cruisinon2

"Multi" if you want to use both.

It's not really a question of one option "making more sense" than another... it depends on the situation, and one's personal preference. Using in-ears with no stage amp is certainly an option...lots of bands do that now... but A) you have to get everybody on board. There are still plenty of guys dragging a tube amp to their Friday night gig at Walt's Trout Hut... good luck talking them into a "quiet stage", and then B) make the investment in time and money to get it going. Some bands/guys just ain't gonna do that. Or more simply, some might just prefer a backline (FRFR or otherwise), or like myself, use an FRFR speaker as a floor monitor while also running Helix straight to FOH. Different strokes...

Unfortunate, but whatever the issue is, it's unlikely that it's related to this discussion. Open a support ticket, and they'll tell you how to proceed.

50 years? I doubt it...it took less than 10 for the original Lacey Act restrictions in 2007 (maybe 2008... don't quote me) to go from Brazilian rosewood, to essentially all rosewood, regardless of origin, as of January 2017. They'll bring the hammer down on something else as soon as there's a big enough hole in their budget.

And once the fury dies down and nobody uses rosewood anymore, the revenue from fines (and the headlines they generate) will dry up, and they'll have to find some other wood to "save"... and they will. So enjoy it while you can fellas, eventually we'll all be playing on plastic.

Anything but the HX FX is overkill... for someone who doesn't play electric guitar at all, the amp modeling will go unused... why spend the money?

That's all the evidence you need... nobody gives away stuff that's awesome, lol. ;)

Yup...a "solution" desperately in search of a problem. Good marketing though. "Big Pharma" good, lol...

I'll believe it when I see it. Gibson didn't file for bankruptcy because everyone suddenly abandoned Les Pauls en masse, in favor of fanned-fret guitars. The industry in general is in trouble because kids can't tear themselves away from Facebook long enough to learn an instrument... but I digress... I've still yet to actually see one of these things in the wild, either hanging on the wall in a store, or in someone's hands on stage... and I gig regularly, often with one or more other bands on the bill. The internet exaggerates the prevalence of everything. If you're seeking out guitar related stuff online, it might seem like you can't swing a dead cat without hitting one of these guitars... but that doesn't necessarily translate into real world numbers. Half of the crap you'll see on YouTube won't ever filter down to Joe Average Guitar Player...

Haven't tried the Powercab... I've seen some complaints over on that forum that they might be a little anemic in the volume department, but I suppose that's relative... but if you're determined to rattle windows in the next zip code, it might not be for you. I've been using an L2T for 4 or 5 years now...I use it as a floor monitor, plenty of headroom. It'll boil down to whether or not you care about the PC's onboard cab modeling, and the ever elusive (and oft whined about ;) ) "amp in the room" thing that it allegedly provides. If that doesn't matter to you, I'd get something with a little more horsepower.... better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it. There are a bunch of options out there now... some quite reasonably priced, and some comical. The Alto's are a favorite, the new Headrush powered cab (more or less a rebranded Alto), the Mission Gemini stuff, etc. etc. You should be able to get good results with any of them, really...but whatever you pick will take some getting used to, and require reworking your patches (a lot)...FRFR is a very different animal, no matter what logo is stamped on the front.

It'll function, yes... the question is for how long? The power(s) that be have repeatedly warned against doing so, however. Don't bother trying to find out why... their legendary 007 cloak and dagger routine forbids it. If you search around you'll find vague references to using both outputs simultaneously causing some sort if circuit "overload". Whether or not it'll actually happen is anybody's guess.

Well you can't use the 4cm without an FX loop... so no matter what you do, you're going shopping. But no... personally I have no use for the 4cm. It has exactly one advantage: it allows you to get your basic tone from either your amp, or the models in Helix. That's it. But if you're searching for a way to bypass the preamp and have no intention of using it for your primary sound, then the 4cm is 100% useless to you... it'll only make you spend more money on cables, and take you longer to set up and tear down at a gig. I went FRFR....gave up "real" amps years ago at this point, and couldn't be happier. Not going back.

I was about to answer, then realized I addressed the same question you asked in another thread... so here's the abridged version: Without an FX loop to bypass the preamp, your'e fighting a losing battle... while technically feasible, modelers really just aren't designed to be used in that configuration. You might be able to get away with it for clean/ low gain tones... but if you're looking for substantially overdriven sounds, going straight into the front end of an amp will be a chore to get right at best, but more likely an unworkable mess that you'll never really be happy with. Time to look at other amplification options...

