xavierb

1) How do you feel about your new Helix? Very happy overall. Tone is not as great as an Axe FX2 (I have used one for years) but way better than a POD HD (which I also have been using for years). The IR block make a big difference to your "tone palette". I use it with a Variax which works really well (post firmware 1.02) with it, as it did with the POD. The large LCD, the LCD strips & the foot switch colors are really useful and not a gimmick, as I initially thought they might be. So great for practice and live sessions, which is what I've been mainly using it for. For the studio (and recordings) I will stick to using my Axe, and BTW the Helix makes an awesome controller for the Axe FX if anyone's wondering. 2) What would you like to see changed or improved about it if it was at all possible? At this stage (had it for about 3 weeks) I really miss a proper (desktop based) editor (see " Helix editor is available for download" thread for more details). Apart from that, I think they pretty much nailed it, and sure there lots of little things here and there (I started a handful of Idea Scale) that I would like to have fixed but nothing really screams at me. Their product manager (Digital_Igloo) and Phil_m (another Line 6 employee) have really been on the ball with the forums answering questions, etc... which is really nice. 3) How would it be then? Not sure what that's exactly supposed to mean, but for me it's a keeper. If the price is too high for you, I think it's only a matter of time (a year?) before they release a cheaper model with reduced features (for instance, the dual path, the large LCD and the strips are not 100% necessary and it could make things cheaper to reduce or remove those) so you could wait for that. If tone is by far what you care about the most, I'd look at the AX8 - which is about the same price.

I strongly disagree, I've seen that argument on the forums (TPG and here) but editing patches on the Helix is a major pain compared to (for example) the Axe-Edit (the best "device" editor I've seen) or even the old POD editor (which wasn't great, but did the job). The "edit with your feet" is a cool concept (for practice and even live) for quick edits, but long edit session for a Helix preset are a pain - moving blocks with the joystick (compared to drag & drop) and constantly paging left/right is slow and error prone. Editing patches with a mouse and keyboard on (hopefully) a bigger screen real estate (hopefully your devs won't simply replicate what the Helix screen does and take advantage of the higher resolution) should be many times more efficient. I personally can't wait for the editor to come out, sign me up for a Beta (or even Alpha) if there is one! Finally, as a couple of people have already said - bending over all the time is not helping my (not so healthy) back.

Update: Store (Music Express in Brisbane) exchanged the (bricked) Helix for a (working) one - amazing! AND I was successfully able to update that one to v.1.0.3 :)

Update on my (bricked) Helix: The store (Music Express in Brisbane) exchanged the Helix for a (working) one - amazing! AND I was successfully able to update that one to v.1.0.3 - so great after sales service Line 6 :)

That's the obvious way to go IMO, and also what Fractal does with the Axe FX upgrades. Not sure why Line 6 doesn't do this, maybe there's another reason.

Got an answer from support: They suggested trying switches 5 + 12 (I haven't seen this combination yet in this forum, which is why I'm posting this in case it helps someone) but that didn't work for me either. Looks like I have a bricked unit, so I'll return it back to the store today.

Got an answer from support: They suggested trying switches 5 + 12 (I haven't seen this combination yet in this forum, which is why I'm posting this in case it helps someone) but that didn't work for me either. Looks like I have a bricked unit, so I'll return it back to the store today.

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=usb+B+to+A+female

Weird... Seems so obvious. Would have been a great way around those El Capitan & Windows 10 problems for a start.

I'd love to know as well. Was wondering if for instance putting the upgrade file on a USB flash drive (connected to the Helix) and booting with a combination of footswitches would load the firmware file that's on the drive and flash the Helix with it. Currently I'm the unlucky one with a dead (error -28) Helix due to a firmware update that failed, so I'd love to know if there's anything I can before sending it back.

Still no go. Tried 8 & 9 + 10 as well. No other secret combinations?

Already tried that, it says "Will restore stock Presets and Setlists" but sill ":(-28" at the top left and no cigar, even after 5 minutes.

No loss of power, it did said "could not complete update, please power off and try again" (not those exact words). Now, the problem is that since it doesn't boot anymore (it gets stuck at error -28) the USB is no longer recognized and therefore I can't do anything firmware wise, at least through the Line 6 updater :( I tried the 9+10 switches on boot, it says it will "reset Globals and restore stock Presets, Setlists and IRs..." but the ":(-28" still shows in the left top corner and it has been sitting there for the last 30 minutes. Is there a secret Kung Fu Grip that will make the Helix go back to v1.0 or anything that I can do before returning it? Helix gurus help me, you're my only hope! Right now it's the most expensive door stop I ever bought... I'm so glad I waited after my Halloween gig before trying to update the firmware!

My Helix is stuck (upgrading from 1.02) after a power cycle on reboot, first it shows a ":0" for about a second or 2, then there's a ":(-28" showing in the top left corner - any suggestions? I don't see a way to do a firmware (or factory?) reset. Is it back to the shop for this one?

You should vote for your own idea, at least you've got my vote :)

And you get the magnetic as well as the variax signal through Helix, it's great for dual path presets

Even better... keep the same settings (at least the ones that are common) when I change amps or cabs - I would love that!

No you can't :(

Is there an equivalent to the 57 on axis of the HD500x? Sounds to me like all the microphones are "off" axis - and it seems that the distance is not what I'm after. I realize that I could get around it with an IR, but I'm posting just in case I missed something.

IIRC the HD500x did this quite well, you could choose to put the looper at the very start or the very end of the chain. Helix only supports one looper, but I find that it's useful to have it at the start (while I'm working on the tone) but it's best at the end when I want to use it to record a quick chord progression to solo over. I get that now you can put it wherever you want, but action + joystick is very tedious. Should I submit an Ideascale entry to suggest adding a button to cycle the looper's position to one of the following options: 1/ Right after input 1 2/ Right after input 2 3/ Right before output 1 4/ Right before output 2 Or is there some other way to do this that I have missed? It doesn't seem possible to have more than one looper, which would be another way to solve this - even if only one of them can be used at once.

Hopefully this no longer matters once the desktop editor is finally released, and they can show both rows at once.

Try the rosen digital IRs if you haven't... I prefer them to the others I've tried, i.e., TAF, Ownhammer or Redwirez

Voted up, would be amesome - one switch to change the disto, pickups, etc...

I vaguely remember someone writing on the TPG forums something about Helix being able to assign footswitches to (among other things) changing the variax model. Was it all a dream? I can't seem to find a way to do this at the moment, has anyone done it?

My 2 submissions so far: Helix doesn't reset the variax tuning to standard