robbieb61

Reading that link to the Fractal Forum...and right off the bat the initial post is just wrong.
The guy is talking about why guitar cabs are mic'ed up close in the studio and says: "This is done primarily for isolation reasons."
WRONG.
In the studio there is no need for "isolation".

The reason guitar cabs in a live situation have generally always had an SM57 mic right up on the cabinet grill cloth is because that microphone is designed for close up use.
Take most any microphone and put it right up to your mouth and speak. Then move it back about six inches and speak again. You will just have lost a ton of volume and pretty much all the low end.
THAT is why, when using a dynamic instrument microphone...you always get as close as you can with placement. It's the way the microphone works. 
Just wanted to rant about that for a second..."isolation reasons"...has this guy ever BEEN in a recording studio? lol

3 hours ago, BBD_123 said:

The fizz is the result of not setting the patch up right. You can set up excessive (unrealistic in real-world) levels of gain very easily and it will sound crap. You can not cut the HF quite right and it will sound crap. The fault isn't in the unit.

You can do that on an amp too....For instance if you turn the drive all the way up and turn the mids all the way down with highs + bass dimed and keep the master very low.

But my point was: For those of us who use plenty of mids and run the master at 5 and above...I should be able to set the drive on 7 the bass on 5, the mids on 7 and the treble on 5 without having to make a bunch of high cuts (just like I always have on a real amplifier).

By making a big high cut on my IR I'm able to get the sound I want...but my gut feeling always tells me that I'm losing upper harmonics when I use high cuts. Which may be why there has been such a bad rap about Line 6 not having amps modeled as well as the competition.
We have to be losing SOMETHING other than "fizz" when we make these cuts. 

I SHOULD be able to pick a high gain amp, add a cabinet...and play with the above tonal settings without "fizz".  But instead I'm doing high cuts at 5.6k  
Just can't help but feel like I'm losing some richness and texture by doing that. If not for that sizzling fizz...the amp models sound great.  
THEN, we have to start cutting highs and end up with a somewhat compromised tone.

This is just my opinion. I do love the Helix and gig with it every week (playing tonight right here in Las Vegas). And I DO achieve a great tone. Have had many other professional musicians tell me that I have the best tone they have ever heard through the P.A.
But it does seem that having "Fizz" in your product that has to be tweaked out is kind of defeating the purpose when trying to sell the unit at a music store.

I would think that at LEAST Line 6 would create some higher gain presets that were already tweaked with high cuts to get rid of that fizz so that a person trying the unit out in the music store would be able to hear it sounding good. AND have a preset with which to see and hear how the high cuts can work.

Or...just get rid of the damn fizz when you model the amp. lol

On 5/30/2018 at 9:00 AM, BBD_123 said:

 

...have too much gain in their signal

 

I personally am a classic rock player...but a LOT of players use a lot of gain. And a lot of amps on the market ARE high gain. 
I like a lot of gain on my leads and I don't like to use distortion pedals in front of the amp. So I always used relatively high gain heads (my last "real" amp was a Bogner Ecstasy 101B).
I currently use the Archon model in the Helix for my crunch and lead tones.

I would think that if a player wanted insane amounts of gain then they SHOULD be able to achieve that without having to worry about fizziness. 
I've never used an Axe unit...but the thing I hear about them when reading forums is that it does not have that fizziness in the high gain amps. 

I've said it for a long time...Line 6 should get in there and make these models sound like an amp. Get rid of all that fizz on the top. 
Yes, I can (and have) tweaked it out of my sound. But why did I have to do that? And by doing high cuts...I always feel that I'm "losing" something up top other than just "fizz". 

Just seems stupid to create a modeler and have it sound that way. From what I've read...Fractal didn't make that mistake. 

Don't get me wrong...I love my Helix. But the amps themselves should be the main event in a modeler. No need for "Fizz" in a high gain amp. 
And if Line 6 thinks there should be "fizz"...then they should have a "fizz" parameter that is set to "0" by default so players can add in fizziness to their taste (bet NOBODY ever would).

8 hours ago, leadplayer420 said:

I so wish I could however I bought the unit from Sweetwater and no local stores stock the Helix upto 100 miles away lol. Maybe I should just return it for another Helix and see what happens. Thx!!

Do that immediately. I buy most of my gear (including my Helix) from Sweetwater as well. Just write your sales rep and tell him you think you have a defective unit and have them ship you a new one.

Maybe you have a bad unit? 
I use Duncan JB's in all of my guitars (best pickup ever).  I'm getting great sounds and have other musicians at gigs come up to me and tell me I have the best guitar sound in the P.A. that they've ever heard. 
I'd say take that Helix to the music store you got it from. Plug your guitar in and show them what it sounds like. Then take one of their guitars off the wall and plug it in just to make sure. 
Then take ANOTHER Helix (the display one) at the store and plug into that one and see if it sounds the same. 

My guess is it will turn out to be a bad unit and they will replace it for you.

That is badass!

On 4/11/2018 at 5:38 PM, cruisinon2 said:

 

The best way to run stereo live is to NOT run stereo live. In headphones, or through studio monitors, stereo can be magnificent. Live, it's a $h*tstorm. With the set-up you describe, half the room will hear one amp tone,  and the other half, the second amp. Weird phase things can happen, depending on the room. Same for effects...with stereo delays getting especially strange depending on where you're standing. The only pair of ears that's gonna hear everything the way you'd want it, belong to the one guy who happens to be standing dead center between the mains. 

 

Dont try and run stereo live...it is SO not worth the hassle. Just my 2 cents...

