DunedinDragon

I think it's very normal for first timers on one of these more advanced modelers. The truth is, you only need as much as is required and nothing more. Probably 80% of my patches contain nothing more than an amp, cab, reverb/delay, possibly some modulation, and some type of boost/distortion pedal all contained in a single path. The fact is, you can make your signal path so exotic that you lose the beautiful rich natural sound of the guitar and amp and your playing. I suggest you start them off as simple as possible. If there's really something that's missing after that, then and only then go further.

Don't worry. We've all been through it with our previous systems. I left behind almost 90 patches on my HD500X and have been in the process of rebuilding them. The good news is there's MASSIVELY less tweaking necessary to get the sound you want, so creating the patches is a fraction of what it was on previous systems.

http://line6.com/data/6/0a06439c975d5787c3e351aa0/application/pdf/Helix%202.0%20Owners%20Manual%20-%20Rev%20D%20-%20English%20.pdf

I use the pitch shifter quite often on finger picked songs or ballads. It gives it that fatness almost like a 12 string, but more constant without the fluctuation of a chorus effect. In a way it's similar to what happens on a piano with multiple strings struck by the hammer. I suppose if you broadened the shift you would almost approach a honky-tonk detuning effect.

With the wings pulled full out the Helix fits, tight, but it fits. I've had mine for quite a long time though. I wonder if they changed the dimensions.

I think all you need to do is adjust the delay time to 800 ms and the reduce the repeats to the level that you only get two of them. That would place the second (and final repeat) at 1600ms. It might actually be easier to time this using the tempo feature and set the delay time to the appropriate note (1/4, 1/2, or full note).

Yeah. Pretty much. I've seen him twice. Both times he had the Lab.

For his sound I use my Gretsch hollowbody through the Roland Jazz Chorus with a Blue Bell cabinet, ribbon mic about 3 inches out. EQ to taste.

I use the same approach on the Helix that I used on the HD500, which is based on live use. When I build a patch, I set my Helix master volume knob at 50% hooked up to my Yamaha DXR12 with it's volume also set at 50%. I use a target level of 80db on all of my patches with leads going up to 82 or 83db measured by a sound meter. This leaves me plenty of headroom for adjustment depending on the size of the stage we play on. Even on the largest stage I've never exceeded 60% in order to have ample stage volume. In my case for live performances I plug the 1/4 out into a DI box and send a 1/4" line to my DXR12, and an XLR out (which would be line level) to the board. I do this because some of our mic's require phantom power and not all boards have the ability to limit which channels to exclude from phantom power. The board gain stages my output to the level it needs and I've never had any problems with either noise, and certainly not with signal clipping because I've built in more than enough headroom. The advantage to this setup is that once the board gain stages one patch, that same gain level will be good for all patches.

We could speculate on this endlessly, but it does appear to me that IR's seem to be more of a "brute force" way of doing a transformation because the .WAV structure seems to be maintained when it's in use. I suspect since we're talking about using less DSP (processing) it's a matter of reducing (or precompiling) the .WAV results into a set of discreet representative points that can be used as arguments for rapid convolution transformations via the Sharc DSP..probably the same with the mic and distance. It's fun to speculate, but it's clear they're using a different and proprietary way of handling it in order to provide greater functionality with reduced DSP usage which suggests they have a proprietary way of capturing the raw data both for the cabinet and the mic.

I would think they would need to collect the raw data directly in order to do the convolution of the effect of the mic at different distances.

I can't say that the HX cabs have gotten any better as of 2.01, but I can say undoubtedly I've gotten MUCH more proficient at expoiting them...so that may be what you're hearing.

Clean: Hiwatt and Vox AC15/30, sometimes Soldano. Mid: Hiwatt, Vox, Fender Deluxe, and increasingly Matchless. High: Marshall, Peavey...Sometimes Dual Vox AC-30 (Brian May)

That's the great thing about these forums, always good for a nice little chuckle now and again... If it really bothers you, use what I used for the first 20 years of my career. Always works, always in tune.....

Agreed. There's an old adage in the business world that excellence comes from "sticking to your knitting". The Helix is designed to be a top of the line modeler. Once you begin to add in features that don't fit that category the Helix loses it's focus and becomes a jack of all trades. From a technical standpoint every frivolous feature added takes away from processing that could be useful for creating better effects or amp models...which is at the core of what most of us bought the Helix for.

What operating system is it running? There's no support for Android.

For me it's just a matter of having it where it's easier to work with it when I'm dialing in patches, saving them, recalling them...etc. When I'm rehearsing or playing with the band it's on the floor. But dialing things in is easier when it's up where I can deal with it because I really don't like using the editor for such things. It also comes in handy when I want to roll it over to hook into my other computer that houses the DAW.

I guess this all depends on how big L6 wants to make the editor. It could easily become some bloated piece of software that takes more time to load and interact with the hardware than it's worth. For me it's pretty close to that now. Just seeing how long it takes for an adjustment I make on the Helix to be reflected accurately in the editor makes me think there may not be a whole lot more room for additional features without slowing down that interaction even further. That's pretty much why I do everything on the Helix itself and use the editor just to manage backups and such. Well, that and the fact that I have no intention of needing to use the editor at a live performance in order to tweak something on a patch....

There are some days I'll leave it on for 4 or 5 hours because I'm working on things around the house and intermittently coming back to the Helix to work on patches or playing around. Just trying to avoid the long power up cycle.

Does it occur to anyone else how much whining goes on here? For the last several months we endured whining about the inaccuracy of the Helix tuner. Now we endure whining about it being too accurate. I'm thinking the best feature Line 6 could add would be a test for bi-polar syndrome as a qualification before adding things to IdeaScale.

You do realize this would mean buying a new, updated hardware version of the Helix, right??? Another $1500 for another footswitch?

Yes...use the potentiometer on the Helix unit itself and it will reflect accurately in the software.

This is what I use for my Helix at home. It expands just large enough to fit the Helix in snuggly. They're available at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/On-Stage-MIX400-Mixer-Stand/dp/B000RXN6XI/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1470164420&sr=8-3&keywords=rolling+mixer+stand

Oh, it's undoubtedly a bug. Checking visuals on various screens and resolutions has been a staple requirement of any Windows or Mac test plan for almost 20 years. Someone dropped the ball big time on this one. Fortunately I'm not really affected since I only use the editor for doing backups, but it truly affects my perception of the quality level of testing being done at Line 6.

Yep...this is definately a MAJOR oops. It does the same thing on my Windows laptop/tablet. Given the popularity of these smaller tablet pc's this is something that should have been caught in testing/QA. Shame on you guys!!! A really novice bug....