DunedinDragon

What you're running into is a well known and well documented situation in which items get greyed out due to the DSP limits. On a full Helix or LT you have two DSP chips which are allocated across to two signal chains. But on the Stomp you only have one DSP chip.

Without knowing more about the specifics of your in ear setup it's pretty much impossible to answer your question. Ideally it should be nothing more than taking the inputs the boards and sending a mix back to your in ears via an Aux monitor out that feeds your in ears. But there's lots of different ways people do it.

Well then all that's left is EQ since most folks don't seem to have your problem. You might try going to an amp that has a bit more efficient tone stack like the Archetype lead and see if that gives you what you want.

I think a lot of this really depends on how you use your Helix as well as which Helix you're using. I could see myself orienting toward the native cabs if I were to be using the Stomp due to the limitations. But I'm in the same boat as Cruisinon2 in that I pretty much exclusively use IRs in my everyday use. The reason being that I play a very wide range of genres and for the most part use a preset per song, so I build a LOT of presets. That being the case the IRs are just quicker and a LOT less work. No parameters to mess with and if I want to try something different on a patch I simply dial to a different preset that has all the parameters built in. As to the size of IRs and the limitations on 2048 multiple cabs, that's really just not relevant to me. I briefly tried multiple 1024 IRs and they seemed fine, but then what's the point? A good portion of my IRs are multiple mic'd cabs and provide the same benefit for the most part. So why go to the bother. I guess for myself, since I gig at least once a week and sometimes several times a week I'll take any approach that lessens how much time I might need for tweaking a patch. And that's what IRs do for me. I'm just more of a practical guy than a cork sniffing tone hound. I just want to Git 'Er Done....

My guess is you have too much gain on the amp. Distortion is a form of clipping and will more likely affect higher notes than lower notes because of the need for better clarity and articulation in order to be differentiated. Lower the gain until the high notes are clear then dial it up slightly to get a level of distortion that will maintain articulation of the notes. The other thing that pops to mind might be your pickups if they're particularly hot. Try playing with the input levels rather than leaving them on auto.

Essentially Helix + Stomp IS the competitor to Axe 3. All Axe 3 did was add another processor, not a new processor so adding the stomp would be the same thing. I personally don't see any driving need to attack a new generation of modeler until there is some significant leap in the underlying DSP technology. Who knows when that will happen, although I'm sure it will at some point.

Just bear in mind that the Helix will only sound as good as whatever you plug it into for output. So there's likely to be more of an investment than just the Stomp to think about.

There's so many possible variables such as the same cab/speakers or mic and mic positions that it's hard to figure out where the difference might lie. Personally I've never worried about any of that sort of stuff as it's something that's easily adjusted and spending time on it is just wasted time. I just take the amp model for what it is, assign cab/ir and mic's and a couple of other blocks and start dialing it in. Normally I'm plugged into a signal meter on a small mixing board so I can pretty easily get the patch to the right volume levels then adjust it all by ear at the end by comparing it to other patches. The way I figure it you can waste a lot of time on stuff that simply is what it is, or you can work on getting the job done.

It's probably worth a try to see how it would sound for you. It's not going to be the same as what would typically be referred to as FRFR, but it may be okay. Just so you understand, the term FRFR in popular usage isn't about whether something has a horn and a simple crossover circuit or not. It's more about compression drivers, bi-amp designs, and DSP contouring which aren't part of the Rumble bass amp. Compression drivers work to manage high end frequency response into tweeters, horns, wave guides or even coaxial speakers. Bi-amp designs replace traditional crossovers to individually amplify low and high frequency ranges to better manage the distribution of amplification between lows and highs (at any given volume level, highs need less amplification than do lower frequencies). Digital Signal Processing (DSP) contouring is used to manage the frequency response profile, or flat nature of the response profile across it's entire range of frequencies and allows tuning for different placements of the speaker typically. The "flat response" part of FRFR can be misleading as it's never meant to really be perfectly flat. It would probably be more accurate to refer to such things as Full Range Natural Response as that's the real target of the designs. But you can pretty much blame recording studios for promoting the concept of a speaker being being more or less "flat" as that's where the popular vernacular came from and has been used for many, many decades now.

