markman87

And now it really is here. ;)

Yep, a solid update! Looking forward to loading it later tonight!

:(

Line 6 does not:

1. Share their plans for the future

2. Beta test their firmware updates

3. Release regular, timely upgrades

All of which is doing them some harm IMHO.

 

Why would you write that they don't beta test their updates? Why do they have a bunch of beta testers if they don't beta test?

 

They are certainly releasing regular updates. 1.06 4 months after release added 9 effect along with 3 amp channels. Then they were busy with the editor, then came the massive update which implemented snapshots — and trust me, there's a lot of fractal owners who dream about snapshots, it's much better than scenes, even in their opinion.

 

The problem is we're comparing Helix to products that have been out a LONG time. Fractal has been working on the same software since the standard and ultra days, and back then things didn't have the same pace. And take a look at Kemper. For years people have been asking for new and better effects, and not until now is it being implemented. Compared to the competition, this year has been really effective for Line 6, and this is all the ground work that'll give us a lot in the future, I'm sure.

 

I'm also excited to see updates, but as long as they keep improving it for th next couple of years, I won't complain. And even if there wasn't any more updates after this last one, I wouldn't complain, but ask myself whether I'm satisfied as is or well it and buy something else.

 

And I really don't get the whole transparency thing. I'm glad they don't tell their customers a bunch of things. I like being pleasantly surprised. ;)

 

Oh, and this just my opinion, not trying to silence anybody. I know I don't have that power anyway. :)

...Avengers movie!

 

 

 

What? What did you think I was gonna... Oooh - naw, I'm cool there, whenever's good....

 

I see what you did there ... well played, sir, well played ;)

If you are using the Helix to run into an amp and not using the modeling, you wasted a whole lot of money.

What? Some peoples pedalboard cost more than Helix, and when you think about the routing, 8x8 interface, being able to monitor yourself with an amp and going to FOH with modeling enabled, how can one say that it's a waste of money? I don't use an amp with Helix, but Helix is designed to be flexible enough to use in all kinds of situations. That's why they also gave us 4 loops ;)

Depending on the original amp's complexity, quirks, and nuances, HX component-level modeling takes anywhere from three to eight weeks per channel. If we were to speed up that process—or take shortcuts—the amps wouldn't sound and behave as close to the real thing as they do. Quality over quantity is the mantra.

 

It's not unlike CGI. Crossing the uncanny valley takes a ton of expertise and a lot of time.

I really appreciate that the Helix crew decided to go the quality route! I'd rather wait longer for it, and you already gave us a lot with Helix from the go and the very substantial updates! Keep up the good work! ;)

I can't tell what cabinet this was from. US Custom does't really tell me much. Anybody know what cab this free IR is?-Max

I remember reading it on thegearpage. Joe Quick wrote this:

 

"Our UK Custom is going to sound in the same vein as a Marshall and Orange. The US Custom is going to be in the same vein as a Mesa and EVH. I will note these aren't just simply adding two cabs together and printing. We're breaking each impulse down into many multiband sections and combining them in a unique way to make an ideal balance that not only sounds great but will give your guitars more perceived volume than a traditional ir or real cabinet can provide."

I never seem to find time to write reviews, although I gain lots of knowledge from those that do and I thank you very much. Something so amazing happened this last weekend involving my Helix I just had to write this one in. Now you have to understand I baby my Helix, it's expensive, I love it and so I make every effort to protect it. This past weekend my Helix suffered a gut-wrenching 30"-36" drop FACE DOWN onto a concrete floor. I was in the other room and heard a loud crash - so loud it set my glass break detectors off in my house. I arrived to find my beloved Helix face down on the fore-mentioned concrete floor. Needless to say I am sure I stopped breathing and my gut seemed to turn inside out. With a heavy heart I looked the unit over - not a scratch on it. I plugged it in and it worked perfectly. Now I do NOT suggest trying this yourselves; however, I have to give a big HOOAH to the folks at Line 6. THANK YOU for building a piece of kit with this kind of impeccable strength and quality!

 

Best,

James

Wow, man. That must've been a big chock! Glad it survived with splendor :)

It's also good to remember that some of them also give you cabinet IRs or "tone match" IRs, which adds to the amount of work.

 

I haven't bought a patch yet, but I understand why people do. Maybe just to see how people go about making patches ans set things up.

Just bought my wife a Sire Marcus Miller M3. $329 delivered, plays and sounds great and has selectable active/passive electronics. The active electronics run at 18V and the bass weighs 7.5 lbs.

Got a Sire Bass, the Jazz bass version, more than a year ago. It's a beast! I simply don't understand how it can be so cheap and so good. I think mine is better than most Mexican fenders and even as good as some American made ones. Maybe I lucked out, but they are great, and cool to be able to switch between passive and active controls.

