a performance standard for FRFR.

Okay..got my equipment unpacked and pulled up the patch. I'm old so I can't remember all the details without looking at it. The key for finding JW's sound was using a WhoWatt amp in conjunction with a Teemah for rhythm guitar, and a Scream808 for leads using an OwnHammer Gibson GA-30RV Super Goldtone combo cabinet IR using their OH2 mix of a Royer 121 and a Telefunken MD421-5 positioned about midway out on the cone of the V10 speaker (GibsV10 OH2-05). No high or low cuts on the cabinet and I'm going into a Yamaha DXR12. I'm using a Les Paul standard with burstbucker pro II pickups. Here's the basic layout of the core of the signal chain: ---> TS808 ---> Teemah ---> WhoWatt ---> OH GibsV10 OH2-05 ----> (other effects, etc.) ---------> DXR12 or FOH Scream808: (Added to Teemah when engaged for lead) Gain - 5.2 Tone - 6.5 Level - 4.7 Teemah: (Always on) Gain - 5.4 Bass Cut - 2.5 Treble Cut - 6.0 Clipping - Up Level - 4.6 WhoWatt: Drive - 3.8 Bass - 4.9 Mid - 6.8 Treble - 5.5 Presence - 3.8 Channel Vol - 8.3 Master - 6.6 Bias - 7.0 That's really about it. I add a couple of things to it such as a Twin Harmony for dual leads (ala Eagles), and echo/reverb to taste for different styles JW uses on some of his songs. I'm sure there are probably a variety of ways to get a JW sound, but the HiWatt is such a generic power amp and takes on pedals so well it was pretty easy to dial in his sound this way. It's kind of my goto amp for a lot of the crunchier styles of classic rock like The Who and Doobie Bros. I typically play with the pickup switch in the middle position even for leads, but you can get a bit more of his James Gang sound going to the bridge pickup. All volume and tone knobs are on full.

I'll have to get back to you later. My gear is all packed up right now.

I'm not sure you're getting the most out of an FRFR setup if you start chasing the sound of an amp. I think you're better off chasing the sound of a recording. For example, I really love the sound Joe Walsh gets on his records. And for a while I'd try to chase that sound after doing research on the types of amps he would use. However one day when just messing around with different combinations of amps, cabs, and mics I heard the sound I was looking for. A little tweaking with compression and EQ and it was the dead accurate sound I'd been looking for. But it wasn't on any of the amps Joe had been known to use. But it was the Joe Walsh recorded sound, that I could reproduce in a live environment. That taught me a valuable lesson about modelers and FRFR setups. It's really not about getting the sound of the amp, it's about the getting the polished, studio sound you want using the entire signal chain. Since that revelation I've gotten MUCH more productive and efficient at finding the sounds I want, and the sounds are much more professional and polished than I was ever getting before. A sound I could not likely ever get using a real amp.

I have OwnHammer, Redwirez, and Celestion. They each have their own distinctive characteristics in my opinion. OwnHammer tends to add the most coloration to the tone of all three, therefore the differences in sound tend to be more distinctive between different styles of cabinets, mic, and mic placements. Celestion tends to be the most pure. In other words, less cabinet effect, more speaker effect. But these also blend together nicely in parallel path setups and come with some interesting options for blending in room mic's for open back cabinets. Redwirez is easily the most comprehensive. Not as much cabinet coloration as OwnHammer, but enough to be useful. The value of Redwirez is the comprehensive list of mic's and mic placement options (cap, cone, cone edge off-axis as well as distance). For myself this tends to be the most useful as I'm kind of a geek in this area. Tons of options here so you really have to know what you're doing or you'll get lost in the maze of possibilities. I'm the first to admit that IRs aren't for everyone. Without a certain amount of knowledge about speaker characteristics, mic characteristics, and mice placement characteristics you can spend an awful lot of time trying to zero in on what's going to work best for any given patch. IRs work for me because I'm kind of old school in this regard having cut my teeth working in recording studio environments back in the 70's and 80's where this type of thing (cabinet, mic, mic placement) went on a lot and was a key part of capturing the right sound for the guitar on a given cut. If you can do this right it can often eliminate the need for further EQ, and it will certainly diminish it and give you a more natural sound. But you really do need to have a bit of a geeky nature and some OCD helps also to really appreciate this stuff. In my case I'm far more interested in getting the right core sound of the guitar as I tend to use fairly minimal effects, so this works for me.

I assume you're talking about the Variax connector, but I doubt that's wired the same as an ethernet connector. Especially given the fact that it's designed to provide power to a Variax guitar.

This is the situation that I was referring to earlier. I'm assuming you mean you're recording the guitar track while listening to the other tracks, correct? If that's true, what source are you monitoring on the guitar track in Reaper? Most DAWs offer the choice during recording of monitoring the recording track as it's processed by the DAW, or monitoring the raw source in the input that's being recorded. In all 4 other cases you're listening to your source guitar directly from the Helix. In the last case you're monitoring your guitar through Reaper. If you have your recording track set to monitor the recorded input you'd be hearing the playback levels of the backing track as processed by the DAW (post-fader level) but the input recording level (pre-fader level ) of the guitar.

It's really hard to determine exactly what you're saying from the description, but I'm assuming this has to do more with what source you're listening to when connected to Reaper. I've never worked with Reaper but most DAWs allow you to configure whether you want to listen to the original source before it goes into the DAW or the signal after it's been processed by the DAW. It sounds to me like this is where your problems lie. But it's hard to be sure since you're description isn't very clear about when this occurs, on recording or on playback.