MelThorpe

I think it depends on your expectations and the tone you are going for. I play in a modern country band, a classic rock band and I jam with a bunch of guys that goes from Eagles, to Metallica to Wild Cherry. I am getting absolutely fantastic tones. It is "modeling" and for me there may be something that is slightly off and doesn't quite feel exactly like a tube amp with an overdrive pedal in front of it cranked to 8. But, for me there is such a negligible difference that having so many tones at my toes is worth the very slight difference in feel/sound. Also keep in mind that once you dial in a good sound you may come back to the the next day and tweak it a bit more. Then the next day you tweak it a bit more. Rinse. Repeat. I used the POD HD Pro for years and it took me quite a while to dial in stellar tones, but once I got it dialed in with my guitar, my hands, my pick, etc I had tube snobs coming up to me asking what I was using. They thought I was using the POD for effects and I had a tube amp as well. I even had POD users coming up to me wanting me to send them my patches. Mixer settings, SAG levels, BIAS adjustments, etc. It all made a difference. My point is, going into it knowing that 8 times out of 10 you will find a tone that you really dig, but you may need to spend some times tweaking to get it to sound right. Even if it is moving a tone setting 1% one day, 1% more the next, 1% more the next until you get it where you want it. if you think about it you would do the same thing with a tube amp, every day tweaking a couple knobs here and there until you get it dialed. Its no different with a modeler.

^^^ This. I think the confusion lies in that some people may think L6 Link is a specific "feature". It isn't really. Its more of a method of allowing features to work between specific products. It's the medium that carries the communication, its not a set of APIs that allows one product to control the other automagically so to speak. Line6 would have to first add the L6 Link bits to the physical hardware, and then they would have to add whatever features you want to control between the devices to communicate OVER L6 Link. Its a way of communicating between the devices, not a specific set of commands or features. At least that's how I understand it.

I remember thinking the same thing with the "X" versions came out about a year and half after I bought my HD Pro, then I found out about the DSP chips. The problem you face in a situation like that is either you keep making the same version with the new chips and then try to discern version differences by cryptic serial numbers, etc, or you give it a new model number. Giving it a new model number makes it easier for the manufacturer from a support and customer service perspective to know exactly what unit a customer is talking about. It also helps the customer identify the product with the new chips. And they did go 3 years before introducing the X series. Unfortunately some people bought the HD series a few month before the X series came out and they may feel ripped off, but that's how product cycles go. Like buying your iPhone 3 months before the new one comes out. It's just part of the cycle. There is no way to time it perfectly.

I haven't tried the editor yet, and I am sort of trying not to because I want to get used to doing things on the board itself for gig situations. My biggest gripe of the HD series was it was painful to do stuff on the device itself so I always went with the editor. I could be at one of 5 different types of gigs and I want to be comfortable doing stuff on the device even if it takes a couple extra steps. But at the same time it would be easier for mass edits like copying a bunch of patches, rearranging, etc in the editor.

What kind of mess did you get into with the Wah? I found it to be pretty straight forward to modify the settings, then I just press the knobs in to set them to the default value if I mess it up.

I use the XLR output of my Ibanez acoustic into the XLR in of the Helix and it works great. No need for a DI that I have seen.