cruisinon2

Lol... so because a new product release is not imminent, therefore everyone at L6 has been just sitting around with their thumbs up their a$$es? That's fascinating logic. To conclude that because nothing new is available today, therefore L6 has abandoned the market to their competitors, is truly astonishing...it's also ridiculous, juvenile, and short-sighted, but I digress. Just for my own morbid curiosity though, do you have a similar reaction when the supermarket runs out of broccoli? SPOILER ALERT: It's not because all the farmers decided to play in the dirt instead of growing $hit. Helix was in development for years prior to it's release... do you think somebody just snaps their fingers and a product magically hits the shelves? Hell, beta testing alone takes months, and that's not even the hard part. Ask some of L6 guys over on TGP if you like, and they'll tell you the same. Just because they're not inviting you to the R&D meetings or screaming about a Helix successor from the rooftops, doesn't mean they don't have anything in the pipeline. Whatever is coming next has likely been in development for quite some time already. It's a crying shame we can't all just pitch a fit and have everything we want miraculously appear, but life's rough. In through the nose, out through the mouth, nice and slow. Everything's gonna be OK... ;)

The Helix platform is nearly a decade old... and I could be wrong, but I'd say the odds of any significant overhauls like those you're suggesting will not be forthcoming at this point. Any major UI or functionality changes will likely be reserved for whatever the next flagship device(s) will be. No matter how good something was when it was "the next big thing", continuing to spend resources duct taping endless upgrades to it just doesn't make sense... at some point you're putting a silk hat on a pig.

Harrumph! We really need either a soapbox, or an "I'm outta here"/ angry storm-off emoji around here. It would save so much space. ;)

Given that all the Variax stuff has been discontinued, you could spend the rest of your days searching for the OEM springs and never find them... fortunately, these things are pretty universal. Any springs for similar bridge saddles should suffice.

With any floating bridge if you want to avoid these kind of issues, it's best to change strings one at a time so that most of the tension is still maintained on the springs. With what you've done already, your intonation is likely out of whack... if you're not familiar with basic guitar set-ups, take it to someone who is... from your description there three things are pretty much certain at this juncture: 1) Multiple things probably need adjusting at this point, 2)Trying to describe it all in here will take forever, and 3) If you don't know what you're doing, you're gonna make things worse.

This should be stamped on the outside of the box... it would save some folks a bunch of money, and countless repetitive forum discussions. ;)

Just get the Focusrite. I've had at least 3 generations of them now, they all worked great. They usually come with access to a slew of plugins that are either free, or at a steep discount from all sorts of companies they partner with.

It's a computer, and computers do weird $hit...that being said, whether it's something specific that you're doing to trigger it or not, I certainly wouldn't call it "normal". New firmware and/or a factory reset might solve the problem, or it might not. Either way, those are really the only options you have at your disposal. Give it a try and see if the issue persists. If not, problem solved....but if it still misbehaves then it's time for a service ticket.

You're not wrong, per se. But this is a "Don't hate the playa, hate the game" situation... If you think that any other company out there will care any more about your desire to use stuff forever, then you're in for a lifetime of disappointment...and the only thing that's gonna change is the name of the company you're currently mad at. Neural DSP is not any more interested in selling you one device that you'll use for the rest of your days than anybody else is. That's not how things work in a disposable economy. Planned obsolescence is real, and it's been with us for quite some time, now. It really doesn't matter what sort of product we're talking about, or who's making it. The pace at which technology currently evolves guarantees that it simply is not feasible to keep any one device that relies on connectivity with other 3rd party stuff, updated and fully functional in perpetuity. It's a costly, and ultimately a losing battle. Virtually everything becomes obsolete in short order, regardless of the profit motive. The real problem is that we're forging ahead too fast for our own good, on multiple fronts. It's the reason that even life's bare essentials are now driving folks into poverty. It sucks, and it's a problem in dire need of a solution...but L6 didn't cause it. They just make toys for us to use, and if they refuse to play in the same sandbox as everybody else, they'd just disappear too...

We could get it to admonish you whenever you hit a wrong note...bonus points if they include a retractable wooden ruler that smacks you on the knuckles for that vintage Catholic school nun vibe...;)

The technical term for this is "busted"...;) See also: Curtains FUBAR The Big Sleep Shuffled Off This Mortal Coil There's nothing you can do for that...it's a hardware issue. If you're still within the return window, get a replacement or a refund. If not, prepare for the service ticket/authorized service center/shipping back to the L6 Mothership dance...A one, and a two, and a three...;)

Stereo fx are glorious...especially time based things like reverb and delay. 1/4 note on one side and dotted 1/8th on the other is the best thing to ever happen to guitar solos, but I digress. However, it all boils down to how you're monitoring everything. Through headphones or studio monitors it's wonderful. If you're playing through a single cabinet or FRFR speaker it becomes a mess. If there's no physical separation of two speakers at the end, don't bother...

This will languish in here unseen by anyone who can actually do anything about it. Feature requests have to go in Ideascale.

Deep breath time...you've got a new device that you are not yet familiar with, and you're jumping into the deep end when you should still be in the kiddie pool. 1) Update to the latest firmware, because you most likely have an older version installed. Just because it's "new" doesn't mean that it hasn't been sitting in a warehouse for the last year before arriving on your doorstep. 2) Read the manual. Yes, I know it's boring...but the answers to all the "see-spot-run" questions that you will inevitably have are all in there. Get familiar with the UI and terminology...if you don't have a working knowledge of basic terms and definitions, then any help that folks in here can offer will be about as useful to you as if we responded in Chinese. Trying to do it this way will just waste hours of your time and ultimately frustrate you even further, and it will take forever. 3) Seek out some youtube video tutorials. There are tons of them, and many are quite good. Jason Sadites' channel comes to mind....he deals mostly with the Helix Floor, but the basic functionality of the Stomp is the same, there's just a little less of everything.

