cruisinon2

I used to think it was emotional fragility too... but the older I get, the more I realize that anytime someone's opinion or assessment of your tone flips 180° instantly, based on nothing more than discovering what piece of gear was responsible.... you're not talking to a "fragile" person. You're talking to a simpleton, an a$$hole, or both. ;)

It does seem like we're getting lost in terminology here, and I'm confused by the statement "I've built all the sounds I would use within one snapshot". A snapshot is ONE sound....a capture of the state of each block in the patch's signal chain at one particular moment... one snapshot cannot contain multiple sounds. It's a single entity. Effectively, it's a "patch within a patch". (Or "preset within a preset", if you like. The terms are interchangeable). Copying any one snapshot to the remaining 7 slots would yield 8 identical snapshots and 8 identical sounds. On the other hand, if what you're doing is creating 8 distinct snapshots within one patch, copying that entire patch into a separate slot, and then toggling between them, then yes there will a lag when switching between the two. That's unavoidable.

Which is exactly what he said he wanted to do... an acoustic model in one path and an LP, Strat, Whatever model in the other. Didn't want to use mags at all... two different modeled guitars feeding separate signal chains at the same time. Can't do that...

You hafta leave it plugged in, otherwise the 1's and 0's will leak out...

¹344 Lol. Everything fails sooner or later. I once had a JCM800 head start belching smoke on stage (at sound check, fortunately). Another time a Carvin TS100 power amp just went dead between sets one night...had it on standby, flicked it on, and a whole lot of nothing. I used to drag around an old ADA Microtube 200 power amp as a backup in those days... finished the night with that. Having no backup rig is like driving from NY to LA without a spare tire... you're practically begging for a flat.

Workbench is for making adjustments to individual Variax models... relative string volumes, mixing and matching pickup models into different guitar bodies, creating custom tunings, etc... but it has nothing to do with what happens inside any external gear processors, nor does it allow you to offload more than one guitar model from qthe guitar simultaneously. The Variax can't output more than one modeled sound at a time, period. It would be nice, but it is what it is. Yes, you can have isolated signal chains in Helix, one set up for an acoustic tone, and the with a distorted amp model... that's the easy part. And yes, you can set the input blocks of each of those signal chains to receive a Variax model... but you're still limited to the one model that the guitar is spitting out at any given time. The modeling happens entirely inside the Variax, not any external processor you're plugged into. Whatever you've selected, either by physically moving the selector switch on the guitar, or by triggering it from the Helix or POD, is the one and only modeled sound that leaves the guitar, and is the one and only modeled sounds that would then be fed into the Helix, POD, etc. What you can do is use snapshots to toggle between the two chains, disabling the output on one in favor of the other, while also switching Variax models...I do this all the time. But having both chains going together, with a different Variax model feeding each one simultaneously is not possible.

There are two certainties here... actually, make that three: 1)There is exactly ONE way to find out whether or not you'll be happy with the end result of any gear purchase... buy it and use it. Relying on someone else's experience or opinion about any piece of gear is a complete and utter waste of time, as this is all entirely subjective. What works for me may or may not work for you, and neither one of us is "right" or "wrong". 2) No matter what headphones, earbuds, or studio monitors you choose, there will be a learning curve when you get the Stomp, and a period of experimentation... possibly a lengthy one depending on how tech-savy you are, and whether or not you have any prior experience with modeling. You'll have to learn how the unit works, and figure out how to get the sounds you're after. Do not expect instant gratification, or for the sounds you've heard in YouTube videos to come pouring out the minute you open the box. That simply does not happen for the overwhelming majority of users. 3) Obsessing over it to this extent is a waste of energy. Buy what you can afford, when you can afford it, and make the most of whatever you get... but driving yourself nuts about the decision is pointless. Nobody can predict the future, and worrying about whether or not it's "gonna work out" just robs you of the present.... plus, unless you rely on your gear to make a living, we're talking about toys here. It's not a life altering decision, no matter what happens.

Not for nothing, but you should be backing up your patches regularly. Helix is a computer, and computers crap out and fail at the drop of hat, individual patches get corrupted, etc etc. It can happen at any time, for no discernable reason... even if you've had a flawless experience with it for two years, that doesn't guarantee that it won't $hit the bed tomorrow. Without backups, you run the risk of losing some, if not all of your work, even if you never plan on updating the firmware.

