gunpointmetal

Something is amiss in the presets themselves or at the board coming back to your in-ear system. My IEM rig sounds just like my stage rig, just without the room involved. This is one of the main reasons we've gone to our own mixer/IEM setups for both of my bands. Custom mixes that never change, individual channel EQ separate from the FOH feed if needed, saves time in setup/soundcheck because we don't need to involve the sound guy in the monitor mix and we can each control our own mix from our phones.

Sometimes it easy for us guitarists to over and under think things when it comes to gear. Speakers play a huge role in how something sounds. You could have a really awesome top-dollar tube head and dial it in to sound amazing through a Marshall cab, plug it into a Mesa cab, and now it sounds totally different without ever touching a dial. Same idea with modelers and small cabs or FRFR speakers. A lot of peers that I play shows with use modelers from Boss to AFX, but most of them are still plugging into a power amp and their preferred guitar cab because of the feel and in-the-room sound that comes from those speakers versus a small full-range cab. Even if the FOH/studio sound of that cab mic'ed up might be the same as what the FRFR cab is putting out, its not the same for the player in their position on stage between a bassist and a drum kit, and being comfortable on stage is as important for a performance as how things sound. Headphones are whole 'nother thing compared to even FRFR solutions and most people will build patches specifically for headphones, patches specifically for recording, and patches specifically for live use.

Ok, a few misconceptions to clear up first. The Helix doesn't "sound" like anything until you tweak it to sound a certain way. (big period) You're never going to get a 1x12 PowerCab to sound like a guitar played through a massive bass rig, no matter how you tweak it. You could make it sound like that rig mic'ed up, and run into a console from another room, but the visceral guitar-playing experience of a stack of (bass) speakers throwing sound at you will never be replicated with a 1x12 cabinet, no matter how awesome it is. This is probably the BIGGEST reason people who are comfortable with amps and dive into modeling ultimately head back to amps. There's an expectation that because something like Helix/AFX/Kemper has all these bells and whistles that it should be able to sound like anything (which IME, it can) at any time, through any playback source, and that's just not possible. Imagine if you could have a 2" speaker and an 18" speaker that both are capable of the same frequency response. Even though they're moving the same frequencies, that 2" speaker will never SOUND like the 18" speaker. It's the same for a guitar rig. If what makes guitar enjoyable and gives it the sound you want is having six bass speakers cranking sounds at you, playing through a 1x12 will never match that experience, no matter how you tweak it. Before you write the Helix off as generic sounding, try running it into the FX return/Power Amp in of your head into your cabs and tweak with it that way. Always tweak with your ears, don't necessarily try to match physical gear settings to digital gear settings by the numbers, adjust stuff till it sounds good. TL;DR - The Helix is an incredible tool, but you have to be realistic about your expectations depending on your playback source. EDIT: if you're the kind of person who sees a button or knob and HAS to push it, modelers might just make you crazy, lol.

Unless you're running Native out to a power amp and real speaker cab, they're two very different types of sounds. What works/sounds good in the room with a real cab might not be what works in a recording situation. Depending on the pickups and output of the guitar, there should be enough gain on the Panama model with it set at 3 for chugs and pinch harmonics unless you have some low output single coils or something. If you're muting is tight and it's not a noise from the strings between the bridge and the nut, and you're sure on your technique, there's gotta be something loose somewhere in the guitar hardware.

Pinch harmonic squeals? You can get those on an acoustic if you do it right! lol

Could be lots of things - loose pickup springs, trem springs vibrating, above-nut string vibration, loose string saddle height screw. If it's consistent across several guitars it might be a technique thing.

Simple Pitch isn't awesome at polyphonic downtuning because the stuff that happens between notes (harmonics, modulation) can confuse the algorithm. I could never get on with Drop/Morpheus type pedals for downtuning anyways, because once I got it loud enough to not notice the strings vibrating differently than the sound I was hearing I was drowning out my drummer.

Cables in general are a visual OCD person's nightmare, lol. Both myself and my bassist in one of my bands are cable-OCD. He literally pours over his guitar pedalboard weekly trying to eliminate extra things, find cleaner management, etc. At some point its just function over preference.

Get some 1" flex wrap and some heat shrink tubing, make a cable loom with both ends labeled. If you don't go in and out of the loop, those FX will just be in front of the amp's input. You could eliminate 1 cable by just putting the Helix in the amps loop and plugging straight into the amp, but then you can't put any Helix FX in front of the amp. The easiest way to eliminate cables would be to bypass the amp's preamp all-together, use preamps in the Helix, and run Guitar->Helix->FX Return of the amp head. Then it's two cables. Even with a "real" pedalboard you'd still need four cables to put FX in the loop and in front (guitar->pre amp FX->amp input->FX send to post-amp FX->FX Return.

I like to do it with a Snapshot that increases the amp channel level and boosts the midrange slightly.

Mine has been on the floor 3-5 times a week for rehearsal and shows, tracked two EPs, and get's used at home almost every night that it's not at a show/rehearsal since December-ish of 2015 and I haven't had a single hardware issue. I did have to tighten the expression pedal up after about two years, but outside of that (which I wouldn't call an issue, just regular maintenance) not a single issue.

You might just be missing that good old AMP IN THE ROOM sound. With FRFR patches, (I'm sure you know this) you gotta think of it as a full studio signal chain, then you gotta think about how many albums or even live sound is the guitar just getting a mic on the cab and that's it. Most will have compression, EQ, and various other "tricks" after the microphone to get the sound you're used to hearing on a record or a major concert experience. Without that, sticking a mic on a cab probably has some "ugly" stuff going on that an engineer or sound guy would fix further down the line. I would highly recommend and amp with an FX loop so if you do want to get more flavors in there, you can go 4CM or into the FX loop. If you want a "pedal platform" and not have to worry about multiple cables, maybe the HXFX would be a better fit than the STomp.

IT's just group them into stereo input for some dumb reason. Can you select individual mono channels from the track I/O?

Every piece of guitar equipment I’ve ever owned works best when I turn knobs until it sounds good.

I'd say if you can swing it, go with Powercab!