robbieb61

Yep, Page created guitar "symphonies" on Zeppelin tunes. :) And his use of alternate tunings is just incredible. It's amazing how guys like him did all that while taking huge doses of heroin, cocaine, and Jack Daniels. I drink a couple of beers and my creativity and dexterity are shot. lol

BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I spit out my soda when I read that! DI is in the Line 6 "Break Room" (a strip club near the Line 6 headquarters) right now laughing with all the other guys about that post! :lol:

Nice Stones-ish sounding tune! And hell yes...the new modded Marshall sound is the one I'm using these days too. It's just exceptional.

No surprise here. Audiophiles and guitarists have known forever that tube amps sound better than solid state. My Helix is sounding great all by itself. But when I plug it into my DT50 tube head...it goes to another level.

Not really. Since the mid 1980's I always had a rack of effects and a midi pedal to control everything. And whether it was a Boogie set up or the last "real" tube amp I had (a Bogner Ecstasy head) I usually had my sounds all pre-programmed and it was one button for each sound with no latency (of course). And with the crybaby wah....no problems engaging it when I needed to. I'm loving the Helix because I can literally throw my guitar and the helix in the car and go to the gig. No truck or road crew needed. :) But yeah, the toe-switch kinda sucks. And yes...there is a "problem" with wah and snapshots that has already been documented and some workarounds "invented" heh-heh I'm just not using wah until they fix that problem in a future firmware update. :)

Been using wahs live onstage since 1979. Completely different environment when you're using a real amp and wah pedal. Not as much "dancing" on the pedals lol And I can also tell you 100% that my Crybaby switch is so much easier to turn on and off than the Helix one. Not a big deal...especially since the wah is not an option now with the 2.0 firmware and moving around from Snapshot to Snapshot. But once they get that sorted out it would be nice to have an "auto engage" on that pedal. :)

Brother you must have missed a lot of posts. :) That has been a complaint since day one. As I've pointed out before...Just try playing on a stage with nasty old carpet and uneven weak spots on the floor. Sure the toe switch works just "fine" when you're on a hard floor or a short carpet and you don't have to worry about singing, switching patches, and trying to entertain a crowd at the same time. But in the real world of live music...it's a bit of a pain. Having used "auto engage" wah pedals that required no toe-switch...I can tell you that it is THE way to go.

Pretty much every room I ever played in had a P.A. that had been analyzed and eq'ed. Including the rooms where I bring in my own personal P.A. (I have a DBX PA Drive Rack in my rack and a reference mic...so I white noise every room I play in and EQ the room...as do most pro's) And yeah, there's always a lot of power going to the subs of a good P.A. But none of that really matters if you simply use the low cut on the cab model OR if the sound guy knows what he's doing and engages the low cut button on your channel. My point was that if you use your global EQ to tweak your Helix to make whatever rig your using flat...then you are going to be sending a signal out ot the P.A. that is not gonna be what you might want it to be. Even if a PA is set up to be bass heavy or mid-heavy....you would still be sending out an altered signal that isn't gonna sound too good in the P.A. Under most circumstances it might not be that big of a difference and the soundman may simply have to play with eq controls on the mixer channel that your guitar is assigned to. I was kinda thinking of people who end up doing radical global eq to get their onstage monitor sounding right and end up with a bad "real" sound going to the PA. So far...I've never had to touch the global EQ. And every room, and every engineer I've worked with here in Vegas has been blown away by the Helix. :) I've also used it here in my home studio. And again...never touched the global EQ. I look at it like this...none of my "real" amp rigs over the last 38 years ever had "global eq"...heh-heh, so why start now? You shouldn't really need it. But that's just my opinion and experience. I suppose your mileage may vary.

My take on all of this would be...what does it sound like in the P.A. system out front that the audience is listening to? For instance...you use an analyzer, run your noise, have your ref mic and you get your FRFR cab tweaked out perfectly. But then your signal is going out to the "mains" of the P.A. for people to hear in the crowd. That EQ you worked so hard on is useless now. If the P.A. is set up correctly out front it's already been room analyzed and eq'ed. So wouldn't you want to be sending your signal with NO global eq on it to the P.A. system out front?

I had several musicians in the audience and they all wanted to know how I was getting my guitar sound. One of the pros in the audience was a sound engineer and he told me had NEVER heard a guitar sound that good through a P.A. system before. And his ears are really good as he mixes a lot of the big venues here in Vegas. I was very happy! That modded marshall is a monster as is the matchless. I also used a Fender twin amp + cab snapshot for a more straight ahead rock rhythm and a lead snapshot using that amp as well for a more classic rock lead sound. Everything sounded articulate, full, and warm. Straight from the Helix to the P.A.

