cruisinon2

Anybody know what I'm having for lunch tomorrow? ;)

The only thing that's "recommended" in the modeling world is to try different things and use whatever settings work for you. If it sounds good, it is good... fixating of theoretical "optimal" settings for any given scenario is the fastest route to becoming dissatisfied with your tones and gear. If you get locked into some alleged "correct" way to do things instead of simply allowing your ears to tell you what sounds good, you'll never try anything new.... and in so doing, you can easily miss out on something that might make the difference between being happy with your gear, or becoming embroiled in a constant search for satisfaction that never comes. There is no "right" or "wrong" setting for input impedance, or any other parameter. Pickup outputs are all over the map...arbitrarily assigning 'X' impedance for single coils, and 'Y' for humbuckers is pointless. And having fiddled with the impedance settings quite a bit myself, you'll find that the difference from one to the next is rather subtle anyway...you're not gonna hear a night and day difference.

Nope... mine has done that since day one.

Harrumph! Do you feel better? If you look around I'm sure you could find a few more 4 year old threads to whine in.

Any of today's upper-tier modelers can create just about any sound you want... provided that you take the time to learn how to use the unit. What you cannot expect from Helix (or anything else for that matter) is the following: 1) Instant gratification. Won't happen, period. Not with factory presets, not with anything you download from Customtone, nor any of the much- touted patches that you'll find for sale from various sources. You'll find yourself editing everything... sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. There is a learning curve, particularly if you've been using a much older platform forever... and in the long run you'll be much better off learning to create the sound you want yourself, rather than trying to tailor someone else's patch to your needs. Plan on spending a significant amount of time getting your feet wet. A couple of hours on Saturday afternoon is not likely to leave you dilerious with glee about your new toy. 2) It won't behave like the unit you're used to... don't care what you're upgrading from, even if it's another Line 6 product. Don't assume that dialing in the same settings with the same amp model will yield the exact same tone you get from your current rig, because it won't. What you're playing through (and the volume at which you're playing) also matter. A lot. Headphones, studio monitors, a larger FRFR monitor, into a "real" amp, etc etc... they're all fundamentally different, and your patches will need to be tailored accordingly.

You'll need to do some more investigating before sending it off for repair. The master volume knob can be set so that it only controls the signal sent to certain outputs... for example, if you were running straight to FOH via the XLR out and using a small stage monitor for yourself, you could disengage the volume knob from the XLR out so that signal remains constant, and have the knob control only the 1/4" that's feeding your monitor.

Yes, you will need cab sims.

This has nothing to do with your problem... but just for my own morbid curiosity, where are you that the local constabulary is allowing gatherings of hundreds of people mid-pandemic? At this point, I just vaguely remember gigging... lol

Post this in the Spider forum... nobody's gonna see it here.

Here the rub, though... no matter what the timeline is, L6 is never gonna tell you, or me, or anybody else until the release is imminent. That's just how they roll. So a year from now if there's still no new hardware (or the announcement thereof), you're gonna be in the exactly the same place you are now...a year closer to "the next big thing"... but a year closer to what and when? You'll still have no actionable info, and still be playing on gear that you already want to upgrade today. Nothing remains the "latest and greatest" for very long anymore... certainly not long enough to justify this sort of purchase strategy. Everything is "old" within a couple of years at this point...tech evolves much faster than it used to. If something suits your needs and you want it, then buy it and play the $hit out of it. Life is short.

Yay! After we get this going we can work on getting that hamster wheel Helix power supply that I've been asking for forever...;)

Dude... you're fixated on useless information that can't help you. The firmware version reveals NOTHING about the date of manufacture, and neither one has anything to do with your warranty. I couldn't tell you what firmware came with mine if my life depended on it...I haven't a clue. That's how little it matters. And even if I could remember, it wouldn't help you accurately date your unit...repeatedly asking the same question won't magically transform the answer into relevant information, no matter how much you want it to be. As I said before, the only way you'll ever get an answer is by going directly to the company and begging them to tell you the manufacturing date based on the serial number. But in the end, it doesn't matter anyway. If something breaks you are covered under warranty, because you bought a new, unused product. How long that unit may have aged on a shelf before you took it home has no affect on warranty protections. All that matters is having a receipt, and the purchase date.

What have with the other unit is irrelevant. You purchased a new product. It is under warranty, period. We can talk in circles all day, and you won't get any closer to an answer. There is no way to tell when the thing was made based solely on the firmware version that was on it when you opened the box... it's a useless indicator for a number of reasons. All anybody can do is guess. Line 6 can probably date the thing based on the serial#, but whatever that formula is, it's not public knowledge. You can pursue this with the company directly if you want, and they may or may not choose to share that info with you...I have no idea what they'll say. But either way, with the limited info you currently have, you might as well be asking a Magic 8-Ball.

