robbieb61

I got my Helix back in Oct. of 2015 and used it at a live gig that very week. It was a gig on world famous Fremont Street here in Vegas on a concert P.A. and I went straight to the mixer board out of the Helix and heard myself through my floor monitor (we all had separate monitor mixes of course). We were one of three bands that night (us and another band opening for a national act). And even though I only had my Helix a few days, and the Helix didn't yet have some of the great amp models it has now...I was able to use the Cali Rectifier model (we play classic rock). And the soundman came up to me after the show and told me that I had the best guitar sound out front of any other guitarist that evening. And the guitar players in the other bands were using Marshall stacks. :)

Yep, yours is jumping around like crazy just like mine does. And your other tuners are spot on and "non-jumpy"

I don't think Line 6 will respond here. But they do respond on the TGP forum. lol I guess that if you are a Line 6 customer, you have to go to another website to get any info. heh-heh

Oh yeah, by the 1990's the live rock band scene was done. Not just in Miami but everywhere. And if you were at Miami beach during that time...that's a whole different world than Miami itself and Ft. Lauderdale. Back in the 1980's Miami Beach was deserted. There were cheap $80 a week apartments full of senior citizens. All the real action for live music was happening in the Kendall area of Miami off U.S. 1 Of course these days...Miami Beach is high dollar real estate and slammed with tourists and nightlife. I was down there just a month ago on business. And it was crazy! :) Tons of hot women running around half naked and the beaches are packed. Huge difference from back in 1983 when I first went to Miami Beach and rode down Collins Ave. and my car was the ONLY car on the road in the middle of the day! Now it's like driving in NYC on Collins Ave. But anyway...yeah, they were doing the DB meter thing and it was a nightmare. Caused a ton of tension between bands and club owners and our booking agents. As you can imagine, the club owners did NOT want to get in trouble with the govt. because the bands were too loud. These days it would be easy to comply. Amp modeler for guitar going straight to the P.A. and floor monitor. Bass player going straight into a DI to the P.A. and floor monitor. And drummer with a set of Roland drums. But back then...I was using a Mesa Boogie amp (original one) with a Marshall stack for cabs. Our bassist used an Ampeg SVT with 2 8 x10 SVT cabs. Our other guitarist had a Marshall half stack. And our keyboardist had an actual Leslie cabinet onstage as well as an electric Yamaha baby grand. It was very difficult to play loud rock music...at low volume. heh-heh

No, these weren't clubs that were near any "geriatric" people. These were huge nightclubs down in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale (on the strip). And they were all in commercial zoned business areas. There were no homes within miles. Why OSHA did it I'll never know. And I have no idea if they were doing it nationwide either. During that period I was working with King Music booking agency and there were at least 3 dozen A-Circuit monster nightclubs in Dade and Broward county's that had rock bands. Some of them even had two bands a night. So I wasn't forced to tour all over the country in that part of the 1980's. The music biz was very, very good. We played 7 nights a week every week. And some of the clubs (like The Button South in Hallandale) held thousands of people. It's not what you guys are envisioning at all. We weren't playing the little clubs of today in the middle of residential neighborhoods. This was back when musicians and live bands had value. These days? I'm lucky if the clubs I play in even have a stage. lol

Crazily enough...in the early 1980's OSHA started cracking down on nightclubs down in Miami. If a band was more than 95 db 10 feet from the stage...the night club was fined. And if it happened a second time, the fine increased...and it went up exponentially. And enough citations and the club would lose it's business license. You can imagine that nightmare. Here we are playing "hair metal" (which was the most popular music at that time), with a big-asss P.A. and light show and a 3 man road crew....and suddenly all of our P.A. was useless. We were actually too loud with the P.A. turned off. The drummer could hit his snare drum and be over the db limit. :( It was a horror show for about 6 months. All the clubs in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale were freakin' out. The club owners would be checking us every few minutes with a DB meter because OSHA was making "surprise" visits with their DB meter at all times of the night. That repressive regulation was dropped a few months later after massive protest from the nightclub industry (even DJ's had to abide by it). It really, really sucked. Especially when your playing Judas Priest "You Got Another Thing Comin'" at the volume of a mosquito. lol

Not out of the Helix itself. I just got an EHX Talking Machine and an expression pedal for it. Using it in one of the send/return loops of the Helix. Just got it...I got one last week but it was defective so returned it. Got the replacement yesterday and it does the job. :) Here's a demo vid of it:

Probably when I mentioned that some car audio works that way with the speed of the car. I made it more confusing by even mentioning that.

You guys are making it too complicated. A "low volume mode" to turn on and off manually would work just fine. Or you could simply set up a global eq for that purpose right now.

