njglover

Yup, now that I've done the fix, everything works great.

It is completely worth it. Bug fixes and improvements aside, the Archon model alone is worth the update. There have been some reports of users (including myself) having expression pedal problems after updating, but they are very easy to fix. FYI, I use the Dual Rec on like 50% of my patches currently. I have not noticed it to sound different in any of the updates even from back before 2.0 to now.

Interesting. I was not selecting snapshots because I had not been using them on any of these presets. I find that going to any of the other snapshots doesn't invoke the glitch, only going back to the first one (the only one I had been using) AFTER going to one of the others triggers it. And, actually, I can cycle between all of the other ones as much as I want without triggering it, it's only going back to the first one that does. Odd.

Not exactly. Every time I have gone to use the Helix since then they have been fixed. I literally did nothing other turn the Helix off at the end of practice (having made no changes to my presets) and then turn it back on the next day in order to fix it (at which point it was already fixed). I checked every preset and all display the normal EXP1/EXP2 text instead of the EXP 1 glitched text.

I am the same, I don't do any EQ on my IRs. I find an IR I like to begin with. If it needs EQ, then I will probably pick a different IR. Mic choice really depends on what I'm going for. Most often I pick one that has an SM57 or a combo that includes it, but if I am going for a more old-school rock sound, I might go for a ribbon like the R121. I find that many of the other choices are too boomy or too shrill. The only edit I make to the Ownhammer IRs I have is I turn the volume on the IR block to -21.5 dB because that seems to match the stock cabs pretty well. I don't think using two 1024 cabs in parallel will sound better, but that's a choice for you to make. I find the 2048 to be better, more "real" sounding, but, like everything tone, that is subjective.

I also noticed that a couple of my presets, imported from a previous version, were only displaying "EXP 1" at practice last night. I figured I would come fix them today using the method here, but when I turned the Helix back on to do that, they were all fixed already without me having done anything. So... yay? Not sure why that would happen, but perhaps the shorting trick isn't necessary.

If I understand you correctly, this means that I am now using a return jack as my monitor input and a send jack as my line output, correct? If so, then there are a couple of problems I have with this. The first is that in one of the bands, we don't have our own mixer or run our own sound, which means that I actually generally use a microphone connected to the mic in to monitor the stage - this means that the sound guy can basically run sound as normal, but I get better control over the volume. It's not the ideal situation, but it requires no changes for the sound guy and a lot of them are... not that intelligent around here, so that works in our favor. For the other band, we generally do run our own sound, so I can just run a line in, but the send and return jacks are not balanced, IIRC, which is also not ideal. I would much prefer to run XLRs for my ins and outs to the board.

Right now, I am using the Helix for... everything. It processes all my guitar or bass sounds and I use the mic in to take a monitor out from our mixer for monitoring purposes (I run wired in-ears off the headphone output). The problem is that it seems that the only way to route things this way is to use up an entire path for just the mic input and a preamp model that go to a digital output only (so that they don't get fed back to the mixer). Is there a way to do this without using up a valuable path?

I just got it out of their Mesa freebie sampler. It is labeled as 412 MES-ST V60 MDRN-0. I have bought several of their others, but haven't found any reason to go beyond their freebies on that particular cab, so.....

I've been using the same Mesa 412 IR (one of Ownhammer's modern ones) I use for pretty much everything and the sound is killer. One of the things I never quite liked about my real Dual Rec is that the EQ controls are practically useless on the high gain settings, but the Archon, at least this model, has some really powerful tone sculpting capabilities. I CAN be scooped, if I really want, but I can also be super forward in the mix, which is usually what I actually want. My real Dual Rec is a little more mids-forward than the model on here (because it is a Roadster and I use a semi-open 2x12 with it), but the Archon puts me right where I want to be. So good.

I really am not sure why it is breaking for everyone else. I use it every weekend at practice (probably around 5 hours on average) and have taken it to several gigs and had no problems. Granted it lives in a padded SKB case when it is not in use, but that also means it does not stay plugged in, so I am putting more wear and tear on the jack.