Not only is that dude running Ownhammer and L6, but he's also a Freemason... the guitar modeling crowd has been selected as the first domino to fall in the NWO's quest for world domination. But pay no attention to that buzzing sensation in your molars whenever your Helix is turned on... "They" are everywhere, and can't be stopped.

You don't actually have a problem yet... you're just anticipating one...and there's no possible way for anyone to predict whether or not the pedal is going to break. Even if it does, it will be covered under warranty, so it's a moot point. Just use the thing and don't lose any sleep over it, because there's nothing preemptive that you can do anyway. It'll either break or it won't. As for the firmware... just because you buy something today, doesn't mean that it hasn't been sitting around in somebody's stockroom or warehouse for 3 years. That's retail... it happens all the time.

Yet you use it as "evidence" of substandard design. Can't have it both ways. How so? Doing battle with sunlight is a loosing proposition, in nearly every way imaginable. It'll bleach your patio furniture and give you melanoma. And given that gear like this is gonna be used indoors the overwhelming majority of the time, what do you expect? If this is your yardstick, then you're gonna be disappointed with most displays on earth. Everything mechanical eventually fails... and if you swing from the chandalier, it's gonna fail sooner than it would otherwise. If you don't beat the $hit out of the joystick, then it'll last a good long time. Assuming things are indestructible, or "should be" indestructible, is a great way to break stuff. I hardly ever touch the damn thing, simply because I don't want to bend down to the floor every time I want to edit something. At a gig it's unavoidable of course, but otherwise I'm on HX Edit. It's far more convenient, and it spares the hardware unnecessary wear and tear.

If we're gonna use math, let's use math. Nothing on earth can be meaningfully evaluated with a sample size of 7. While your figures do indeed represent a significant percentage of your buddies, they also represent a miniscule percentage of the total number of units in the wild. You could poll 7 random users on this forum and just as easily come up with 7 perfectly happy gents who's units have never needed repair. Armed only with that info, would you then conclude that the Helix repair rate is zero? Of course not... ain't nothing that good. At the end of the day, anecdotal evidence is exactly that. Sample size is everything.

No... only 1 patch can be loaded at any given time. What you can do however, is set up a dual-amp patch (1 clean and 1 dirty, for example) and fade between them by assigning the channel volume of each amp to the expression pedal.

HD Edit works just fine on a laptop...I've used it on both Windows and Apple hardware. But don't hold your breath for an app version on tablets or phones. The 500X is a rapidly aging platform for which development has ceased... hell, it's successor (Helix) is 5 years old at this point. Yes they're still selling the 500X, but from an R&D perspective, it was mothballed long ago.

Mine works fine, but I'm pi$$ed anyway!!!!!! ;)

99.97% of the time your "ghost notes" are the result of hearing the guitar acoustically, along with the altered pitches that are coming from the speaker(s) with which you are monitoring. Nobody ever wants to believe this at first (myself included years ago). It's almost always dismissed as "impossible" with the wave of a hand, and most will argue until they're blue in the face that this couldn't possibly be happening, but I assure you it does. I initially declared my JTV69 "defective" right out of the box for this very reason... and I was mistaken. Solid body guitars ring out a lot louder than you think, you're just used to ignoring it in favor of whatever is belching out of the amp... which is easy to do provided that the sound that is heading directly from the body of the instrument to your ears is the same pitch as that which is emanating from the speaker. However, when those pitches are no longer the same, particularly at close intervals, dissonance is not only inevitable but VERY easily perceived. Crank up up the volume and drown out the acoustic sound of the guitar itself, and the problem vanishes. I also use a Digitech Drop pedal with the rest of my non-Variax guitarsenal, and the exact same thing happens... if you're not cranked up sufficiently (and depending on the individual instrument, that might be a lot louder than you'd guess), then you're gonna hear unaltered pitches acoustically whether you want to or not... turns out ears work really well...;)

Lmao... best thread ever.

Off-loading the IR's and saving them on your computer would be a good idea just in case the Helix $hits the bed at some point, and you have to do a factory reset...but there's no need to go backing up individual patches manually. Besides, it would take forever. Creating a backup of everything on the device is a one-click operation in HX Edit.

As everyone has already indicated, what you're looking to do is not possible. A preset (or patch, if you prefer) is a discrete entity that cannot be combined, merged, or otherwise mingled with another, and only one patch can be in use at any given time. Snapshots only exist within an individual patch. They simply "remember" individual parameter settings that you've designated, and allow for multiple parameter changes (up to 64 per snapshot, I believe... I've never come anywhere near hitting the limit whatever it is, so it's really a moot point) across multiple blocks, with one click. But no matter what you do, you can't take Patches A, B, and C, and dump them together... it don't work that way.

On the contrary... like it or not, decreased charging capacity IS the solution. Expecting any further changes will be a long wait for a train that ain't coming.