cruisinon2

Yes. Rolling back to a previous version is no different than updating. You're just loading software.

Unless you're touring the world and need an enormous road case that'll withstand a small tactical nuke...a rack case is a rack case. They're all essentially the same plastic box.

You waited all of 5 hours between posts...you didn't hear anything because the answer is very amp-specific. You'll have to wait around for someone to stumble upon this thread who has both already updated to 2.8, and who also just happens to own the same (or similar) amp... you can't realistically expect an instantaneous response to this one. It'll be a hell of a lot faster to just do the update, and see if it works. You'll have your answer inside of 20 minutes. Worst case scenario, you roll back to 2.71.

You'll get a thousand opinions on this, so here's my 2 cents: Simply put... no, not really. The problem with trying to use someone else's patches is there's no way to tell how or what was used to dial it in. The guitar, pickups, how the sound was monitored, and at what volume... those are just a few of the Gospel length list of variables that will affect your tone. When the only common denominator is Helix and everything else is a mystery, the odds of randomly downloading a patch that'll match exactly what your looking for without significant tweaking, is essentially zero. And yes, I've tried. Repeatedly. Between Helix and my 500X before it, I've tried hundreds of 'em. Some I paid for out of curiosity, others I snagged free from Customtone... regardless, it always ends the same way: shaking my head and wondering why I wasted my time, money, or both. Again... perhaps I have a learning disability, lol. ;) Anyway, it doesn't matter what Joe Blow puts in the description. It might have sounded just like Joe Satriani with his guitar, his studio monitors, in his living room, at "it's 2 a.m. don't wake the kids" volume... but that doesn't mean that there will be any continuity at all when you load it up with your rig. In my experience, it's almost guaranteed to be the opposite. There are simply too many variables. If you're gonna have to tweak anyway, you may as well start from scratch yourself and eliminate the guesswork... and you're doing that already. Try different amp models, cabs, mic's, 3rd party IR's, etc... it'll take a while, but eventually you'll hit on what works for you.

But that's not nearly as satisfying as getting to tar and feather The Man, whilst screaming "Woe is me!" from the rooftops, now is it? ;)

In short, yes. You're spitting distance from a dozen other threads discussing various 2.8 issues in great, gory detail...

I'm gonna go with "Oops..." ;)

Yeah, but if you plan too much, you run the risk of things starting to go well... how would I get my daily dose of existential outrage, then? Next thing I know they're drumming me right out of the Perpetual Victim Society.... and the annual Whinefest is next month. What color ribbon do we display for sh!tty firmware solidarity? ;)

Same as always...self-righteous indignation. It's the 3rd most powerful force in the universe, following gravity and denial. ;)

I rest my case... if it's close enough to lunch and/or quittin' time, they'll tell you that Dunlop medium picks have been discontinued just to get you off the phone.

You ever see "The Money Pit"? "Two weeks..." ;)

There seem to be several issues that need fixing... but I wouldn't stay up nights waiting for a formal announcement on the subject... they're not gonna go out of their way to advertise software goofs. Even if you open a ticket, all they're likely to say is "Yes, it's a bug and it'll be fixed in 2.81". I doubt there's ever been a completely bug-free update in the entire history of firmware. This is actually the first time I've thrown caution to the wind and charged down the cannons with the rest of the "Gotta Have It! " Brigade, and updated right away. So far I have remained unscathed... but that's just dumb luck. It's almost always better to wait until the dust settles and save yourself the inevitable aggravation. There are always problems that go unnoticed until the firmware is in the hands of the great unwashed. It's a sample size problem...all the in-house/beta-testing in the world can't make up for that.

Would you prefer that they just leave us all to twist in the wind and guess what new stuff each update contains, or any other info that might be pertinent to existing features?

Personally, I wouldn't trust GC to give me the time of day without screwing it up. Inventory- related info that appears on the websites of any Big Box retailer is about as trustworthy as your local news station broadcasting a weather forecast for 3 years from next Tuesday. Half the time they can't reliably tell you what they already have in the building that day, never mind what may or may not show up a month from now. Then there's the guys who show up in a panic every couple of months because the computers at GC, Sweetwater, or wherever have (again) declared that the JTV's have been discontinued... still waiting on that, lol...;)

You're right, posting requests to Ideascale does not guarantee that you'll get what you want, but it is the best (not to mention only) chance you've got... because asking for stuff in here is a guaranteed waste of time.

