Tboneous

Well said! I like puzzles too. How to work a lydian dominant arpeggio over the V chord in a II V I progression is one that I'll spend hours doing until I can play it convincingly! You are absolutely correct. No harm no foul in playing with your gear! I have fun, at times, playing with my gear too. And you are also correct that there was a TON of discussion about how to get usable tones out of the Dream Rig. But no one spent any time trying to get the hardware to communicate. You plugged it in and it worked! Plug and play! You may not have liked what you heard, but when you hit the button, the relays in the amp did what they did automatically as advertised. You only spent time trying out different amps and different FX as you do with Helix or with any other processor. None of this stuff sounds usable out of the box! We all have to put our thumbprint on the gear we touch. But no one spent any time on an elaborate work around to get the Dream Rig to behave like some other gear. That is what is happening now. Before you spend a moment getting a useful tone out of Helix, you have to spend too much time, in my opinion, on your rigs Flux Capacitor and getting it to talk nice to the rest of your rig. I don't want to spend a moment attempting to get Helix to behave like a POD HD in its relationship to the DT amps. No worries about it! I get it! Some people enjoy that type of tweaking. I don't. I want play guitar. 1000:1! Any day of the week! If I am spending too much time getting the Flux Capacitor in my rig to act right....I'm out! That takes me away from writing songs, playing guitar and taming that blasted Lydian Dominant arpeggio! But truly, from the bottom of my heart, tweak on my man and keep us posted on your findings! Lastly, I would never be so arrogant to assume that anyone is "wasting their time" doing anything! It's your time! Get down the way you want to get down! I am only speaking for me! I stand on the shoulders of great puzzle solvers like you! I mean that! 'Cause as soon as you make the discovery of how to make this stuff work in a manner that my simple mind can understand, I will use it, sound fantastic playing it for audiences, and give you absolutely no credit for it! lol!

I may be on the road to using this amp more. I've got a few issues (thinner tone, limited foot switching, low volume, among other issues) But it may be workable! Impressed so far!

...It worked out really really well! The band did an in the studio radio show. I was warned that the space would be tight so I figured..."why not!" I never really used my amplifi for guitar. I use it at home as a wireless speaker for my families iDevices. My thinking was we need a good speaker and if I can plug a guitar into it...BONUS! I never played with the iOS app. I never considered ever using this thing in public ever. And then.... I was pleasantly surprised. It couldn't have worked out any better. About a week prior to the gig I downloaded the app, quickly dialed in some tones (a clean, a crunch and a lead) I was liking my results so I got the FBV3 shortboard foot controller and I was off and running. Plenty loud enough for what we were doing. Great lead tone saturation without bursting everyones ear drums. The clean tones were a little thin and I use a Stratocasters so that thinness was accentuated. To compensate, I rolled off the strat tone knob and it did the trick. Very good Amplifi! We can be friends!

Jecswp...Your communication was fine! Good job. Congratulations on figuring out something that is going to work for you! But.... YOU GOTTA BE FRIGGIN KIDDING ME! "It's a bit of a hassle to program all those midi commands at the start, but worth it I hope?" After all of that, you are left with "You hope its worth it?" Do you have time to actually PLAY guitar? My reaction is not about you, your post or anyone else who is enjoying their Helix. By all means brother, make it happen any way you can! But... You gotta be kidding me?!?! This is from Line 6 about Helix.... "Immense care was taken to assemble a palette of tools that would let musicians quickly recreate the sound they hear in their head, without sonic compromise." "Smart Interaction. So Intuitive, You already know how to use it." Clearly, in this instance, this is not the case right? Look at this Dream Rig diagram. Simplicity and Great Tone! This simple diagram is the money shot. Bada Bing! I plug it up and I am playing guitar! I am in uninterrupted creative flow. Simplicity and great tone are the cornerstones of Line 6's business model. This expressed simplicity of work flow is in nearly every piece of Line 6 product marketing... Variax: "With the Variax family of guitars, creating your own unique sound has never been easier" Amplifi: "Plug in. Let it rip." Firehawk: "Get the perfect sound faster than ever before" Dream Rig: "With the press of a single footswitch, you can recall up to 512 totally different rigs" What you have "discovered" is not in keeping with the one of the cornerstones of Line 6 products. Simplicity. It also sounds to me like a huge pain in the A$$ that has absolutely nothing to do with inspiring one to play more guitar. Again, congrats on making it happen for yourself! I'm really not speaking to you. I speaking over your shoulder to my commiserate souls who love their Dream Rig and who are a bit sore that Line 6 has released a fantastic new FX processor that we all really want but we don't want to be involved in Blanking out preamp voicings and finding hidden midi controllable features of the DT and screwing around with the 6 instant command slots (whatever the hell that means!) Helix needs DT integration. PERIOD! It needs to be simple. It needs to be quick. I'm not paying $1500 for Line 6's trademark Simplicity and Great tone to then engage in a complicated time consuming workaround that I "hope" will give me what I want. And we ALL know the inevitable scenario that this convoluted work around is going to place us in don't we? You are going to show up to a gig, plug your stuff in and your instant command slot is going to screw with your phase inverter B+ voltage which regrades it to a phase inverter D- voltage which will cause your 12AX7 Boost to poop out. You are then left standing there with no sound coming out of your amp while scratching your head and wondering where to start wiggling wires. The audience is staring at you, your singer is trying to entertain a staring audience, your drummer is shaking his head as he wonders why you don't get rid of that thing and your bass player is indifferent! 1000:1= the ratio of time we should be playing guitar to the time we spend tweaking gear. Sounds to me like your ratio may be a bit off.