Of course there are always variables. But at least now we know which speakers you use and if a person were so inclined they could get the L2 and listen with a bit more accuracy to some of the factory patches as well as the amp models. Obviously the same criteria existed when Jim Marshall made his first Marshall amp....he heard it in his room at his volume with his ears. But it still sounded like a Marshall amp when you played it anywhere (with slight variations) With modeling I would think that knowing exactly which speaker you are using to listen with ..would be very helpful for a person wondering which speaker system they should buy to go with their Helix. :) If I'd known that...I would have gotten an L2.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Faster your car goes, more volume and less "loudness" button. I would say that a "low volume mode" would sort of be the same thing. :) Extra bottom end. Then at "Gig level" disengage the "low volume" mode and crank it up. For me personally, it's not that big a deal. Learned a LOOOONNNNNNGGGG time ago what to set an amp on as far as bass, mids, and treble go. You learn (obviously) over the years what translates with a drummer, bass player, keyboards, and vocals. And several decades of really good soundmen working for my bands didn't hurt either (they let you know real quick if your sound if big and tight OR shrill and flappy). I was just saying that car audio manufacturers figured it out decades ago with the "loudness" button they used to have on stereo systems in the 80's and 90's to make the sound have bottom end at low volume. And you were supposed to turn that button off when you cranked it up (because the speakers start moving air and creating bass naturally). And then in recent years, many cars have that "auto" function that works off of your cars speed to determine whether to apply the "loudness" function or not.

That sentence tells me what I've been wondering. What exact speaker set up do you guys use when working on the Helix to listen to the amp models. :) So there is the answer. If you want to know what the creators of the sounds used to listen with...get an L2 speaker. Then you will be hearing the same exact thing as DI is hearing at Line 6 (with variations of guitar and pickups...but at least you would have the starting point)

Car audio has been doing it for a long time. Most car audio systems these days have an "auto" sensor. So when you're pulling up to a red light or driving slow, the volume is lowered and the "loudness" (extra bass) switches on. Then when you're driving fast, the volume is increased and the "loudness" switch is deactivated. So yeah...I would think that it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility to have something like that for the Helix. It's probably just something that nobody thought of doing....a "low volume" mode.

Can't get the cocaine dispenser on my Helix to operate properly... gonna try an IR of some Peruvian flake to see if that fixes it. :lol:

Yep, never had to get used to any tuner on the market in 40 years of plying professionally. I pluck the string, the tuner shows me if I'm sharp or flat...and they all did it in a stable reading, except for the helix tuner.

Maybe it's the cowboy hat...but sounded like you were getting some nice "Uncle Ted" (Nugent) lead tones on your solo! :)

Peter, you are dead wrong. I've said before...my Korg rackmount tuner has the exact same specs as the Helix tuner. It doesn't jump around. The Helix was "jumpy" on the tuner from the day I bought it in Oct. of 2015. Long before the added bars, back when it was just the one line of bars...it was jumpy. THAT is what people were complaining about in the beginning and prompted Line 6 to add the other line of bars thinking that would solve the problem. Instead, it gave me two lines of bars that are jumpy. :( There has never been in my lifetime a tuner that was "too good" to be used onstage. lol I've had guitar techs that worked for me that used nothing but the old Petersohn strobe tuners in the late 1970's and early 1980's. I highly doubt that the tuner in a modeling pedal that cost me $1,500 has a tuner that is just so accurate and detailed that it can't be used. Come on man! A tuner is a no-brainer. It either works or it don't. Yours does apparently. Mine is erratic. So are others. Never seen anything like this in a tuner before. Never heard of any tuner from the cheapest to the most expensive giving people problems. Hopefully Line 6 has a couple of Helices that do the same thing that many of us see with the tuner and can figure it out and get it to stop being jumpy and just tune like every guitar tuner ever on the market. If not? I'll just keep using external tuners so I can play professionally. Congrats to you and I am jealous that yours works so well. Figures the mine came with a gremlin living in the tuner. lol

When I said "let it ring" I meant for a couple of seconds while I tuned real quick and then pick it again if neccessary. Not ringing for long periods of time. And again...I will say that the problem with the Helix seems to be that it doesn't "capture" the note as other tuners do. It never settles down. And after I finally get the note in tune, I can try it again on the same string and it reads slightly sharp or flat. Also...a lot of times between songs onstage I like to "check" my tuning. With other tuners I can simply go down all the strings. My guitars are set up so that they stay pretty much in tune all the time (even the strat, but especially the Floyd equipped ones) So just for my own piece of mind I like to quickly check each string. The guitar is almost always in tune so that takes less than 10 seconds to visually verify with my Boss tuner. The Helix? The guitar appears to be slightly out of tune because of all the jumpiness. For playing onstage with a band that tends to move quickly from song to song...that is not viable for me. :(

LOL! I put your nickname as "Just Startin" Sorry about that fenderod! I guess I just looked up and saw that above the avatar and like an idiot thought that was your board name. My bad!