Personally I would prefer a simple standalone reporting app that would allow me to make side by side comparisons in a separate window outside of HX Edit. That would be a very quick and simple way to keep them on the screen while editing them in HX Edit. This could be built by anyone with some experience in JSON coding similar to the HIRB app for IR library reporting across all patches.

You're going to find quite a few of us here that came to the Helix from a Pod HD500 setup. I'd be another one to testify that you're better off just starting from scratch when rebuilding your patches on the Helix as any type of conversion of HD500 patches would just not be optimized for the Helix environment. What I would strongly recommend is that you spend some time viewing some of Jason Sadites YouTube videos to get a much clearer idea of some great approaches and techniques to build your patches on Helix. These will be invaluable in quickly getting your patches built on the Helix.

I'm not sure how you would have missed this in researching your decision to by the HX Stomp. It was in the HX Stomp FAQ released on October 2nd. It wasn't concealed from anyone. Can HX Stomp presets be loaded into the Helix Native plug-in? Not currently, but individual blocks can be copied and pasted between HX Edit 2.70 and Helix Native 1.70. Again, rebuilding an HX Stomp preset in Helix Native shouldn’t take more than 30 seconds.

I use those same amps in several different presets with great results. It's really impossible to say what the problem is without understanding what your output rig consists of which will really be the determining factor as far as articulation. It's a reasonably good guess that you've incorporated too much gain, or potentially the wrong type of gain. With the WhoWatt and to a slightly lesser extent the J45 are specifically designed to work in conjunction with drive pedals very well. Particularly with the WhoWatt I keep the tone fairly clean and push it using a pedal or sometimes combinations of pedals. I tend to get better results and better control using the Matchstick jump rather than the Matchstick 2 which, to my ear, is harder to manage and get the right amount of distortion. Again, chances are you need less distortion than you think you do. Using less distortion with some added tight push from something like the Deluxe Compressor can often get you the control and articulation you want...given of course that you're using a speaker setup that is capable of providing it.

I've done something recently that could be interesting/useful to you. Personally I run all my presets at home through the same FRFR I use when I perform which is a Yamaha DXR12. The advantage being that it's full blown front of house style powered speaker which will give me a great indicator of what's going out to the audience. I recently began doing some open mic/jam nights with fellow musicians in the area and got tired of hauling around a 50 lbs beast, so I ended up taking a chance on a one of the new QSC speakers, a CP8. I have a ton of respect for the quality of Yamaha and QSC when it comes to live sound, so I wanted to see if I could get comparable performance from the 20 lbs CP8 versus the 50 lbs DXR12. I've been pleasantly surprised that the CP8 could give me comparable sound quality at roughly half the price and 1/3 the weight. But there's a slight catch. The CP8 is rated at a max SPL of 124 db while the DXR12 is rated at 132 db. Although I don't play at super loud volumes it does have an effect on how much I need to turn up my Helix master volume to get a comparable output in the signal and resulting volume level. However leaving the CP8 volume control at unity (or 12 o'clock) and turning up my Helix volume level does give me a comparable sound quality to the DXR12. Turning up the volume level on the CP8 does have more of a negative effect on the sound than it does doing so on the DXR12. What this might mean in your case is that a CP8 would be able to give you a very good indicator of what your FOH sound will be as you dial in your presets. You would likely need to turn up your Helix master volume to get a good representation of what will come out of the FOH than you would when you play live, but if you setup your globals so that your Helix master volume doesn't affect the XLR outputs and send to the mixer with the XLR out, you should be good...given of course that the sound personnel know how to gain stage your output signal appropriately. This could be a great alternative for you to get high quality at a reasonable price since the CP8 is priced at $399. Just a thought.

There's nothing you've mentioned that couldn't be achieved on either the LT or the full floor model. You do have more input and output options on the full floor as well as the difference in build quality, which in my opinion is pretty significant if you use it a lot. Bear in mind going 4CM is just one option and generally isn't something a lot of us do. Most of us take a much more simple and straightforward approach and simply use a good full range flat response powered speaker. There's a lot of complexities and considerations in going the 4CM route and is necessary for some people, but it's certainly not a requirement to get any type of tone you want. The Helix is a complex machine as it is and adding more complexity isn't something that is worth doing unless it's absolutely worth it to you.