Heavy on the error is right! I know how my gear works. I'm not using patches I use with my DT and wondering why they don't sound right. I know to go to studio direct, I know to use full models, I know about cab/mic selections, I know about DEP, yada yada yada. Still sounds like crap! So far.... I start new patches the same way I always do...Pull up an amp model (in this case, the full model) and try to make it sound like a real amp. Once I've got that dialed in, then I build the patch. So far, not so good! I'll keep trying but I don't think I'll give up my DT just yet.

Thanks. Im not having trouble saving settings just on the L speaker direct from the pod. what i have been asking is "Does this work when the L is used along side a DT". Like shown in the video clip of the "Dream Rig Plus"

Cool. So far, as I play with this set up, I am no closer to hearing something pleasing coming from my L2. Maybe it will sound sonically better with the band. I can get the L2 to save its settings alone but I have had no luck getting it to save its settings in conjunction with my DT amp. All I get from Line 6 is shrugged shoulders. Maybe hitting save twice is the ticket!

Makes sense. So you are XLR out of the 500X to the P.A. And L6 to the L-speaker?

Does anyone have any thoughts on how this is connected? I have had my rig for 4 years and to this day, I am unable to get my l series speaker to save its settings. what's even more of a pain is that no one who answers support tickets seem too concerned in working me through this. So I come to you all! My line 6 brethren!

Thanx! Interesting that Reference/P.A is the ticket for electric guitar and not electric guitar!

Every now and then, I pull my L2m out of my setup (I use it only for acoustic stuff) and experiment with using it for electric guitar work instead of my DT amp. I know a lot of people here swear by this FRFR set up, and I would love to have a small grab-n-go setup. But to my ears it sounds horrendous! I can't even describe the sound other than complete crap awfulness! For those who have success with this setup, can you give just a few tips on how to dial in a believable tone in the FRFR environment? I'd sure appreciate it! My goto models with the DT are the DR Z, AC 15, Plexi and very recently the Blackface Vib. I have no use for any of the High Gain models. I like Eric Johnson Clean tones, Bonamassa lead tones and Robben Ford Rhythm/lead tones What is the nugget to get me started? Why does it sound like a ear piercing speaker in a shoe box for me , but sounds great online and for all those who swear by it?

Good job! You should play with using your expression pedal for your leads. Particularly in this song where your lead transitions into a softer clean chorus type of tone. I find that controlling the drive with the expression pedal helps make this type of transitions less drastic in the volume difference. It's a bit more involved than just assigning the gain to the expression pedal. You might have to also assign certain amp parameters, maybe delay, possibly a compressor to the same exp pedal. Play with it and see what makes sense.

Yep!!!!! With that said way better than I could say it Palico, I went ahead and got myself that Pearlcaster I mentioned! http://line6.com/support/topic/19628-i-would-have-spent-my-money-on-helix-but/?p=147825

Thanx! I'm totally enjoying the hell out of it! Already there my friend!!! These pups do what they do really well and they are suitable for maybe 90% of what I like doing. The rest? I've got a JTV with Suhr ML's in it that does it's thing and a 335 with P90's that does its thing and so on.... For an SSS Strat, which is my axe of choice, I am glad I found the Duncan STK-S4 pups! Very responsive. The bridge pup is very musical and usable with great bite without being shrill! What can I say?....they work for me! If anyone is looking for a warm darker sounding pup for their Strat, give 'em a try!