I concur 100%. 
I DID use to run a stereo Mesa Stereo Simulclass tube power amp to two Marshall cabs...but it was a complete "wet/dry" set up. With one side being dry (no effects) and the other side being wet (nothing but effects).

That sounded awesome live. But it was still a mono P.A.  out front.  Just had both cabs mic'ed up for the soundman to mix the dry and wet signal to taste out front.
But real stereo? Cruisinon2 just gave you your answer on that.

On 4/17/2018 at 11:15 AM, cruisinon2 said:

 

 Does it sound like I'm standing 6 feet from my beloved Marshall 25th Anniv. Jubilee 4x12 that I dragged everywhere for 2 decades? No. And it won't. But that doesn't make it any better or worse... just different. They both have their merits. 

 

If it's the "amp in the room" aesthetic that your after, you're not gonna get that from a modeler, because it's not what they're designed to do 

I don't quite understand why everyone always says this.

I've ALWAYS had a big guitar rig which was usually including a rack full of effects. 
And the sound I've consistently gotten out of my Helix is JUST LIKE STANDING IN FRONT OF AN AMP. 

I wouldn't have kept the damn thing if it didn't sound that way. 
I'm not sure what the heck most of y'all are hearing...or maybe none of you ever played through a complete professional rig. 
But I have spent my whole life on stage with top notch gear behind me and it feeding back to me through a separate monitor mix in front of me as well. 

My last rig before the Helix, for instance, was a Bogner Ecstasy 101 B head going through a TC Electronic GForce and ending up in a Bogner 4x12 Greenback cabinet. 
And that was my smallest and simplest guitar rig in my whole life. 

Before that I was always using different versions of a poor man's "Bradshaw Rig".  For instance I had the Mesa Studio preamp running out into a rack full of effects ending with a Rocktron HUSH unit and going into a Mesa SimulClass 295 stereo tube power amp into 2 Marshall 4x12's.

Anyway...my Helix DOES sound like "my" sound that I always got with all my various rigs over the years. 

Maybe my idea of the "amp in the room" and other people's is different. If I thought my Helix sounded like some studio-homogenized sound...I would have returned it immediately.

To me it sings. And I play at a pretty loud volume as well. I would set my rig up with Helix and Bose L1 Compact beside a Marshall head and 4x12 cab any day onstage standing right in front of it. 

I guess the answer to the original question of whether DI would weigh in on this subject is:  NO

22 minutes ago, marmatkat said:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DWIM

 

Sorry, I couldn't read all of your message on my phone.

Lol

Most of us already have solutions (I went with the Bose L1 Compact and love it).
It's too bad Line 6 didn't roll this out a couple of years ago. I would have jumped on it.

3 hours ago, Line6Tony said:

Sorry guys. One thing at a time. All forums should now be visible, and I resized the button. @soundog, the graphics are a riot!

Thank you Tony! :)
Sorry to whine so much about it. I use my phone as much as my PC so it was really screwing up the forum for me.
Thank you for getting that removed. 

This is starting to really get old. :(

Does no one at Line 6 ever visit their own forum,

Obviously whoever was working on the forum design for Line 6 didn't look at it in mobile. 
Dumb mistake...but stuff happens.

Maybe Phil can point it out to them and they can take a look at it and remove it.  :)

If you have some insider ability to let them know about this Phil...please do. 

4 hours ago, PaulWilliamson said:

P.S. My car is actually a 64 Ford Anglia 

Love classic cars!  I am a longtime MG owner myself. Owned a 1973 MGB and a 1974 MG Midget.
Both cost around $3,000 to buy initially...and about a million dollars over the years in parts and upgrades (not sure what the automotive equivalent of "G.A.S." is lol).

Finally sold them off before I moved to Vegas 10 years ago. Didn't think they would be able to withstand 115 degrees Fahrenheit in the summers out here in the desert. 
I loved my Midget the best though. What fun it was to drive and tinker on. Before I was done with it I had personally installed a rebuilt over-bored 1275cc "A" series engine in it, put headers and a free-flow exhaust on it, changed it from a points ignition to a modern electronic ignition, and put a super charger on it. 

It was truly a "pocket rocket" and when you are going 110 miles per hour in that little go-kart...it's VERY exhilarating...lol  

On 4/6/2018 at 4:15 PM, PaulWilliamson said:

I'm probably being paranoid, It's not every day I spend more on a guitar effects processor than I did on my last car :)

WTF?  What car do you have? A 1980 Ford Fiesta? lol

This is pretty bad. :(
And not only this problem...but I just saw that if I'm not logged in, you can't see ANY forum on desktop except the "Dream Rig" one!

So that means a new Helix user looking to check out the Helix forum...can't.

I would have fixed this stuff on any of my sites in about the first 5 minutes. Somebody needs to find a new webmaster for Line 6

Sounds to me like you had one that had been opened and played on at the store.

This is super easy to remove it...why is this still happening?

Grrrr... I'm on my phone now...this sucks

Really need that fixed. I literally can't use the forum on my smartphone anymore. :(

Please get rid of the "Click here for common faqs and basic information" side popup on mobile. 

It makes the forum unusable now on my Samsung phone.

It covers up text on the right side of the screen and is impossible to dismiss.

Here is the official vid. Sounds good on this one.

59 minutes ago, spikey said:

Interesting- I don't seem to have that and you do. I'm thinking the same thing happened with the tuner... Now if we could just get that nice one you are using.

Lol!  I want that great Helix tuner too! :)