Thanks Just Startin' Sounds like you're almost constantly picking the note. Never thought to try that. lol Every tuner I ever used you picked a note (or the harmonic on the 12th fret) and let it ring while you tuned. I'm guessing you had to pick those notes real soft to do that? I would think that the actual picking of the note would throw it off a bit. Anyway, it looks like you are able to use the tuner. Not sure I can do that with a Floyd equipped guitar since my right hand would be turning fine tuners on the bridge as opposed to my left hand turning tuners on the neck (while picking the note over and over with my right hand). Thank you again for taking a moment to do that for us. :)

Thanks BigRalphN :)

BigRalphN... thanks for your report on what yours is doing. Sounds like yours works just fine. Mine does not. It's jumpy on both lines. If even one of them would line up steadily and consistently I would be happy. What I mean by that is...let's just say I'm tuning a string, any string. The thing never seems to "settle down" and "grab" the note like every other tuner I own or ever owned does. It's constantly jumping sharp and flat like it can't make up it's "mind". And when I finally get the string as close as I can tell to being in "tune" (even though it's still not steady)...I can strike the same string immediately after and it will show as out of tune! And even all of that, that I just described, doesn't happen consistently. There's no rhyme or reason to it. I do believe the tuner would be very accurate IF it would only zero in on the note being tuned. I have a 2005 Fender Custom Shop Jeff Beck Signature Strat, a 1978 Gibson Les Paul, an Ibanez RG 2020 Prestige, a JTV89f Variax, a 2006 Floyd Rose Redmond Series Model K retrofitted with a Floyd Pro (replacing the old speedloader for lack of strings), a 1985 Charvel Model 6, a Brian Moore I-Guitar, a 1984 original BC Rich Warlock, an Adamas Ovation acoustic/electric and a Yamaha acoustic/electric All of those guitars tune beautifully and quickly on my Korg rackmount tuner, Boss Tu-2 tuner, the tuner on my Roland VGA-7 modeling amp, the tuner on my Roland guitar synth, my clip-on tuner, and even an old Furman Power Conditioner I have with a built in guitar tuner....lol Only my Helix tuner (with it's beautiful huge display) has any problems whatsoever and does the same nonsense on every guitar. When I'm onstage and our singer is talking between songs...I need to be able to quickly check each string in a matter of seconds to ensure I'm in tune and then the drummer is gonna count "4" and I better be ready. I simply can't do that with the Helix. So I put the Boss TU-2 in front of the Helix and it works great. And since I have the tuner of the Helix set to mute the sound while tuning...I have it turned on simultaneously. So while the Boss is quickly showing me in tune...my darn Helix is still "nervous" and unsure if I'm sharp or flat. :( I keep asking people but nobody has done it yet...would you mind just grabbing your cellphone and filming yourself tuning on the Helix and maybe post it on youtube and link it here? I just want to see the thing work. lol That's all I want mine to do...just let me tune fast and accurately with no jumpiness.

It almost sounds like you and some others have "good" units (as far as the tuner goes) and the rest of us have "bad" ones. It just doesn't make any sense that the tuner is so sub-par to me that I have to use the BOSS chromatic tuner pedal to be able to get in tune....and yet you quickly and easily use yours with no problem. None of us have any reason to make up what we are seeing, but it just doesn't make any sense. Can you just whip out your phone and video tape yourself running through all 6 strings on your guitar and finishing tuning in a few seconds and put it on YouTube? I would love to see that tuner work good just one time! lol

I think everyone in this thread is misunderstanding the question. Brother is tuned down a half-step (did the same for decades in live bands to help with vocals when playing 5 45 minute sets per night). And if you have a floating trem like I do on some of my guitars...setting it up to play a half-step down is a big deal. And so is learning new cover songs that are tuned to standard. You can't just tune a floating trem with a floyd rose on it up a half step to practice and learn a song where the guitarist is tuned to standard. And you definitely can NOT use a capo to do that either. Could you imagine putting a capo on your guitar to learn Joe Walsh's licks on "Rocky Mountain Way" for instance? Or "Life In The Fast Lane"? Or any Stones tune. Or Aerosmith song? And all the great rock riffs that use open strings etc. and the lead breaks in those songs? You might as well not even bother learning the songs in that scenario because you won't be able to have any muscle memorization. It's true a new Variax equipped guitar would do it...but I'm pretty sure he's not going to go buy a new guitar for that. If he did, then he could just get another "regular" guitar with a fixed bridge and tune it to standard to learn the songs. And that would be my suggestion. I've always had a ton of nice guitars and always had a Les Paul in my collection. That's how I did it. Just used the guitar that had a fixed bridge. Not much help to the OP if he doesn't have an extra guitar with a fixed bridge. :(