String age matters, yes. Gauge matters. Brand? Impossible to prove one way or the other. It's like asking what the best beer in the world is. I would be willing to bet a large sum of money that the average guitar player, no matter how "golden eared" or tone obsessed, probably wouldn't be able to distinguish one brand of strings from another, merely by listening. Feel is another matter...especially with coated vs non- coated strings, but that's about it. Honestly I'd probably laugh at anyone who claimed to be able to distinguish D'Adarrio from Ernie Ball, merely by listening to somebody play.

Drink heavily until you lose 30% of your chops, then plug into anything that says "Peavey" on it (solid state only)....;)

Yes, you can use an IR plug-in. And yes, where you put things in the signal chain matters, to a greater or lesser extent. As the IR would be after the Stomp entirely, your speaker sim would be happening after any effects in your signal chain... reverbs, delays, etc... which may or may not matter to you. Then again, if you're recording, you generally want to capture everything dry anyway, and add FX after the fact...so it's probably a moot point. Depends on how you like to do things. With Native, you really don't have to worry about running out of blocks, and you wouldn't need to load IR's in your DAW... you still could, but it certainly wouldn't be necessary.

I can only help with question #3, and unfortunately the answer is no. The pocket dimensions are not the same as a Strat, and even if you found something else that fits, it's likely that you'd have scale/intonation issues that you might not be able to adjust your way out of.

Doesn't work that way...you can only have one model selected at any given time, so you can't send the J-200 model to one signal chain and the Les Paul model to another simultaneously, no matter what device(s) you're plugging into. You can toggle back and forth between electric and acoustic models to your heart's content, just can't run them both at the same time. And though it's been requested numerous times over the years, you also cannot send the raw piezo signal to the output... good or bad, you hafta choose a model.

Buying the HX and the Stomp is pointless... the cost of both is the price of the Helix LT. May as well just save up for that.

You'll probably find some of acoustic patches on Customtone... but the odds of there being anything that instrument- specific is a longshot, at best.

Waaaaay prior... the 500's have been gone for 15 years, or more. Given that finding a used one at this point would be a Herculean task, why he even bothered to bring it up is a complete mystery. Anecdotal evidence from other threads I've seen have indicated that some things will work and some won't. You might get some insight if you poke around, or wait for someone who still owns a 500 and a Helix to chime in.

Ugh...I said if there was gonna be a lefty version of the CURRENT models, then we would have seen it already. Cherry-picking half a sentence, absent any sort of relevant context, and then going on reference a product that came and went more than 15 years ago, accomplishes what exactly?

But for anyone who found those devices useful, I have magic crystals and magnets for your shoes that will cure everything from headaches to cancer, both for sale in the lobby....;)

Difficult? Probably not. Cost effective, or anything that even approaches "lucrative"? Almost certainly not.... and that's why it's not gonna happen. I sympathize with ya, but this has been a gripe for years. The JTV line is nearly a decade old at this point, and the Standards have the same guts. If there was gonna be a lefty version, it would have happened years ago. It's about numbers, nothing else.

Let the cork sniffers wax poetic about the relative wonderfulness of the vacuum tube... you'll never change their minds anyway. And while they're philosophizing about the endless satisfaction they get from their ONE sound, go enjoy the nearly endless options you have at your fingertips, at a volume that won't raise the dead.

That's just it... there ain't nothing "maybe" about it. It's an iron-clad certainty, and it shouldn't puzzle anybody at this point... unless they've been living in a cave for the last 20 or 30 years.

+ If you run a power amp into anything but a speaker or a load box, the fire department tends to show up...;) Anyway, that tone is really just a whole mess of gain, and kinda scooped... pretty much the opposite of everything he's done since. You can probably get reasonably close with anything Marshally, crank the gain and roll back the mids a little.

And followed inevitably by a nostalgic "tube revival" wave, just like the renewed fascination with vinyl, of recent years. Everything comes back sooner or later...even if it's only to satisfy the collector's niche. "Vintage" and "tradition" are two of the most successfully monetized words in the English language.

No... but depending on exactly what you're trying to do, it may or may not matter. If you're using an actual acoustic, or Variax acoustic models, and some sort of FRFR speaker (which is critical), then you can get very good results using the mic pre-amp model in Helix and a little compression, plus any FX you might want. You don't need an amp model in the chain at all.

It's conditioning... and it's not even product- specific. We could just as easily be taking about golf shoes. The fear that they won't have the "latest and greatest" device twelve minutes after opening the box is what's doing it. It has nothing to do with what is or isn't in the Helix. The populace has been very successfully brainwashed into believing that if they don't acquire the newest (insert product here) the instant it's available, not only are they missing out on something "better", but everybody else will have something that they don't. "Keeping up with the Joneses" is what drives our economy.