njglover

When I first got the Helix, way back when it came out, I spent hours messing with tones and hours sampling IRs (after not getting what I wanted with the stock cabs) trying to match up the modeled Dual Rec tone with my actual recorded Dual Rec tone. But there's a few patches where I've had to use both paths just to have enough DSP on account of how much DSP the IRs take up and I've seen a few people posting here about how they've gone from IRs back to just stock cabs for simplicity. Then the Stomp was announced and I thought hey, that would make a great backup unit if I could only cut down to a single amp+cab block. Since then, I've been experimenting with the stock cabs trying to match what I have with IRs and I think I've finally found something that works for that particular patch, anyway. Was trying to match an Ownhammer IR that was a 57+412 mic combo on a 412 Mesa cab with boosted mids, eventually settled on the Uber V30 cab with the 409 mic. With headphones, I can still tell the difference, but after plugging into my FRFR and auditioning them, there is almost no difference aside from slightly more mids on the stock cab (which is a good thing, IMO). Long story short, anyone else finding themselves moving to the stock cabs in an effort to simplify their setup? Are you learning any interesting tidbits along the way?

You'd need to change the output of your path to a specific non-XLR output instead of the default multi. You may also need to change one of the global settings if there is one that determines what feeds the XLR outputs, but I don't remember. Honestly, though, it'd be easier to just unplug the XLRs, no risk of messing up your patches that way.

I exclusively use headphones at home and just run direct to the PA at shows wherever possible. However, I have made a few tweaks to my sound based on what I hear at practice. As mentioned above, it may sound great with no high or low cuts when you are playing by yourself in headphones, but with a band I find that I cut lows at around 120-130 Hz and highs at about 7.3 kHz. There's not a lot of useful frequency information for guitar outside of those. I do lose a bit of lows, but that's what the bass is for. A good sound engineer would probably cut these frequencies anyway, but I'd rather not have to rely on them so I do it myself. If for some reason you don't practice together in a setting with PA speakers, then it might help you to get a PA speaker to mess with at home to make sure your sounds work. But you will need to turn up to a decent volume to check.

Yup. The release notes mention that they made some changes specific to getting the tuner to work better with the low B on 5-string basses. But in general it works better with bass, so there are probably so low end enhancements overall. It's easy enough to filter this out from the audible signal (I usually set the high pass on my cabs to 120 Hz anyway), but the only way to do it with the tuner would be to filter it out before it gets to the Helix at all. A wireless unit would separate your guitar from the house's ground, but the receiver would still be connected, so I don't know how much help it would actually be.

That's almost certainly what is going on. Sounds like low frequency hum. I'd bet that if you crank up the volume you will hear it until you turn the guitar volume down or go into tuner mode (which mutes the output by default). There are a number of things that could be causing it, but there's a good chance it's related to the room you are in, the cable you are using, and/or generally noisy power where you live. If you're not comfortable with electronics work, I'd suggest having a tech look it over, though there may not be anything you can do about it. I'd also look at getting a nicer cable if you are just using something cheap. The quality of the shielding is quite bad on cheap cables, so they are more prone to interference.

This is a bit of self-promotion here, but the Helix was used for all the bass tones on my band's album (and all the guitar tones, too): https://gunbladex.bandcamp.com/album/dark-dragon-king. Naturally there is a bit of processing after the fact, but nothing that couldn't have been done on the Helix. Just a bit of multi-band compression and EQ. Most of the album is heavy, so it may not suit everyone's tastes, but all of the tones are produced by the Mesa 400+ model with the 2x15 cab. Distortion is done by the Obsidian, occasional fuzz here and there but I can't remember which models (typically done by splitting to a separate, high-passed track for the fuzz). Child's Play also adds in a couple of the legacy synths to achieve a sub bass effect as well as to round out the synth pads.

I don't use Fluence, but yes, it probably has to do with the impedance. Guitar in is variable, aux in is fixed. The idea with the guitar in is that it will change to match whatever amp model you are using to more accurately model the total experience of that amp. Active pickups typically aren't affected as much by the input impedance, so you just put them in the aux in which is, I think, fixed at 1M impedance. However, you are certainly not going to hurt anything by going into the guitar in. I use the guitar in for both my passive guitar and my active bass, if only because I forgot the aux in even exists. Sounds fine to me, so do whatever works for you.

With Native, you have to deal with round-trip latency of the audio interface and computer. Depending on how good all that is, you might experience some delay, making it feel "wrong." The hardware units don't have this problem as there is virtually no latency. There's also the issue of the input. The 11R also has a variable impedance input, but if it's not set up right, you might be getting a duller tone from the guitar than you are used to. The Helix hardware units set that up automatically by default, so you don't really have to think about it.

I think to really take advantage of it, you need to fully commit to what I assume was always Line 6's intention with the Helix. That is, each song gets its own preset. This is how I have my Helix setup. I have a different setlist for each collection of sounds I might need - for example, one setlist is for one band, another for my other band, a third for generic sounds I might want when writing new songs, and a fourth for recording tones - and inside each of the two I use for the different bands each song gets its own preset. This is really easy to manage since setlists can be rearranged very easily on the Helix itself. In this way, the setlist serves as a literal setlist since I can put an entire set in order for the night. To be honest, the majority of what I play involves an amp, an IR, and a reverb. That's three blocks. For solos, I might add delay and either simply boost the volume (using a snapshot, for example) or I might add a boost pedal or compressor depending on the sound I want. In one instance, I also add a harmonizer. That brings me up to a maximum of 6 blocks in one song. The only issue I might run into is that I might have to divide up some songs where I normally switch between clean and dirty into two presets depending on how I do things (ie do I use two amps or just reduce the gain on one, do I want to use a chorus on cleans, etc). If I needed to, I could get rid of the IR and mess around with the stock cabs more, consolidating the amp and IR to a single amp+cab block. I understand that some people might have more complicated needs, but... that's why the full Helix exists. This is clearly not meant to replace it, but committing to the Line 6 mindset will go a long way toward making it possible.