It's exhausting and expensive to lease Hubble telescope time from NASA to read tiny fonts...;) You might get lucky with https://www.fullcompass.com/ ...but otherwise it's likely to be a struggle as those have been discontinued for quite some time. Probably better off just trying to something else that fits, rather than searching the ends of the earth for an original arm.

Good/bad is entirely subjective. Your definition of a pleasing guitar tone might sound like somebody rattling a coffee can full of nickels to me, and vice versa...and it has absolutely nothing to do with the gear. Perception is just weird, highly variable, and mostly unexplainable...but I digress. For the purposes of this discussion I'll assume that we're not talking about some junk "experiment" of a distortion pedal from a company that's made nothing but toasters and microwaves for the last 50 years. That scenario aside, most gear combinations can be made to sound good. However, the exact same gear in different hands might sound like $hit...and when the results are lousy, 99.97% of the time it's because of user error and/or lack of experience. In other words if you don't have an understanding of what makes different types of gear sound the way they do, and what you might have to do in order to get any two units to play nice with each other, then the gear itself is almost irrelevant and you will struggle no matter what's in your rig. Your mileage will vary accordingly.

No...the problem is that it's an abrupt and drastic change between two sounds with vastly different gain structures, it has nothing to do with what amp model produces which tone. And in this case everything ultimately has the same origin anyway, regardless of how things are visually represented in the signal chain. One, two, or ten amp models, it makes no difference...it's all one computer generating generating everything you hear. Gain staging presets takes practice. When you get weird results like this, go through each block in the chain and look at the input and output levels...you may have inadvertently boosted an output stage somewhere.

I think this is the first case of 3rd party user error I've ever seen...;)

It's not really much of a surprise...the Variax just never caught on with the masses. Most of the guitar playing public either never heard of it, or simply had no interest in it. Then there's the boots on the ground reality: The Variax tends to be even more fickle and difficult to get up and running than an amp modeler. While the more tech-savvy players are often willing to do all the necessary tinkering to get it "just right", most of the time Joe Average can't be bothered. Simple sells...complicated stuff just gives people a headache. It also didn't help that they couldn't solve some of the nagging technical issues that plagued some users, (piezo "plink", cross-talk between adjacent saddles, etc, etc). Such products are always doomed in the long run, and especially when a multi-national corporate behemoth is involved. Outfits like Yamaha are never impressed by stuff that only generates a cult following, no matter how devoted. They want mass adoption...if they're not convinced that they can sell "Product X" to a significant percentage of the target demographic, then whatever it is it's going in the dumpster.

It's a computer. Computers do weird $hit. Any problem that has persisted for months on end like this obviously isn't going to fix itself, and the odds of you being able to do anything about it yourself are slim to none...unless you're an engineer familiar with the innards of stuff like this and are comfortable doing your own surgery, warranties be damned, but I digress. I doubt it's a hardware problem anyway. Otherwise your options are rather limited, as is the case for most of us: 1) Back everything up and do a factory reset. 2) If you're still running 3.11, do your back up and then upgrade to the latest firmware...perhaps it's a bug peculiar to the version you're running. Besides, there's been a bunch of stuff added since 3.11 that you might want to explore anyway. Beyond that, these things just aren't particularly user-serviceable devices...at some point it's time to open a service ticket and see what they tell you.

There's always the global EQ...obviously it won't help for drive or channel volume settings, but generally speaking most tinkering in a live setting will be EQ related anyway. Once you start mucking around with too much on stage you're inviting a Spinal Tap moment...;)

Nope...and unless you're using the same amp model for every patch, I'm not sure why you'd want that anyway. Settings that work for the kinds of sounds you'd typically want from a Fender Twin aren't going to help you for any of the high-gain monsters, and vice versa. Standardizing arbitrarily selected settings for every knob wouldn't prevent you from having to adjust things...

The "best" anything...be it a vehicle, brand of boxer shorts, or toenail fungus ointment is the one that works for you. What works for me, or the guy in line behind you at the bank is of little consequence. Everyone's needs/wants are going to differ. Do you actually need an amp on stage? I haven't used one for years now. The modeling wizardry that brought us all here makes running an amp completely unnecessary. Now if you want one, so be it...get whatever twirls you're beanie. There are no wrong answers...

Line 6 has a long and glorious history of operating with a veil of secrecy that rivals the NSA...anything that relates to the inner workings of their "secret sauce" is never divulged. Might as well ask the CEO for his wife's measurements.

Nothing... You've just learned the most important modeling lesson there is: The final result of any patch is heavily dependent on a long list of variables, most of which are peculiar to the player who created it. Whatever you've downloaded was created by somebody else with a different guitar, different playing technique, a different playback system from whatever you're using, and (most critically) dialed in in an unknown context (solo, live with a band, playing along with backing tracks, etc), and at an unknown volume. The only common denominator is Helix...everything else is a mystery. That makes the odds of any given patch sounding the same on your end as it did to the guy who built it, slim to none. CustomTone is an idea that looks great on paper...especially advertising copy...but translates poorly into reality. Unfortunately for us all, it's been used to push the idea that tonal bliss is just one mouse click away. The truth is that there's little in the way of tonal continuity from one player to the next...there are simply too many variables, and no one piece of hardware can compensate for it all. Don't feel bad though...most of us end up learning this the hard way. The moral of the story is you have to get used to creating your own tones from scratch. The alternative is to spend hours downloading everything under the sun, then auditioning one after another in the hopes of eventually stumbling on the one or two patches that you might be able to use without extensive editing. Skip the middleman, you'll waste far less time in the long run.