duncann

I currently like the throaty with FcLow 350 and FcHigh 1600. But this is also in combination with the Cali IV Lead amp, a Redwirez EnglPro Tab57 12 inches and the built in XXL V30 cab in parallel. With different cabs, and possibly a different amp, my wah of choice would likely also be different.

I would replicate the HD preset, as far as effects/amps/cabs, on Helix as only a starting point to see how close or far apart things are. After that, working with the newly built Helix preset, promptly forget about the HD and the tone it produced, and dig in to Helix and all the numerous tools available to you that the HD doesn't have. Obviously, keep the basic tone your after in mind all along, but try not to constrain yourself by replicating a tone made on a previous generation device. Also construct the tone in context, even if the context is only the tone by itself :lol: .

Before I provide my opinion and experience with both I should mention that my use for bass on either device is fairly simplistic. A simple clean, clear, and defined bass tone with sometimes a phaser or more likely a flanger thrown in. I always made use of the modeling on both devices. Never play live, only into a DAW and always through headphones. On Helix, I recall one of my songs using a preset originally made for guitar, but adapted slightly for bass, that's basically a distorted guitar with a particle verb and high mix to give a dark, deep synth-like tone for a background ambiance track. The HD would actually be better for something like this because of all the available filters on the HD, which Helix still lacks. But for a clean, clear, and defined tone Helix is by far better than the HD. I can't ever remember being satisfied with the HD. The tone was always two or more tweaks away from what I wanted. The bass pack, which is necessary imo, made things much easier, but still frustrating. Part of the reason for the frustration was I could not seem to get away from using the EQs, which, on the HD, are a terrible thing to work with. On Helix, I don't think I could find it much easier to make a good tone, especially since they added a 3-band compressor. That in combination with the standalone EQ block that's taken from a Mesa Mark IV amp makes for pretty much an instant great tone. Not sure about octavers on Helix; there might be a fuzz type distortion in there that has this. Synths on Helix for bass might be a bit disappointing. They probably need to update whatever algorithm they use for pitch effects, as the tracking, in particular for bass, is rather poor. The wahs on Helix are generally good and most of them allow you adjust the low and high frequencies. Never tried one for bass though.

That global option seemed to appear from nowhere, lol. So @drutang's idea works now for the analog outputs.

I'm the opposite. I always found the HD a nightmare to get a good bass tone. And when I first got Helix, I still did struggle with Helix and bass a bit, but it was orders of magnitude easier. And now, with the addition of the 3-band compressor and the EQ block taken from the Mesa Mark IV, it is much, much easier to get a good tone. Never really experimented with the synths or pitch blocks and bass, but I imagine that once you have a good framework tone, adding in these effects would work well.

I don't think this can be done, as I remember reading from someone at Line 6 that the headphone volume control is a separate circuit, and analog.

You're probably asking the wrong person, as I've never had a real amp, real stomp boxes (did have several rack items), and work in a more or less virtual environment, so I use the edit software most of the time. But I can't imagine that turning knobs on a Boss digital delay versus one on Helix are that much much different; it all happens in real time on Helix too. And specifically for delay times, Helix does have a global option called 'tap-tempo pitch', which allows for being authentic (by changing the delay time you'll hear the resulting chaotic pitch weirdness) or transparent.

There's no way to change any of the knobs' behavior, but I would guess you're talking specifically about the encoders below the screen to change parameters? Generally, these knobs are sensitive to how fast you turn them. So a quick turn will result in a larger parameter change, and a slow turn covering the same arc distance will have a smaller parameter change. You can also push on them to return to the default parameter value.

I think you should go ahead and create an out of the ordinary RPG. It would be interesting. Just be sure to include CC128 and the Tuner.

Make a product that's good enough so that most people won't even consider not paying, and extreme measures like iLok won't even be necessary. It's even possible that iLok could end up unnecessarily costing Line 6 more in the long run. Although I have never seen or used Helix Native, I believe that Line 6 has a product that's going to be good enough, based on the hardware version.

When I used this amp on the HD, I remember it being especially buzzy or fizzy. I had to use it so the gain was around 25%-30%, no more than that. You could supplement the distortion if that's not enough by driving the amp harder in some way, such as a compressor set with a high output level, or a distortion with a low distortion and high output level. Or perhaps use a dual amp configuration with either of the amps' gain set no more than 30%. Despite the fizziness of this amp on the HD, it was still easily my most favorite. It's also interesting that on Helix, this amp does not have nearly the same fizziness problem.