DOH! :lol:

Hey I put video up of me using the Helix last night onstage here in Las Vegas. The clean sound is the Matchless channel 1. The lead is the new modded Marshall amp model that came with the latest firmware (version 2). It's all amp model with NO distortion pedal in front of it. Check it out: https://www.facebook.com/robbieboyette1/videos/812288378907832/

Guitar pickups make a huge difference as has been said above. Pick attack (or finger attack in the case of those who don't use picks) also affects the tone. And of course the other variables such as type of guitar, the wood in the guitar, the scale length of the neck, the correlation of the stars and the moon...heh-heh

I actually keep hearing a "chorus-ey" sound...but I'm still on 2.0 -Robbie

Snapshots have turned the Helix into a monster! :)

No it didn't. At least not in practical use. "Before" snapshots...If I had a preset with a crunch and a lead amp sound set up on one preset using footswitch control and the wah pedal acted EXACTLY like I expected it too. Like a "real" wah pedal would. I could push the toe switch and have wah whenever I wanted it. Switch back and forth between amps and the wah was still on unless I turned it off (within a single preset). And if I switched presets the wah would be "off" when I came back to the previous preset. Now...with the ultra-cool snapshots (I LOVE them by the way)....I have 8 different sounds set up using 3 different amps all on one preset. And if I use the wah on a lead it does NOT stay on until I turn it off when switching from one snapshot to another. It acts completely different than it did before. That's kind of the point that all of us are making about it. It doesn't "act" like any wah pedal on Earth lol This is why I am simply not going to be using the wah until LIne 6 has a chance to address that problem. I never use a volume pedal (I enjoy creating different tones with the volume control of the guitar itself)...so for now my expression pedal is useless for me. But I do want to say: The snapshots are GREAT! Made the Helix so much more useable. The wah will get fixed and then all will be great!

Before you go buying patches...make sure you ONLY buy the ones that are new and made to go with snapshots. All the old ones out there are designed to be used with footswitch controllers and won't work with snapshots. :)

Good to know that Line 6 is on top of it. :) As for your question...here is the scenario: I'm playing a gig. I'm singing the song. The last note I sing is held while I launch into the lead break. This lead requires wah pedal. I have the "lead snapshot" right beside the "crunch snapshot" As I sing the last note, I kick on the lead. As I'm playing the first note of the lead, I stomp on that infernal toe switch to activate the wah and now I'm all good. As the guitar solo ends...I'm coming straight back into vocals and rhythm guitar. NOW...I have to somehow finish the lead break, dance on that toe switch and then switch back to my rhythm guitar snapshot. All without screwing up the end of the lead, the first chords coming out of the lead, and the vocals. :( What I have done in the past is simply go to the crunch sound, get in my first chord and vocals and then fumble around with that hellspawn toe-switch lol At least then I was able to keep some illusion of cohesion in the music. Not possible now at all. In my humble opinion...for a LIVE guitarist onstage who also sings...the optimal thing would be for the wah bypass to be unaffected by snapshots. Like a "real" wah does when you have it in front of a real amp. And then in "awesome world" it would also not require the toe-switch to activate. But simply work by moving the pedal and turn off by raising the pedal all the way....but that's another story for another day. :)

Phil...you might be going too far out on a limb here. :) You're sounding like Bill Clinton back in the 1990's when he said: "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." lol! "Bug" or not...it IS what it IS. And it sucks when you're playing live. I'm sure Line 6 is taking a look at that to "fix" it (or whatever word would define what they will do to make the thing work the way it should) :) Until then...I'm just not using a wah.

The wah doesn't work right with snapshots. I finally just removed the wah from the chain. :( I'll put it back in when Line 6 gets it figured out. :)

That's kind of what I figured. And it DOES make sense. For instance...I like to start the Helix up with "snapshot 1" and work from there. But if I were editing snapshot 3 and hit "save" before going back to snapshot 1...then the thing would start up on snapshot 3 instead of 1. I just ignore it...unless I'm tweaking the settings of a snapshot during a session. In that case (where I've changed a setting)...I will hit "save" one more time before I shut down just to make sure.

Actually...I was thinking of a "live" situation where I would come out of the helix to the DT50 and use the XLR of the DT50 to go straight to the P.A. system out front. I already long ago figured out a way to do what you're trying to do (come back to the Helix with the tube sound)...to do that I did this: Set up an effects send/return before the cab in the Helix. Send to input of DT50 amp (with all models and cabs turned off) Then I used a Rivera Rock Crusher out of the speaker output of the DT50 (so I'm getting the tubes) I sent the line out of the Rock Crusher back to the Helix effects return. Done. But instead of going through all of that...I'm thinking I could simply send my complete Helix sound (complete with cab) to the DT 50 and turn off cab sim in the DT50 and simply come out of the XLR of the DT50 to the P.A. The drawback to that is...I would get the Helix cab sim affecting the tone of my physical 4x12 cab onstage.

I'm not currently using any expression pedals (because of the bug with the wah & snapshots that was discussed in another thread) and yeah...the second I move from one snapshot to another the "E" for edited comes up. I'm just ignoring it. :)

So if I disabled the cab simulator in my DT50 and used the cab in my Helix...does the XLR out of the DT 50 still come off the transformer of the amp and add the tube "flavor" to the sound?

I'm thinking I'm a little of all 5 of them. lol