DunedinDragon

I'm not shocked at all because modeling is all about digitally replicating the features and behaviors of the existing circuits in specific amps, not modifying them. Line 6 does create their own modified versions under a different name sometimes, but it's really based on the level of interest in the user community for such things. I keep a fairly close eye on IdeaScale every week and I don't think I've ever even seen a request there for the bright cap modification. It may be the end all, be all to you, but to me it's kind of irrelevant. The tools in the Helix are more than adequate to get the sound I need regardless of the style of song or the guitar I choose to play on it. That's why I don't get too excited about it. And quite frankly I could care less about what Fractal is doing. I don't own one and have no need for one. I've already got what I need.

I'm really confused!!! How is it I've had my Helix since it came out in 2015 and there has not been a single situation in the thousands of presets I've created where I had to ask this question???

Since I don't use Reaper I'm lost on his description of entering the values, but it's one of two things happening here. You may not be sending MIDI like you think you are and that really depends on the configuration of your DAW in how those things get enabled. Your best bet is to get you a MIDI monitor program that will allow you to capture the values being sent out from Reaper on you computer. There are any number of these available for free downloads, but that will at least tell you whether or not the MIDI values are being actually sent. The other problem is making sure that if they are being sent they are the correct values. Here's a link to a very complete description of the PC and CC values need to be to do MIDI operations on the Helix. It's a long read but it's worth it to understand how it all works. Helix Help MIDI

Any of those type of approaches will give you the live cabinet feel, but only the powercab would have the ability to modify the cab sound a bit more similar to what's done with the Helix cabs. The rest will all be static. However any approach using a physical cabinet will lose that "feel" once it's mic'd and sent to the mixing board. That's just physics and it applies no matter what your system consists of.

In a nutshell the "ultimate" Helix experience has a large range of what different people deem as "ultimate". Many of us that frequent these pages have had our share of different variations, but each have their limitations. But each limitation may not be that important on an individual basis. For example getting a traditional sound like you would out of a cabinet setup isn't all that important to some of us. How could that be you might ask? To put it simply, the only one that hears that particular sound are the people standing in the vacinity of that kind of setup. That can never be the actual production sound you hear in a live performance or on a professional recording because it has to be captured by a mic, which will change the sound. Add to that in a sound reinforcement practical sense no stage setup can ever compete volume-wise with a PA, and you wouldn't want it to because it messes up the overall mix the audience hears. That's why many people using modelers target creating a great production sound, the same as would be done in a studio which the Helix is perfectly capable of right out of the box and going direct to the mixing board. But what a person needs for inspiration as a stage or studio musician actually performing that music may be different, and that's where the configurations can make yet another turn using a stage setup similar to what you're describing, but purely for on stage or in studio performance. But of course that comes with the limitation that you won't be hearing the same thing as the audience will be hearing including the mix with the other instruments. The thing that's important is that modeling, by it's very nature, changes and expands on the lessons we learned from playing in a traditional setup. That's why you see so many variations in how people use their Helix.

Well start with a Les Paul Custom or you won't have the same basis for the sound. Beyond that there are plenty of various pedals that would do the kind of things he did. Compression tends to be the best friend for long sustains given enough drive on the amp model.

There's a real mixture of different approaches across spectrum of users depending on preferences, music style, places they tend to perform and many other factors. For example I personally go direct from my Helix to the mixing board and depend on our standard floor monitors (Yamaha DXR12) as does everyone in the band. I didn't start off that way however when I got my Helix originally in 2015. I used my own dedicated DXR12 in the place of a stage amp and sent a separate signal direct to the mixing board while others in the band were using traditional amps along with traditional drum kits. Over time I changed incrementally until the current band was in a state in which we could all go direct to the board which simplified our setup and gave us a much better feel for what the audience was hearing. It also easily scales from small venues to the largest of venues without a lot of changes on stage other than the volume of the monitors, and our setup and sound check time is minimal. You'll likely hear from all sorts of folks with different setups such as 4cm through a standard stage amp, to using setups like mine, setups like you're describing, or powered FRFR cabinets. A lot depends on what you and the rest of the band are doing more than anything. What drives our configuration is we're a vocal multi-harmony based band so getting a really good stage mix is crucial to getting the stage mix precise so everyone can play as well as hear the vocals clearly. But what works for us may not work for you in your situation.

