gunpointmetal

In a small club the only way people near the stage or between the mains are going to hear the guitar is if there is stage volume. My bass player is a day-job FOH and monitor tech for several medium to large venues in the area and his suggestion is simply to keep the tweeter of the FRFR monitors below the height of mains to avoid obvious comb filtering, otherwise treat them pretty much like any other guitar cab as a far as placement/volume.

Stereo to mono adapter for your headphones is about all you can do if you need the two channel separate for recording.

Using the Helix drivers? You can try changing the buffer settings. What other programs are you running (if any) and what are the specs on the PC?

Depending on what you get the differences between a $1000 speaker and a $300 speaker don’t really sound or feel like a $700 value. Kind of like how Fractal has slightly better sounding modeling, but definitely not $1000 better. I’m still hoping L6 comes to their senses on a PowerCab for people who need actual stage volume.

So the Mackies (keep in mind I'm using the first or second gen Thumps, so they might not be 1:1 comparable to the new ones) and a lot of "budget" FRFR speakers have boosted lows and there seems to be a wider or different frequency crossover point between the woofer and the tweeter that made the highs sound almost separate from the rest of the guitar sound. This effect is much smoother to my ear with the EV ZLX or the QSC K series.

If it's just a straight volume boost, you an assign the channel volume to a snapshot. Or you can assign a mid boost and channel volume. Really depends on how you want to "boost" it.

There's nothing "extra" in a 15 that you need for guitar, in fact you'd probably be scooping out anything that it puts out over a 12 anyways, and that's coming someone playing very low-tuned ERGs.

All the JBLs I tried sounded off with guitar. I think the crossover is either a wider point or set higher up in the frequency spectrum so the highs felt "separate" from the rest of the guitar tone. the ZLX in "Monitor" setting sounded like I wanted to hear. Best bet is to try a few and see what clicks.

EV ZLX 12P seems to be the current bang-for-the-buck option. I tried Alto, JBL, and new Mackies recently and the EV sounded really good and wasn't majorly expensive. You might wanna look into an ambiance mic instead of using one IEM out, too. Good way to defeat the purpose of IEMs is to have to keep turning them up to get over the stage sound. Or get some earbuds with less isolation.

Wedge would be better than upright if you have to set it on the stage. It's going to do a better job of getting the sound into the room if you can get it up off the floor, though. If you just want if for some thump you might like wedge better anyways since you can feel it the floor.

If you're going to stand it up, put it on a pole. Standing it on the floor is going to direct all the high-frequency of the tweeter straight and down (look at graphics of how the horns in most PA speakers project: it's usually straight off the top of the horn and angled down across the spread of the woofer) and will sound kinda muddy from a standing position. A pole stand with the top of the speaker at/above about cymbal height on the drum kit is what I've been told is ideal by several pro FOH engineers.

A bigger speaker can be EQ'd to put out less low end if the situation calls for it, a smaller speaker can't be EQ'd to sound bigger/bassier, though. That's the beauty of FRFR. It sounds more or less the same at any volume. If you're on a stage that's too small for one 12in monitor, you probably don't need any on-stage monitoring and can just go FOH, because you're gonna be playing pretty quiet anyways. Or you put in on a pole to get it up off the floor.

Go for the 12s. If you don't need the "oomph" you can always cut stuff. If it's not there to begin with, you can't add it back in. And feeling mutes if half the fun of playing metal guitar live! I run two Mackier Thump 12s or Two EV ZLX 12P monitors in places without PA support and it feels niiiiiice.

Stereo is cool but not usually necessary. FRFR monitors don't "carry a room" like a traditional guitar cab even at high wattage. I have two monitors for places where they don't have guitar support in the PA (small dives, basements, warehouses) just so I can have more than enough volume on tap, but if you don't need ear-smashing volumes one is fine. As far as setting up the Helix for stereo there isn't a global Mono/Stereo setting (other than only plugging in to the LEFT output when you have a stereo patch, which collapses it to mono), so you build patches for stereo with dual paths or stereo effects.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled all my drivers for Helix, XR18, my mouse. Nothing else has ever been connected via USB besides external drives. I'm having hard time accepting a hardware fault since it still is fully-functional as a plug-and-play device for every other Windows program. Itunes plays audio out of it, browser, WMP, Guitar Pro...Why would the hardware work that way, but then complete crash the PC when ASIO is accessed? Two other PCs, actually. My second one that's basically a clone of the first one as far as audio set-up goes, and a third one that's my GF's that doesn't have ANY external audio hardware drivers installed. Same thing across the board; works for regular computer audio, ASIO driver crashes the computer. All the PCs are Windows 10. I was literally using it for recording demos like 20 hours before it crashed. Never left the floor under my desk. A hardware fault doesn't make sense for the way it DOES work, though.

I hope someone else might be able to chime in.... I ran a support ticket, its out of warranty, minimum $90-$100 just to get it looked at, which seems insane since I'm 99% sure its a software problem. But I've uninstalled and reinstalled all drivers, Line 6 Updater multiple times and there's still no change in function. It works just fine as a plug-and-play soundcard for Windows, but trying to use the ASIO driver in Reaper or opening Line 6 updater with the device plugged in causes a blue-screen crash. Support staff suggests I need to do a complete system reinstall, but I have way to much other (professional grade) hardware that is working that I need to use on a regular basis with my computers to spend a whole day refreshing a Windows installation. Anyone have any OTHER ideas? Basically if I have to reinstall everything on my computer to get this thing to work the way its supposed to, I'm just gonna sell it, because my time is not worth it for a POD X3 Live with bluetooth.

Ha, thats the same tuner display as the Firehawk FX.

I guess I'm confused. If the stomp isn't in your chain until AFTER your dry amp, couldn't you split the two FX into separate paths and set the Wet/Dry ration individually then mix them back together before the output or send either to another amp?

Helix Gigboard, lol. For me personally, I don't see the point in doing a "Floorboard" over the size of Stomp that doesn't incorporate an expression pedal. The rest of the design is pretty neat, though.

I always like the look of these guitar-cab-shaped FRFR solutions, but so far none of them have been quite what I need. Most of the time they just don't have the oomph I need for the music I play. The rear-porting on this one seems like an odd choice for a stage amp, too. I rocked a pair of the older Thump 12s for about 6 years and recently snagged a pair of EV ZLX12P speakers for a second band. Boy what a difference. Those Mackies are solid speakers for sure, though.

I started putting a piece of blue tape on my old batteries so I don't do that. I've done it a bunch of times because I'm really paranoid about my batteries dying so I change out for a new one every few shows (guitars, wireless, IEM receiver...lots of batteries) then go through the old ones at practice as they die. Nothing like checking every spot in your chain only to find out it was the battery the whole time. How are you liking the strandberg? Is it an Endurneck version?

I don't know how many actual artist-made patches there are out there, but you're moving into a technology bracket where a lot of the premium stuff is pay-as-you go. There are lots of studios and individuals selling preset packs with custom impulse responses with artist-specific tags.

I play a 9 string tuned one step below the low B of a five-string bass and a 30" scale. It's basically an ERB with extra high strings. Do those Fishman's have the selectable voicings? might be something else to look at.

First check would be the battery. I use actives into the guitar input all the time, pad on, with no issue. Then check your pickup height. Active should be close to the strings, but not too close. If none of that helps, try the AUX input and see how that works. LOL @phil_m calling it a bass.

Line 6 has more company presence over at The Gear Page, and the mods here are the biggest fanboys on the planet. This thread is pretty tame and would hardly qualify as harassment, though.