The Archon is likely to start replacing the Dual Rec on some of my patches. Way more mids, it will sit so much better in a mix. And the cleans are fantastic! Love it, keep it up! Best gear purchase I have made in years.

The only edit I would make to your guide is that many pedals that do not have a threshold control are not actual fixed at all, IIRC. Usually, as you turn up the "compression" knob, you are turning up the ratio and lowering the threshold at the same time. Obviously this may vary from pedal to pedal, but I think most of them are not actually fixed. They are just not independently adjustable.

Well, maybe I should clarify that with MOST 12" guitar speakers it is not advisable as you will blow that speaker to smithereens. I have found basically one IR that I really like, it is Ownhammer's Mesa 4x12 with some combination of mics and I think boosted mids. I did a comparison of that vs the tone I got by actually recording the same guitar through a real Dual Rec into a real 2x12 and found it to be very, very close, but actually a little better because of the extra warmth. So I use that for a lot of my tones, but pretty much any time I need anything that isn't a Dual Rec I just use the stock cabs. And, in some ways, I think the stock Mesa 4x12 sounds a little better going through a PA speaker, just slightly clearer. And the stock cabs have the benefit of using much less DSP, allowing for more options. Which is a real concern now that I have decided I want to start doubling some tones. running a Dual Rec + IR through the left output and a cranked AC30 combo through the right (which sounds AMAZING, by the way).

I generally figure that the default pairing is how it was intended to sound, so I start there and fiddle with the high/low cuts and mic options. If that doesn't get me where I want to go, then I just start going through all the cabs. Usually I go to a cab, dial in my normal frequency cuts, then start switching between the different mics. I can usually tell pretty quickly whether or not a given cab is going to do what I want. Admittedly, most of the times I just stick with the "normal" option - my Rectifier amps all go through a Mesa 4x12 IR, my clean Fender tones generally through the "standard" option or through the 4x10 (which is also a standard option, really). After all, much R&D went into pairing amps with cabs/speakers. I do have one weird one where the tone I wanted was apparently a 100-watt Marshall through a 1x12, which is not even possible in real life but seems to work, so whatever.

When running live sound, the power amp for the PA is always at a fixed volume. You need to run it at a level where the amp is not clipping the speakers so you don't blow out the speakers. Everything that needs to run through the speakers needs to go through a mixer. You make sure all the gear going isn't clipping the mixer and turn up the mixer to the appropriate volume. If you can't get enough volume from there, then you didn't buy a powerful enough amp and/or speakers. This is live sound in a nutshell. So what he was referring to is essentially this: mixing with the Helix while leaving the PA at a constant volume. Though normally the sound guy would be in charge of the mixer instead. Also, my understanding is that the Helix has 4 "volumes" - first is gain, which controls your preamp gain, second is master, which controls your amp model's power section, third is channel volume which is NOT the same as channel volume on a real amp but is rather used to simply match volumes between your patches, and then finally is the overall volume that is generally controlled by the big knob.

I tried it many times, couldn't even get any help from Shure, so I gave up. Customer service here is way better. I agree that the dongle is a bit of a concern, but it's actually built pretty sturdy. Obviously if you drop the guitar on the dongle it's going to break (as will your jack, probably), but, since this thing only has a 50-foot max range (1/6th that of the Shure, I might add, despite working more reliably), it's really just meant for people like me who don't actually run around much but just don't want cables in the way. If your needs are different - you are playing stadiums and go all the way out front or there are a bunch of potential sources of interference or you need the signal to reach all the way backstage - then the G10 is probably not for you. But I have found it to, so far, be of very high quality (with the possible exception of the mounting of the USB power jack, as mentioned in the Relay wireless threads). Like it much better than the G50 or the Shure for my needs.