I don't own a Stomp but from what I understand it's a TRS output. Generally you set the output level on the Helix Global Settings ins/outs, to either Line or Mic, but I'm not sure if it's the same on the Stomp but I suspect it is. Generally most modern mixing boards have preamps that can manage either. Some older mixing boards have setting that determine if it's expecting a Mic or Line level signal on the XLR in. Check with whoever is running the mixing board for that information.

I had something very similar to that on one of my guitars a while back. It turned out to be my pick hitting the pickup slightly.

I would suspect pre-amp volume would relate to drive and master volume would relate 1 to 1 to master volume. CH volume is purely volume or pure signal level which doesn't affect tone in any way.

My approach has been consistent from the moment I started using the Helix Floor when it first came out. I have a single bank reserved as my "show bank". Each preset represents a specific song in the order it will be played. Each of those song/presets are exported as individual files to my hard drive, so I simply import the songs in the necessary order for each show so it's a simple matter of stepping through the presets as the show progresses. Each preset consists of a combination of snapshots and/or stomps depending on what the needs are for the song. This has served me well as it minimizes the complexity of each preset such that I never have any problems running out of DSP memory or running out of available footswitches and I can individualize each presets for each song including changes between what instrument I'll be playing (different types of electric guitars, resonator dobro, banjo, acoustic guitar). The powerful aspect of this arrangement is I can "pre gain stage" each preset so that the signal level/volume is always consistent preset to preset so going through a sound check only requires checking a single song's levels on the mixing board.

No problem here.

Have you tried turning off the MIDI thru? It's been a while since I used it but for a while I was using a BeatBuddy in conjunction with my Helix Floor and I kind of remember I didn't need to use MIDI thru to get messages passed through the MIDI connection that were on a different MIDI channel from the Helix on a MIDI 5 pin daisy chain setup. That's the only thing that occurs to me. What is the configuration of your MIDI chain? Is it MC8-.> HX FX -> RC500 or MC8 -> RC500 -> HX FX?

It's not clear what you're trying to accomplish. If you go to a second amp that's going direct to the front without some form of IR it won't contain any speaker characteristics and not be very close to your 4CM rig. You could certain go direct to the FOH with a direct out from the XLR with a Helix cab model, but again it might be very different than your stage sound from the 4cm unit. There's actually a lot of choices if you're not compulsive about trying to send the stage sound from you 4cm amp which is pretty much impossible.

From the perspective of being an industry observer I'm not sure there's really a huge compelling reason for Line 6 to make a move quite yet to a more expensive premium unit, but it's definitely getting closer. The trend in the industry has been toward smaller units rather than the larger units with more capabilities. The AXE-FX 3 doesn't appear to have been a huge game changer and although there are indications that some innovations such as the QuadSHARC chip might be the next step in processing power, that's going to take some R&D time and experimentation to understand how to best work with it and employ it's features effectively in a modeler application. When I look at what users are asking for in general it's still smaller footprint units, but with more computational power, yet the features they most clamor for tend to be more superficial presentation and usage things like the user interface or better integration capabilities which has little to do with actual extended modeling capabilities that can still maintain low latency times and is durable enough to be road worthy. Those are the things that would make it worth everyone's time to invest in a new platform. But I'm not convinced the industry is there yet.

Many years ago I was automating a BeatBuddy from my Helix. It's was a long time ago but I do remember that I was using simple stomp buttons rather than snapshots or the command center. If I'm remembering correctly I was just simulating the various actions of the BeatBuddy pedal to switch between the sections of the BeatBuddy song as well as a couple of stomps to navigate forward and backwards between different songs.

These are some of the key reasons I've always emphasized the differences between budget powered speakers and more premium quality speakers as well as speaker placement as key factors in how these types of speakers will work with modelers in general. For more than 10 years I've depended on Yamaha DXR12 speakers for live stage production both as monitors and mains. In my experience Yamaha was one of the first to really spend the time and energy to crack the code on how to design these types of bi-amped DSP driven powered speakers so that they have a more musically pleasant sound due to the way they developed their design and technology to tame these various frequencies. I've recently moved away from DXR12 as my front speakers to using QSC KLA12 speakers for my mains as those employ waveguide designs which are a step beyond the standard bi-amp and DSP processed speakers on the market, but are also in a significantly higher price category. It's always mystified me that someone would spend a premium price on a modeler only to run it through bargain basement powered speakers and then wonder why it doesn't sound that great.