Pretty much the same configuration for me as what rvroberts describes, other than the corrections to get his strat more tele like. Using a Tele Elite I had similar drive and lower bass requirements. The trick was getting the compressor correct. I used the Deluxe compressor with fairly aggressive compression which is really necessary to get the hybrid picking technique he uses to sound consistent volume-wise. I did use the parametric EQ at the end of my chain to slice off some highs and lows and to take a notch out a small area around 4.2 Khz by about -2 db (Q of about 4) which gave it some fullness rather than all twang, but this was going through a Yamaha DXR12, so your results may be different depending on your setup.

Now THAT is funny...no matter where you come from.....

This definitely has nothing to do with firmware and is likely some form of connection problem. I agree that you should touch base with Line 6 support on this and get their guidance on what to do. It's not going to be fixed through any settings or reset or anything else to do with the brains of the Helix.

I think the term used was a "fly rig", no necessarily a travel rig. As such it's a great size for a quick fly out gig where everything but your pedalboard is there. Personally, I'm not sure i'd ever be interested in investing in the Stomp myself as it's just too limited and I really don't need any expansion ability for my Helix floor. Even if they expanded the Stomp to 8 blocks I don't think I'd be interested because I prefer to space my blocks across both DSP chips to have room to add things if necessary. But I don't think I was ever the target for such a thing in the first place. On the other hand the rhythm guitar player in my group would be an ideal customer as it has more than enough to keep him happy. His needs and demands are much simpler than mine. Even the bass player might benefit, but his needs are even less. Someone interested in dipping a toe into the high end modeling waters without making a huge investment, and still be able to capitalize on that smaller investment if he decided to go full bore into modeling I'd say would be the ideal customer for the Stomp.

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but those of us that have been around a while already know, Glenn's organ patch has been out there for at least 2 1/2 years. It was one of the first I ever saw offered in one of his collection of patches he was selling.

There are no difference in IRs between units. IRs are IRs no matter where they are used. What they may have been referring to are the Helix cabinets which you can think of as dynamic IRs. IR's are simply a file that contains a specific sound based on the speaker cabinet and microphone or microphones that were being used to capture the sound of the speaker cabinet and the position of those microphones relative to the distance away from the cabinet or between the cap and cone of the speaker. If you want a different configuration of any of those things it will be in a different IR file. Helix cabinets are configurable so you are able to change the mic, mic position, and a number of other configurable parameters at will. Given you have a good grasp on how those parameters affect the sound you can get as good a sound from the Helix cabinets as you can from IR's in my opinion. However 9 times out of 10 I'll opt to use an IR simply because it's a simpler operation to incorporate it than it is to go through tweaking parameters on a Helix cabinet since I have a set of IR's I commonly use and work well for me, and it's simpler to audition those IR's within a preset than to audition various Helix cabinet setups. But that's not based on sound, only on convenience since I build a LOT of different presets.

Personally when I was confronted with this situation instead of using IEM's I went to using my DT770 headphones rather than invest a ton of money in high end IEMs. You may be able to get away with it, you may not. The situation I was in allowed me the flexibility to do so. They sounded perfect on stage as they do in the studio.

The only defined device for doing such a thing would be some form of small USB audio interface. I know there are some out there that are very small units meant for songwriters and such that could work pretty well for you. The problem being it takes over your laptop's sound card so you would need one that at least has a headphone output.

So you want more full Helix functionality at 1/3 the price in the Stomp? I'm thinking there may be a problem with that. You get what you pay for.

It's absolutely the same both for adjusting effects as well as the overall signal chain. I personally prefer to manage the overall volume using the channel volume on the amp model, but the output block works in a similar fashion for adjusting overall volume without affecting the tone of the preset. Of course since each amp is a mathematical simulation of the amp's circuitry, the volume levels will differ as do the real amps, but I've never had a problem maintaining a consistent volume across different amps.