Perhaps some of them are just models of a different channel of the same amp?

Yes they count channels, which makes more sense because sometimes they don't model the whole amp (e.g. the Shiva is only gain, not clean channel, recto is not all modes etc)

 

If Helix had 25 complete amps that would be a lot! But even with the 53 channels you get a big palate to play around with.

 

Wonder which amp makes it with this minor update, a Dumble(ish) amp or more hot rodded Marshal stuff (Suhr PT100, Friedman BE100 etc) or more high gaib stuff.

Are the delays really that bad? Vintage Digital was a great add on. The DMM model isn't my favourite DMM model of all time but it's defitinly not a toy

The delays are spectacular. Just look up the videos comparing it to the Timeline on YouTube!

 

The Helix delays have a lot of character. strongly disagree about what's been stated about the delays. They are totally newly modeled effects, unlike the reverbs, that were ported from HD and optimized. While the reverbs are good, I'm sure they will be remodeled at some point, but the delays? Don't change them, add more, but don't change them, please! Love the transistor tape delay and mod swell delay! YMMV.

well, i probably did try it before but i was going thru the amps last night to see if any grabbed me that i hadn't really used much and the mail order twin really grabbed my ear, it has it's own thing going on for sure and i can see why some well known players covet the sound of this. nice for some raw old time rocking sort of sounds. does anyone else dig this particular model?

I had a lot of fun with that when I just got Helix. I really liked it as a good base tone. I used it mostly clean, and then I slammed the front end some drive pedals. Really awesome, gotta get back to that one again! So many cool things in this box! :)

I'm certain more amps and effects will make to Helix, probably with the next update as well. It's just the name of the game, the competition offers it, so they will too. But I don't think Helix will ever get as many as Fractal and that's fine by me. I'm never going to be without something to check out i Helix anyway. But when you think about how much better Helix is now compared to when it came out, it'll be very exciting to see what It'll look like in a year!

My guess is that they modelled the same whammy as they did for the HD. I don't for one minute imagine they went out and bought all the latest/best vintage pedals. You make a very valid point, it would be great to know what they modelled, if anything. Did they just create the pitch shifter and call it whammy?

Then how did they model the Klon, the Timmy and so on? From people comparing these pedals with their analog counterparts — and the sheer quality — it's clear that they did model them after the real deal.

 

I think Helix is worth the price as it stands, but I'm sure a lot of good updates well come. And the whole comparing with Fractal really gets old. They've had their stuff out for years, and it's taken years to get so much quality stuff out. Consider also that Fractal pretty much only have a couple products, compared to Line 6 that has a whole music industry covered.

 

How about we give them some time to see what they can do? Or sell Helix and move on. All the sour comments is getting tiresome.

If I had my druthers I would prefer to see more frequent small interim releases with less features (bugfixes, new amps/cabs and effects, etc.) and a periodic large release (e.g. snapshots) with major new features. What concerns me about spacing releases out too far and lumping everything into them at once is that it means waiting months for bug fixes. It is difficult to do a major release that does not introduce some kind of bug(s) and it is a shame to see them take months to get resolved. However, too many interim releases can also cause bugs and they require additional regression testing and Line6 resources. There is also the issue that every time there is an update there are a certain percentage of users who have difficulty with the update process. Users also don't want changes that cause them to frequently have to modify their presets. It is a fine line for Line6 to walk. Anyway, my preferences regarding this have pretty much zero impact so I will just be happy dancing to the piper's tune and looking forward to what comes out next.

I think that those kind of updates should be divede into two categories a content and features and b bug fixes.

 

Not that a) can't contain a bit of b, but if something really needs a bug fix it needs to come fast. But that's what I felt they did with with 2.1. It came quickly after 2.0. The same with 1.6.5 (? I think) it came quickly after the 1.6.

 

Another thing is I think that three or four months are quick enough for content related updates. Others want one every month, but in the end Line 6 will choose their strategy, and I'll be content (see what I did there) with the updates – as long as they have what I personally want ;) JK

Sooo, is there any real clue as to when we might see another update for the Helix????

Can't be 100 percent sure but DI said they were aiming for "tail end of October". So maybe we'll see a little something in the end of October/ beginning of November. But only time will tell. I rather they take their time and bring something awesome to the table, just like they did with 2.0.:)

Last night after the band played and the club cleared out I went and setup the 4 cable method to give it a try. I didn't want to actually do the gig with 4CM until I was familiar with it, so I haven't tried it with the band yet but I heard how it generally sounded.

 

I noticed when I ran the time based effects (reverb, delay) into the fx loop they sounded more clear and pure which was good. It still seemed like the distortions were the same, when I go to the low register of the guitar I get this ridiculous 'farty', rumbling, non dynamic sound. The distortions do sound decent in the mid range of the guitar neck, but its important to point out that everything sounds alright when I'm playing alone but with the full band its a totally different story.