Any hardware store... However, raising or lowering the action is done primarily at the bridge saddles, not with the truss rod....that's for adjusting the amount of relief in the neck. While relief will affect the action to a degree, if the action is extremely high (or low), it's unlikely that adjusting the truss rod alone will be a sufficient fix, and it's also entirely possible that it doesn't need the relief adjusted at all. If you're not familiar with doing set-ups, I'd suggest taking it to any competent local tech/luthier, and let them do it. Truss rod adjustments need to be done in tiny increments, and over-tightening in an attempt to lower the action is not good. It's easy to damage things if you're not careful.

To a degree, yes it will. Heinz sold novelty green ketchup a while back, but FDC green dye #5 didn't make it taste like pickles. Similarly, you can't stop a Marshall cabinet (or Boogie, or whatever else you pick) from sounding like what it is, no matter what amp model you pump through it. That may or may not be a bad thing.... and that's entirely up to you, and your own personal preferences/needs, etc. But if for example, the goal is to accurately emulate the sparkly cleans of a Strat into a Fender Twin, a 4x12 Recto cabinet won't help get you there. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that you won't like what you hear, but by not using the clean slate that an FRFR output provides, you are somewhat limiting what Helix (or any other modeler for that matter) can do.

I think you might still be a little confused about monitoring options. If you're running into the FX loop of an amp, you don't want to be using cab sims at all... it's redundant. Doubly redundant if you're then trying to record by actually mic-ing the amp itself. Feeding cab/mic sims into a real guitar cabinet or combo will produce nothing but mud.... if you then add an actual mic on top of it all to record, the end result will be even worse. Cab/mic emulation is for use with FRFR outputs: 1) straight to a PA, or one or more individual PA-type monitors, or 2) straight into a DAW monitored with either a pair of studio monitors or flat response headphones, etc etc.... but not into speaker(s) with a comparatively narrow frequency response, already voiced specifically for guitar, like those found in combos or guitar cabs. It'll just sound like you threw a mattress over your amp... and you can't EQ it away.

Everything else in the signal chain... This is the digital realm... there's nothing but 1's and 0's flying around, emulating real world devices. The cab block doesn't magically "make" sound, any more than anything else in the chain does. Your final output does that, and spits out the sum total of what it's been fed. The cab sims are just one piece of the puzzle. But without them, it's gonna sound like boiled garbage, as you've already discovered. Kinda like what you'd get plugging your guitar into a distortion box and running straight to a PA.

If you're new to modeling, it pays to check out some tutorial videos on YouTube... there's a lot to discuss, and trying to cover even just the basics texting back and forth is inefficient at best. Jason Sadites' channel is a good place to start. https://www.youtube.com/user/gtr111

Yup, modelers are a completely different kettle of fish. You gotta think like you're in a recording studio, mic-ing an amp in the next room, and listening through the monitors at the desk. Takes some getting used to...

If you're using an amp+cab block, then you've already got a cab/mic sim in the chain, so you don't want an IR block anywhere.... daisy chaining 2 different cab and mic sims back to back will be a disgusting muffled mess that you'd couldn't EQ your way out of in 3 lifetimes. You can use either the Helix cabs or a third party IR, but not both together. The FX loop can go anywhere you want...depends on exactly what you're putting in there, and whether or not that particular effect will work best before or after the amp model. There's no "rule" one way or the other.

Over a weekend, 3 days after a firmware release when they've likely been inundated with botched-update service requests? Smart money says it'll be a while...

Yes, that's exactly what's gonna happen, and there's no way around it. Guitars amps and FRFR PA speakers have vastly different frequency responses. Any given patch will never sound the same from one to the other no matter what you do.... some degree of EQing will always be necessary. Volume is also critical. Perceived loudness of different frequency ranges varies drastically with volume. In other words, the patch that sounded magnificent when you dialed it in at 2 a.m. in the living room, will have all the appeal of a 95° day in Manhattan during a sanitation strike when you crank it up to stage volume. You MUST tweak at, or at least close to the volume at which you're gonna use the patch. That's one way to go about it, and some guys do exactly that. Personally I find it much easier to keep the patches themselves as simple as possible, tweaked for each unique scenario, and maintain different set lists according to intended use... live, studio monitors, headphones, etc. They're all the same tones, just EQ-ed for the intended output method and volume. It's a bit more work up front, but you only have to do it once, and then you don't have to think about it anymore. Ymmv...