Yes... if you don't want the amp's preamp to color your tone, then you have to bypass it. Plug Helix into the Blackstar's FX return (I'm assuming it has an FX loop... if not, then you're out of luck). But even then, you may not find that you like the sound if you have a cab block in the chain, as you would be running a modeled speaker and mic into an actual guitar speaker... the result is sometimes messy, and there are numerous variables that will affect the final result.... choice of amp/ cab/ mic models, etc. Running straight into the front of any amp is really not the ideal way to use Helix, or any other modeler for that matter. You'll always be handcuffed by how the preamp affects the tone coming. Removing it from the equation is a whole lot easier than trying to EQ the damage away.

Studio monitors are generally something that you want in pairs.... one won't do you much good, and this particular device is not designed for that kind of use anyway. If you're looking record and monitor multiple instruments, stereo reference monitors are a necessity. On the plus side, you can get a nice pair of studio monitors for half (if not less) than what you'd spend on one Powercab.

You got me... I've lurked through the bowels of various cabinets over the years, and the grille is often stretched across a frame that's mounted to the cabinet with screws that are accessed from the inside. Never pulled one of these apart though, so I have no idea.

Sometimes that's exactly what happens... the amp model matters of course, as does what you're playing and how you play it. But a lot of it has to do with one's choice of cab and mic models, with emphasis on the mics and their distance parameter. Any of the ribbon mics, especially when they're pulled back a bit, can sound quite dark. They tend to mitigate the need for really savage high cuts. But on the other hand...take a Strat bridge single coil, a liberal dose of gain, and a 57 positioned 1" from the cone, and it'll go through your head like a nail. The variables are numerous.

In a nutshell, yes... though the high end fizz that many complain about is often tough to get rid of just by targeting one fundamental frequency. Even with a wide Q it usually isn't enough, especially with high gain tones. But if you're not looking for heavy, saturated tones, you might have as much fizz in the first place. It's all personal preference in the end.

You can do that... the end result is what matters. If you like what you hear, then you're done... how you got there doesn't much matter, and depends entirely on the tone you're looking for, and the speakers you're pumping through. There's no "one size fits all" approach. FWIW, the parametric EQ block also has hi/low cut filters, so you can use a shelf in addition to more targeted attenuation (or boost, as the case may be). Check out Jason Sadites Helix videos on YouTube... he has some pretty in-depth discussions on EQ.

Not sure exactly what you're asking... you can't find HX Edit on your computer, or your can't find it to download from L6? If you can't find it on your machine, then I'd say it's not installed...

You should start your own thread for this... this one is months old, and mostly full of people lamenting/ whining that the HX unit doesn't have it's own dedicated forum, or begging for same. Your question will go mostly unnoticed here... put it out there prominently with a relevant title, and somebody will chime in.

Half (if not more) of your tone comes from the speakers you're monitoring through. That being the case, trying to use patches that worked for someone else, with whatever gear they used to dial it in, is probably gonna set you back even farther... especially with the setup you're using. If you were running some sort of FRFR rig, and used a patch that was created with other FRFR speakers, you'd have half a chance of getting similar results, as you could *assume* that your speaker's frequency response would at least be close, but even then it's a crapshoot. As MikeDV1 said above, EQ will be the answer... but it's gonna depend entirely on what amp models you're using, and the kind of sound you're after. Anything that someone else were to suggest would be a blind guess. At this point, I doubt I have a single patch that doesn't have an EQ block... and they're all slightly different depending on the amp/cab/mic models in question. The experimental phase sucks... but there's really no escaping it. Don't shy away from using a cab sim in the chain... even though you're using an actual amp and cab, and shouldn't technically need it, sometimes it works. There are no "rules" with this stuff.

Just get a set of metric hex keys... if you're gonna own a guitar with a Floyd, then you're gonna need various different sizes anyway... for the locks at the nut and saddles, intonation adjustment, etc. etc. Should be able to find a set that'll include everything you need for $10 or less.

This is eerily similar to the vibrating fan assembly issues thatthe Stagesource speakers had early on... kinda makes you wonder if they're cranking these things up loud enough to see if anything starts rattling around.

No, but future models will come with a bug zapper and a lifetime subscription to the Jelly of the Month Club...;)