In addition to what DiD said, if you add a title tag to the IR, when you import it back to Helix that's the name that will be used, otherwise if there is no title tag, the file name would be used, but with the numbered prefix still in place, you'll lose some characters that could be used for a better description. Hopefully none of this will matter later this year when we see what the streamlined, better update process looks like that they're supposedly working on.

This isn't true, at least in my case. When I was kid of around eight, I basically had guitar forced on me. I had no idea whether or not I liked the thing, and may or may not have even picked it up if it wasn't forced on me. Either way, I'm glad the decision was made for me because it's become something that's stuck with me for basically my entire life from the point I picked it up until now. It could have went a different direction... Besides, what's the worst that could've happened if I didn't like it? I suppose if it was continually forced upon me (which it wouldn't have been), I might have gone off and become a mass murderer. :ph34r:

Well that's something you don't see everyday. What's that little fucker beneath the hihat doing? :lol:

Haha. I like that quote. Like it or not - and since this is basically a guitar forum, most would probably favor like - humans have created an instrument that's more or less immortal. Its popularity may decline and rise over time, but will always be there for as long as the current evolutionary form of humanity, and if we make it further than that, even then, who knows. Don't know how accurate this info is but a little history of the guitar: http://www.guyguitars.com/eng/handbook/BriefHistory.html, from which my point is that the guitar has been around a long time (from our perspective) in one form or another, and will be for a long time to come, despite what society has to say about it. However, I suppose societies and its cultures may act as a catalyst for the evolutionary direction of the guitar.

I like to look at the bright side of things. Out of the hundred+ million people who have come and gone over the past half century or so, how many actually made guitar music that requires skill, appreciation, and dare I say passion, for the guitar and the music it's capable of making, and left something behind that's timeless and transcends culture? I'd have to guess relatively few. Also, how many more people have an attempt at the guitar now than did 30 years ago? I'd guess more, mostly because it's more accessible today, and cheaper. So would the numbers balance out to a degree, and the perception of society losing interest in the guitar just that, a perception? Just some random thoughts.

I've heard of people trying that before, even with Helix. There's nothing that prevents you from doing it. I've never tried it myself because I'm always working inside a DAW for the most part. I don't think it'll give you snapshot like functionality though, and it seems like it could easily become very confusing without some sort of static plan in mind that only ever goes from point A to B. Wouldn't hurt to try it, but even with this method, unless I'm missing something, I don't see a way to tell a block to be on, even though it may already be on, or vice-versa.

Not possible on the HD, it's just toggle. By the way, sending a midi command to explicitly tell a block to be on or off is currently not possible in Helix either, but I read that it's coming.

You're right. It seems odd that they have it this way. More broadly, I think the method they use for the actual swell needs to be changed to something that's not based on a threshold, if that's possible. If they were to do this, the swell effects in Helix could become more easily usable.

On the contrary, this gives you a great excuse for your poor decisions... :)

Here's a preset I quickly put together to test my idea: Auto Play.zip It sort of works, but not nearly as well as displayed in the video. It would probably take a bit of planning to actually use this preset, and the momentary functionality doesn't work very well either. However, there's a bit a flexibility if you were to use snapshots. You could change the scales and intervals used, among other things. To change the speed, there's probably several ways to do that. One would be changing the bpm per snapshot, or another could be changing the delays' note sync. Also, the faster you want the notes to play, the quicker the actual pick attack on the note must be or it won't sound right. It's a fun little way to achieve a musical quality that might otherwise be impossible to actually play on a guitar. I use this method in one of my songs, but as I stated earlier, it does take some planning and would be difficult to use effectively on the spot. That looks like a big advantage of that Revpad.

You might get close to something like this by using a harmony delay, or a combination of multiple harmony delays to increase the number of 'unplayed' notes. You'd need to set the mixes at 100%. Assigning these effects to a momentary switch should work as well, perhaps assigning the mix parameters to toggle between 0 and 100, instead of enabling/disabling the blocks. I would imagine the timing, at those speeds, would have to be pretty exact to sound correct.

A good example of this might be to ask where would current technology be if we never landed on the moon. Or another might be if the inner-workings of atoms and particles were never discovered. In the second example, certainly no one would be discussing Helix Native.

What's interesting is the definition of 'compensate for the delay' in this context, or why is the brain compensating based on certain cues? There's been research done that suggests the brain unconsciously makes decisions before it's consciously aware of the decision (is freewill an illusion? lol). Could this idea have something to do with the underlying mechanics of audio time of flight through air - for which greater latencies seem acceptable - versus a wired, virtual construct of sound - for which tolerance seems very low? Why is a compensation factor apparently absent for virtual sound? Is it simply a lack of cues or input information? Would the brain eventually create the needed compensation?