finglestink

I think it's also worth adding (others may not think this but so what?) that recording a DI and reamping is an excellent way to waste your time fiddling with the sound, it's just not productive. Record your sound including effects as part of your performance and commit to that sound. Record once, done, no additional time wasted trying different patches etc. If you can't nail the performance without having to re-record bits of the DI signal to make one good take, there's a simple answer to that.....PRACTICE. Reamping is one of the reasons albums etc take so long to make these days. No-one has a clear understanding of what they are trying to achieve when they start recording and leave it to the end by which time the enthusiasm for it has dropped off somewhat and the spontaneity of a great performance is lost. Stick with your existing audio interface and record as you would in a studio, create your sound, commit to your sound, play the guitar....done.

why not just use a send block at the front of the patch and then send the clean signal out of send1 ?

I haven't logged in around here in months (actually might not have even posted before), hence very late reply. I use Helix into the front of my Vox AC10 for practice and in front of my Vox AC30 for gigs. Not the best amps to do this with as they break up at high volumes, but keep the vox preamp gain down and the vox volume at a level that it doesn't break up and it works well. Obviously a totally clean amp would be better, but I still get some very usable tones in the following manner. use helix amp sim with NO speaker sim. assortment of effects before and after the helix amp sim. Last point of the helix chain goes out via send1 (instrument level) to a hardware guitar graphic EQ pedal. The graphic EQ pedal is key to this. Just adjust this by ear to dial out the colour of the real amp's preamp. You will need to change the graphic EQ settings at different volume levels. I mostly use the Matchless amp simps with the gain cranked and they sound mighty impressive to me. The physical graphic EQ pedal is a "must" for me. Tweaking virtual eq's in the Helix is a bit tedious, so much easier to just move some sliders up and down to taste ! Although of course once you have a good physical graphic EQ setting you could replicate that in a Helix patch and then dispense with the real EQ pedal. Just try it, there's no rules and you might be pleasantly surprised as you maintain all of that real amp in the room thump etc and the sound projects well, plus you get the sound you want not the sound that the real guitar amp on its own says you are going to have.