PiFromBRC

Whoa...that is a mighty big power brick. I was about to make a snark-reply about Whiny McWhinersons until I saw that image.

(googles: BiVolt, Auto-switching power supply, etc...)

As mentioned by Ted above, are you looking for Distant Early Warning? Red Sector A? Red Lenses? There was a lot of red in Rush's 80's tones. I've got a couple of decent mid-career tones that I built for my AL Custom Paul. I'll dust them off in the next couple of days. PM me your setup as these are pretty rig-specific.

Have you run a signal straight from the phone jack to either your DAW or amp?

As noted above, return policy for dissatisfied customers isn't law. But it is a great marketing ploy. If somebody stands behind their product and offer satisfaction guarantee, they will typically sell more units. I was seriously tempted to return my Helix when I first got it because I hadn't taken the time (ever) to fully buy in to the MFX mindset. A week or two of fiddling and I've got a ton of pedals gathering dust.

I'm going to give this a whirl with my ebow. I don't know if anybody here uses an ebow, and most of what you can find about them from users are, "nice effect, but useless". However if you play around with them to color a song, they are practically essential. I'll let you know what comes of it. Thanks for the tip, HO.

I'm going to go through the pedal maintenance procedure to get rid of the squeak. Where does one get the correct washers? Thanks.

Cool. I'm going to edit it to remove the things I don't use (Mic, Variax, L6 Link). I guess I can get the masking tape off now. Thanks.

Do you get the same hissing when you have hardware in the loop?

It's like a Freeze/sustainer pedal. I just found a couple on Custom Tone that I'm going to mess around with.

Putting "Sound on Sound" in the search box turns up nothing (when using quotes) or everything (when not). I have GD's patches, and they're great, but I'm trying to figure out a good SOS template that isn't too DSP hungry to stick in to a couple of different builds I'm working on. Has anybody figured one out?

This is a long-standing desire from most. As it is, I use the meters on my other FX and in the mixer to check for clipping. That, or at the DAW if I'm at home at the time. It's a pain in the a$$, but not a deal breaker for me. If it happens, awesome.

^ That ^ . I agree about some type of a clipping graphic. It would be pretty easy to squeeze one in on the side of the screen graphic.

First off, sweet mic. What type of room are you playing in? I record a lot of nylon and refuse to put a pu in my high end flamenco. I find that large, open spaces provide the least bleed and allow me to capture more of the natural tone. When I use a preamp I put a compressor after it. Try staging back to around 20-25db and notch it from there. The 'according to Hoyle' rule is recording somewhere between -18 to -12db, but so long as I'm not clipping, I prefer around -12 to -6db. Also, if you have another condenser laying around, you might consider putting the NT2 a few inches from the neck joint and the second mic around 6" from the bridge (There are scads of different patterns you can try with two mics). If you decide to try that, make sure the mics have plenty of space between them.

Agreed. Some two years in and still feel like I'm scratching the surface.

Dude...maybe you're one of those people that just *knows* he's right all the time. I've been playing for close to forty years now. I know all about ear fatigue and I know quite a bit about tonal qualities. Let's agree to disagree and move on. Sheesh.

He's big on speaker combinations as well. One room and a hallway right outside that picture are each stacked with different celestions, et al, as well as various electronic engineering things. And yes, I can hear the difference between the different speaker/cab/finish combos. There's also the tonal warming or cooling after the cab and speakers have been played through during a long session.

Again, I'm not going to judge. It's eggshell blue. I guess one way to look at it would be to view a sine or do a double blind test, but this guy is a friend, I'm willing to grant the benefit of the doubt, and it doesn't really make a difference to me, because when he launches I'll get some cool pedals to play with. I don't want to get in to some conversation where a person claims another person doesn't see, hear, feel, or taste something the original person can't. It's pointless and no matter how strongly you feel about it, somebody else feels just as strongly and with as much conviction, just with a different conclusion.

I know...I was tooling you. To tell the truth, I'm not in a position to judge it, and I doubt others are as well. Let me illustrate my answer for that: I'm colorblind. Totally colorblind. Don't believe the hype, I don't live in a monochromatic world, but I simply don't differentiate any color from the color spectrum if it is placed close to another color. So if somebody says, "that's a beautiful egg shellblue with a hint of fuchsia", my brain may be screaming 'BS...that sucker is white', but they can see it. That said, I have witnessed conversations where contemporaries will each identify the 'pull' due to certain conditions of construction, and while it may be present, it is eggshell blue to me. I will say that I can hear the effect that different woods and finishes have on his custom cabs, but I'm sure most can do that. <shrug>

He doesn't run batteries and he only runs reverb and drive. He just has twenty of each to choose from on his board. Serious.

He's a purest. He has a hobby where he designs and builds prototype S/B's which he plans to turn to a business someday. The problem is that he is that Eric Johnson-y type who discerns between 'this much amperage in the LED affects the tone this way' and 'that footswitch creates that much magnetic pull' that way. He loves my Helix, and he's a quite talented Bluesman/Rocker, but trying to get him to go digital is like trying to teach my mom how to use my iPad. Here's a couple of pictures of me in one of his studios. In one snap I'm playing some insanely valuable and vintage Tele, in the other I'm playing a '52 Paul ( looks worn but is the best playing and sounding guitar I've ever held). You can see my Helix on the floor there and you can sort-of see his pedal board leading to some ungodly array of amps.

Nothing from nothing, but audition them. Do you seriously need more than three or four prime ones? I have a friend of means and he owns thirty to forty high end and boutique amps. I've seen him use three of them.

I have an AL Signature Les Paul, so I've been blending the two together for a few years now. Yup...tone is frikkin' amazing. However I do find that it is better to run two independent paths for most of the presets I build for that.

I just identified a problem last night and am trying to chase it down right now. I'm not getting any L-channel signal through my mixer headphones (all R only). Performed the following TS's to no avail: -Swapped cables between L/R inputs on Mixer. Still Right only. -I followed that swap back through Hum Eliminator to 1/4 outs on the Helix Floor. Nothing. -Tried headphones DI from back of Helix and only a Mono signal. -I have two preamps, one on path 2A, the other on path 2B at the end of the chain for a warm gain coming off a flamenco guitar. All FX on Path 1 are stereo, but since the preamps are on split paths, that shouldn't be a problem. This appears to be happening on all other presets, both custom and factory. I'm about to do a reset, but this one is driving me nuts.

This is actually working pretty well. It's at least giving me a solid base to tweak from . Thanks!