People! My Ed Roman Pearlcaster is f'ing incredible! WOW! What a find! If you are ever in Vegas, you MUST go visit Ed Roman! Ed is dead but the guitars live on and are absolutely Valley Arts, Tom Anderson, Suhr, SVL, James Tyler (the real deal James Tyler, not the licensed stuff) quality instruments for nowhere near the same cost! But, as well as these guitars are made, I have re-discovered the importance of pickup selection. My Pearlcaster has Seymour Duncan STK-S4 pickups in it. I don't know if these pups are considered good, bad or ugly by the guitar tech nerds, but let me tell you this...these f'ers are working for me! When I got my JTV-69, I immediately contacted Sean Halley and asked, "what pups do you have in your JTV. his reply?...Suhr Landau Pups. Sean is a great player and I want to be like Sean so I immediately swapped my pups out for the ML's! Definitely an upgrade from the stock JTV-69 pups. I was happy! I was like Sean Halley! (Less the crazy hybrid picking thing that he has mastered! Sean... Please get with Truefire.com, do a lesson so I can bite your style and become wickedly famous and never give you any credit for my success!!!!) I digress!!..... Now this Pearlcaster has entered my life! All of a sudden, My Dream Rig is sounding like WHOA....What was that?!!! Let me try that again......WHOA! It did it again!!!! That amp model that I could NEVER get to sound right is now sounding like WHOA!!!!! I never used the "Twin Models" Because they suck! But with my Pearlcaster?!?!....Yep......that's right..............WHOA! I've got work to do! The Duncan STK-S4 are a dark pup! But that is what I like! It is what I need! It is what makes my Dream Rig sound like.....(I'm not gonna do it again!, I promise!) I didn't know these pups were a part of an answer I had been looking for for years. But now that I have found them?......I've got work to do! More importantly...I'm not Sean Halley, nor am I anyone else that has displayed a fantastic tone with their Line 6 gear. I have got to be me! I have got to experiment with all that is out there and see what is a fit for MY playing style. The way I hold the pick, the way I attack the strings. Which pickup is going to work BEST for MY style?! I mistakingly came across the STK-S4 because I purchased a guitar that played nice. Really I got it because it was white with gold hardware and had a maple fretboard! I don't have any of those! I will keep the Suhr ML's in my JTV. They are a beautiful pup. Way better that the stock pups! But these dark loud STK-S4's are rocking me right now!!!! I wonder if those disillusioned Line 6'ers who swear that Line 6 gear sucks the big Ron Jeremy, might have a different opinion had they tried a different guitar with different pups in it? Just a thought!

$75 fo1/2 hour. Totally worth it!

...The downgrade in functionality with my current Dream Rig drastically out weighs the upgrade in Helix goodies! So what's a dude to do with a wad of cash to spend? I know!,, go to Las Vegas, visit the Ed Roman guitar store and purchase a hand made Pearlcaster! Oh yeah....and go indoor skydiving! I hear Ed was an lollipop, but this is one sweet guitar!

Delivers for me too! I The DT is a great sounding amp. Though it did make several trips back to Line 6!

Preach My Brother!!!!!!!

That's a pretty broad question with many many answers. Each answer dependent upon what you are looking to accomplish. The best advise I could give you is to be very clear how where and why you want your future rig to behave and then poke around on this forum with that as a guide.

Why don't I have permission to view this link? Yes I'm logged in.

I downloaded El Capitan on my mac and now my pod HD500 doesn't work with my computer. I blew it right? There is no fix for this right? Line 6 doesn't have anything for me right? I should have check for compatibility issues before I downloaded right? CRAP!

What I am getting from this is, you like your AXE FX. You are learning Helix. You like your modeling gizmos through an ENGL and you like the DT. All are very fine observations. But what my man is getting at is what I have been saying as well: I purchased the flagship rig, an HD500 and DT amp. It is a completely self contained, integrated system of awesomeness! Can't wait to see the updates to this rig! I mean really, what company would create a self proclaimed "flagship" rig that they advertised as "The Worlds Best Sounding, Most Advanced Guitar System" only to shortly after release, abandon it? That wouldn't make sense. Line 6 introduces the updated POD HD500X! Not an upgrade at all. Just more DSP! I never hit the DSP limit so....Whatever! NAMM comes around and we get Amplifi (nothing to do with updating the POD or DT). NAMM comes around again and we get Firehawk. (nothing to do with updating the POD or DT) NAMM comes around again and we are introduced to HELIX! Complete with Preamp models and an L6 Link. OK! Now we're talkin'! The demos sound awesome. Helix looks sexy! I start measuring out the larger foot print on my Pedal Train. Multiple FX loops? I need a towel for the drool! I'm ready! BRING IT! Wait.......What the hell do you mean that it doesn't work with the DT amp like the POD did? What do you mean it can't run these two DT amps and two L-series speakers i got like the POD could? What the hell do you mean with all this "midi work around" business? Hey, for $2k, I ain't engaging in no "midi work around"! What did Butters say in South Park?....."Oh Hamburgers!" Look, we have already "taken a moment to appreciate the inherent differences in these two products." Those "inherent differences" are the frikkin problem! Helix is not the product that Kakkoee, myself and many others were hoping for. So as cool as Helix may be, it will remain lumped into the category of Amplifi, Amplifi TT, Firehawk, Firehawk 1500, Variax Standard..... A bunch of stuff that as cool as they may be individually, don't help me take my rig to the next level! C'est la vie! Fortunately, my rig sounds great! So, I'll spend my $2k on a new Pearlcaster! Yeah Boy!!!!!

The new Helix rack website is really well done! It looks amazing! I can't wait to see the website for the new Dream Rig! The new Pod HD1000, the new DT100X amp, and the all new JTV 100 with brand new models! That's coming soon.......right? I can't wait!!!

...And the price of the PODS. There once was a time where I didn't understand why I would ever purchase a POD HD500X when it really wasn't much of an upgrade from the HD500. As the price falls on those things, thanks to Helix, I'm gonna get one!