 

Rd2rk said I should run the distortions before the effects loop, sending them straight to the marshals preamp, as far as I understand this is what I had been doing before and it won't change my main problem, that being the sound of the harsh and 'boxy' sounding Helix distortion blocks.

 

What I've been doing with the band for the past few nights is setting up my Helix with 2 cables and using a 3rd cable to run my Ibanez Tube Screamer stomp box in front of the Helix. I just use the Helix for reverbs, delays, modulation effects and wah, when I need distortions to play a solo I kick on the Tube Sceamer stomp box and everything feels and sounds normal again and I can play happily. So I'm attributing my problem to the nature of the Helix distortions.

 

Maybe it's just the way the Helix sounds through the front of a guitar amp (again this is a cheap lollipop marshal combo) and it would be great through a PA or flat response speaker. But It seems really weird to me that this is such an expensive and prestigious piece of gear and when I'm presented with a totally normal scenario, a stage with a guitar amp, it's basically 90% unusable to me. The ship is in Europe right now and I'm going to give it another month of experimenting, but I might try to find a music store somewhere in Spain or France to buy my Helix used and I'll then buy or order an analog pedal setup because I'm going to be on this ship for most of this winter into the spring and I want to have a really reliable setup so I can focus the majority of my attention on musical things.

 

I'm still really interested in hearing some insights so if anyone can tell me what they think, or if I'm clearly not understanding something please let me know. Again I am pretty much a gear noob because I've just been an vintage archtop obsessed jazz player for most of my life.

 

I can't tell you what to do, but the drives in Helix sound wonderful — better than many analog pedals I've had.

 

Have you followed the manual about setting levels? Chosen the right output method? Try turning on the input pad and test that as well.

 

And if you run it in the loop with a Helix preamp and maybe power amp (but no cab) how does it then sound? A lot of players are using Helix with amps, and while it is limiting as far as the modeling of cabs go, you should definitely get great sounds of it — that is if the amp doesn't totally suck :)

As many have alluded to here, you're making a significant change when moving to a modeler, particularly one with the range of capabilities of the Helix. So the key question is how much time are you willing to spend with it to learn how to master it?

 

The first thing I always tell people that are considering this leap is to put in the forefront of your mind that unlike a traditional setup, the sound will be that of a studio produced guitar sound. Think of it this way, when you go to record in a studio, there is one sound you hear when you're playing and capturing the track, there is a different sound when you playback that track. That's because several things come into the picture when the sound is captured, most importantly the characteristics of the mic and the room ambience at the very least. The same will be true of the sound coming from the Helix generally.

 

You're not simply modeling the amp, but also the cabinet, the mic, the mic placement, and even the early reflections of the room. It's something some people have a hard time getting around. The audience has no problem with it, because that's the sound they've been hearing from you live anyway if you typically mic your cabinet. It's also the sound they're used to hearing when they hear recorded music. But some people can't get past having a finished (produced) sound on stage because they're not used to it.

But that wouldn't really be relevant for OP if he's planing on using it with a power amp and a cab. He will get the (imo overrated) amp in the room feel.

OP, I think you'd find that Helix responds very good as well as gives a lot of flexibility in your situation.

Sold all my pedals except a tuner (which I'm not keeping because I use it but because it's worth practally nothing) and I don't really miss them. I did like the Earthquaker fuzz I had better than what's currently in Helix, but it wasn't essential part of my rig and Helix the will probably get other fuzzes down the line!

 

Helix is awesome!

Well DI mentioned in a thread that there has been a few behind the scenes optimization but more will follow :)

It seems people forget about the editor that needed to be finishes first.

We all know that Line 6 will bring the updates.

We don't want them to rush it.

 

Having Yamaha's backing is not really relevant here.

 

And: Line 6 can't legally share specific info about what's coming.

 

Remember that besides amps, many wants functionality as well, like scenes and stuff. It takes a long time to implement.

 

Patience really is a virtue!

Bah, whatever. I like DI. I understand he's doing his job the best he can. In most cases, he performs a tough job admirably. 

 

In my opinion, his posts had a different tone in this thread. It didn't feel light-hearted to me, it felt like, "man, I'm annoyed at these idiots." /shrug, YMMV.

 

ITT: DI showed he doesn't understand that the same word can have different meanings.

It's cool man. I find it hard to really get the tone on a message board. So your comment might have sounded hard to me, while in reality, you just expressed your opinion. I really hope Helix becomes the bee's knees for us all! ;)

Lmao...Soon this will be a "movement". All we need are some t-shirts, and to decide what color the little ribbons are gonna be. Can't get a decent movement off the ground without t-shirts and ribbons...;)

 

😂

 

Sign me up for two!