The Shure unit sucks. The build quality is great and the sound is fine, but it has the worst drop outs I have ever experienced. Aside from going out of range, I have yet to experience any dropouts with the G10, even under identical conditions to where I had dropouts with the Shure. We practice in the basement of a house and I would go into the next room, about 20 feet down the hall, and get dropouts on the Shure. Even with line of sight. Not so with the G10, can even go deep into that next room and have no problems. So if you want to talk about "no one complains about the Shure," take it from someone who has owned one. Line 6 is the wireless to get if you want reliable performance.

This is also important to note. At home, for practice (and also for recording), I don't use the G10. While, as I mentioned, I can't hear any appreciable difference, it's just a waste of the battery to be using it at home. And, frankly, I think it would be a mistake to use wireless while recording, even though it has the added benefit of completely removing your guitar from the house ground, meaning you cannot possibly get ground issues like you otherwise might. Wireless is intended for LIVE use, and I can 100% guarantee that if I can't tell any appreciable difference listening in expensive headphones at home with trained ears, than some rando drunk dude who doesn't even play guitar sure as hell isn't going to notice at the gig. So the important thing here is to not obsess over little tiny things that are not going to affect you in any meaningful way when applied appropriately.

I just don't see this argument to be the case. There is a slight difference, but I mean... I'm listening with studio headphones plugged into the Helix and obsessively A/Bed the G10 vs a Mogami Platinum 12 foot cable. This is a $100 cable, two of them would cost more than the G10. On top of that, compared to most cheaper cables, it is generally brighter in tone. Now, I know my hearing trails off at about 18 kHz (because I checked), but after extensive testing, I noticed at best a negligible difference. On my active Stingray bass, it seemed like it was slightly brighter, actually. And on my passive US-made Custom 24, it was maybe a smidge darker overall. I can imagine that if I were using the built-in cabs without major high cuts instead of the IRs I primarily use, I might notice more of a difference, but at that point... is the difference really relevant? I mean, the point is to have a tone that sounds like a real amp, yes? In which case, I would never run it any differently. I guess my point is... I studied recording in college, I obsess over things like the tone of picks, strings, pickup height, and cables, and I am not short on nice gear in the least. Even factoring all that in, I still feel that the difference in tone between the G10 and a real cable, at least when used with the Helix, is irrelevant at best. The two places where I might reconsider is if the amp is running at a different input impedance than normal (which is to say, different than the G10) OR if you are trying to use specific fuzz pedals. In both of these cases, the different input impedance will change your tone if connected via cable, so there is a real benefit to using a cable. If, however, you normally leave the Helix's input impedance on auto or the max setting, you are already using (generally) the same load the G10 does, so there is, again, a negligible difference.

The speaker sims are thought by many to not be that great, but you can fix that by applying the EQ as suggested above or by adding some IRs. In particular, I rather like the Ownhammer Mesa Boogie 412 IRs, they work really great for heavy drive tones. And they've even got a selection of those available free, so there's really no reason not to try it. With that, I really like the Solo OD amp for lead work and the Dual Rec for rhythm. I've managed to almost perfectly replicate my real Dual Rec.

Also would just like to clarify, monitoring via the headphone out is not going to cause distortion on speakers unless you have it cranked up too loud. So that is one thing to play with. However, you could also plug headphones in there to verify, as it should not distort those. I frequently use my Helix as an interface to monitor the sound coming out of the computer while I play via the headphones. It allows me to play along to YouTube videos so I can practice. I experience no distortion doing this.

DAWs will generally give separate numbers for input and output latency. One is often worse than the other, particularly with USB interfaces (at least older ones). I have been using the G10 with the Helix and have not noticed any significant latency.

They shouldn't go through the guitar chain. Make sure you have your global settings to run the USB monitoring separately. Also make sure your sample rate is set correctly and matches on Helix and Mac.

You know, I keep forgetting it has mic pre models on there. I mean, I have a really nice outboard tube pre now, but I ought to just use the Helix. Mic pre plus compressor, do it all on there... hmmmm.