I've always thought the idea of selling patches was kinda silly in the first place, but I think Marketplace is kinda neat in that it provides a more "official" venue. Obviously there is a market for this stuff, but it's not like they are offering something you can't get elsewhere or do on your own. The nature of the system is such that it is practically guaranteed that someone else will make a patch that is very similar to yours.

Someone here once made a PPC212OB IR for me that I still have, but it didn't quite do what I wanted and I'm wondering if anyone has ever come across a set of IRs for it. I've seen plenty for the regular, closed-back PPC212, but I really want some good ones for the open back one. I love that cabinet and I'd really like to add an IR of it to my arsenal...

I just use headphones at home, honestly. Lets me appreciate the stereo FX. For gigs, I'll go direct to the PA whenever I can; if I can't, I recently picked up the Headrush FRFR cuz it was relatively cheap and it sounds great. I use that at practice, most people probably wouldn't even notice it's not a "real amp" now that it's got some of the "feel" back.

Yes. There's also a tube preamp that's technically for mics that you could use. Or as another poster here said, just run an amp with no cab. Bass preamps are just DIs with EQ, basically, which can easily be done any number of ways on the Helix.

I haven't done this, so maybe someone else can chime in, but I believe for dual mono you need to have two paths, one panned hard left and one panned hard right. The outputs on the Helix works as left and right, so if you pan it that way, you've basically converted it to dual mono. Alternatively, you can set something to output only from the 1/4" jacks and something else to only output from the XLR jacks. Then you have dual stereo outputs. I have no experience with using real amps and 8 cable methods and the like, so can't help you there.

I haven't experienced the phasing issues, but I definitely find parallel paths annoying. Rather just have a good-for-bass fuzz in there. I forgot to mention that the legacy synths in particular are great for bass. The newer ones don't trigger very well with bass, IMO, but the legacy ones are quite nice. I have one patch with two different synths going on a parallel path. One triggers the synth strings with an autoswell and reverb to reinforce what the keys are doing in that section of the song, the other essentially works as a sub-bass for extra deep low end. It's HUGE and amazing. This is all happening underneath a distorted (via the Obsidian) bass tone. Shoot, just the pedals I would need to make this happen with real pedals would cost as much as the Helix...

I dunno, the only thing I think it's lacking are good fuzz options. I use it as my entire bass rig and I don't shy away from effects at all. While there may not necessarily be things that are bass-specific, most of the effects don't need to be anyway. For example, why does a chorus, flange, phaser, reverb, or delay need to be "bass specific?" These all work great as is. A lot of the legacy stuff works really well for bass, too, including the synths and fuzzes. The Obsidian 7000 you mentioned is absolutely killer, too, one of my favorite effects on the Helix. Again, I do think it could use more in the fuzz department especially, but there's still a lot there. I think it's easy to get caught up in the numbers game, but the reality is that you need to listen to the tones. I've not had any issues getting a great tone with it. Granted that my real rig (prior to the Helix) was a Mesa 400+ into a 1x15" cab, so my tone is pretty much perfectly represented here, but they've certainly covered all of the main tonal options. Certainly there will be people who will say, "But I use this obscure amp!" but that is also true on the guitar side - still no Rockerverb in there, for example. I think the challenge is to stop thinking about it in terms of the gear you are already familiar with and start figuring out what gets you the tone you are after. Also, there is a Sunn 1x12 bass cab option in there as well as two 1x18 (!) options. Though there's no reason you couldn't use any of the guitar cabs if that's what you really wanted.

Actually it's interesting you say that. I've recently been on a kick to move all my patches to using snapshots so that I don't have to remember to press the mode switch for different songs (I use one patch = one song). But I am now finding that I have to rethink my stomping because I can't just hit the same button to turn something on and off, I have to hit the correct snapshot button. I'm sure I'll get it sooner or later, but it's confusing for the moment...

Considering they have only just released the product after (probably) years of development, I don't think they are going to be making any hardware changes. Having said that, there isn't much need for them to add more jacks or develop their own foot controller when there are many MIDI controllers that will do the job quite well. You could get a Behringer FB1010 for pretty cheap and have all the footswitches you need. What would be cool, though, is if the Helix Control could work with this. But that relies on L6 Link, so probably not likely unless they make a new version or a converter for MIDI.

I've noticed that with a few of the amps, actually. Particularly when going for a clean sound with just a touch of grit to it. I think it's just the nature of the beast. The Archon models don't have much of it, though, presumably because they are newer models that use a bit more DSP.

I don't have the Stomp, so I can't speak to that specifically, but I don't see why you shouldn't be able to assign the bypass to the external switches. After all, bypass state is technically just reading a min/max state of the bypass parameter.

Yeah, kinda the whole point of the Helix is to go direct to a PA. I never bring amps to gigs anymore.

Certainly if you want a power amp worth having it will not fit very nicely on your pedal board. What you have now is about as small as they come for that amount of watts. What is the end goal of moving the amp to the front of stage anyway?

Power amps typically do not come in pedal format because they require very large transformers for that kind of power. The two exceptions are the Magnum pedals from EH, but those are like 15 watts, nowhere near enough to even start powering your cab. You'd need to just go into the FX return of your current amp from the Helix LT.

USB 1&2 are for the effected signal. After that, you have to specify where the direct signal is being sent, so make sure you've set that up on the Helix or you may not get any signal to those because, well, it isn't sending any signal there.

Huh, this is how I always did it before. There's also the option to change your current sound device from that speaker icon menu right on the taskbar. Not sure if that works any different/better.