I wouldn't hold a lot of hope on a different mixer making much of a difference with your Mackie speakers. What you were likely hearing in the tryouts was the difference between Yamaha higher end speakers and Mackie budget speakers as mixing boards don't have a lot of impact on speaker performance generally other than maybe some improvements in preamps which is pretty slight. In these days of DSP driven speaker designs there's a pretty marginal difference between a 12" and 15" speaker response so I wouldn't expect that to be much of a factor either. The sub will be a difference maker in adding clarity to most of the instruments and vocals if it's setup correctly so that it isolates the very low frequencies from the main frequencies we mostly want to hear clearly.

If you have done a system backup on your last upgrade you can do a restore and just select the User 1 set. There may be some versions somewhere up on the net but these presets change with each new update. If you have setlists that are really important to you it's pretty easy to just do and export of it to your file system whenever you change it so you can restore it anytime.

The difference is very subtle. I had to listen to it several times to pick out the differences. The second sample has is bit more clarity and articulation than the first sample which I would associate with the oversampling that's been introduced in more recent updates. Distortion-wise they're pretty much identical. I don't hear a +3db boost but that doesn't mean it's not there. I suspect it's likely related to some peaks that would naturally result from better clarity. Quite honestly I prefer the second sample as it would blend better in a mix and retain more of the guitar's presence and character when combined with other instruments and vocals. I listened to it using my Beyerdynamic DT 770 Studio 80 ohm headphones to get the best isolation.

That sounds more to me like a compressor or limiter that may be in the signal chain. I often do that intentionally so that I get a fuller and more aggressive sound with a hard strum without increasing the volume very much. On some amp models you'll get that same effect when you dial up the amp gain or the master volume (those that don't default to 10). it's possible that you could get the initial drop in volume with a high master volume as the additional amp driven distortion effectively lowers the overall output volume due to the flattening of the peaks off of the signal which your ear perceives as less volume.

I'd think the simplest way to do this would be to use a dedicated Ableton project probably in session mode with the effects loaded on different tracks and the Ableton output going to an audio interface to feed into the Helix input either man or return. You would then use MIDI to enable the individual track with the effect you want. You might be able to do this all through the USB interface on the Helix. It's all theoretical however, I've never done it.

There's lots of strategies for handling this sort of thing. Quite honestly I doubt I'd use a "fast scroll" even if it was available. I want to have minimal time and effort between songs. I export each one of my presets onto my hard drive through HXEdit, then once we have our songlist set I simply import them into a specified setlist reserved for live performances in the order of performance so it's a single footswitch to select the next song in the list. Of course this depends on not changing our setlist during performances which is not a problem typically. If we do change the order for some reason it's pretty simple to just move a preset to a different location in the setlist. This is how I've worked with my Helix for about 7 years and it's been very easy and dependable. It also helps in getting all the presets I'll be playing gain staged to consistent levels so all I have to do at the start of the night is gain stage one preset on the mixer at sound check and all my presets will be consistent. The added advantage is I've never lost a single preset because the "master" of that preset is on my hard drive, not in my Helix.

Just out of curiosity, how exactly do you have your LT connected to your amp?

I think we're going to need more info on how you have things setup. Given it's a small stage are you routing your Helix direct to the mixing board from the Helix and relying on stage monitors or are you feeding into some amp or powered speaker on stage? If you're using stage monitors or amps how are they positioned? If using amps are they mic'd and sent through the PA? A confined space is always going to be more problematic with feedback simply because of reflections off of the walls. How many instruments and vocals are in the band and how large is the actual audience area? You realize lowering the gain doesn't mean you have to lower the volume, right? Gain adds a certain amount of noise to the signal which can be accentuated by hotter pickups. Generally speaking most music, even rock music, doesn't use as much gain as you might think it does. A combination of lower gain and a bit more compression often gets you to a cleaner and more distinct and punchy overdriven sound. Another thing that probably needs to be considered is your signal level. Generally on traditional pedals you don't worry about it too much because they all work with instrument level signals. The Helix provides a number of options as far as signal levels on the different outputs. Mic signal level is considerably lower than Line signal level for example and therefore has a lot less noise in the signal. That's why you need to be aware of these things and keep track of how high your signal level is coming out of the Helix by selecting the output block on you signal chain and looking at the display at the lower right of the display on how high the level is. The higher the signal level the more noise it's likely to have. I personally keep my output levels around 40% even on heavier rock songs on the Helix meters and let the mixing board or powered speakers manage the volume levels to ensure I don't clip or have volume/noise problems. It doesn't have any affect on the sound, just the volume.