talonmm

Make sure that you it has firmware 1.04 too even though it seems to be working. 1.04 fixed a sleep mode bug, and it would not go into sleep mode all the time which will prematurely drain your battery. 

I am having a sleep mode issue too so I downloaded the latest version of updater from the line 6 site.

When I run updater it tells me the g10 has version 1.0 firmware, not 1.04 and no matter what I try to do, the latest version of installer will not install 1.04.  

Any idea what I should do?  Seems the only way to update the firmware is with installer and I have downloaded the latest version from the end of March, version 1.11 I beleive.

Talonmm,

 

Just curious if you had any of your other units fail or was it just the one?  Has anybody else had a modded unit fail yet?

 

The remaining two units are working fine.  My friend that did the mod feels it could have been a short in the electronics inside the original base unit.  He retested the board he put in and his wiring work and those things are working fine.  He isolated the electronic piece in the g10 base that failed and is trying to locate a replacement on the internet to see if he can get the g10 to work again.

On the first mod he did, that continues to work,  he taped the step down board to the inside of the base unit as was recommended by Joe.  In the next two units, he wrapped the step-down boards in electrical tape so nothing could touch the board but did not mount either of them on the inside of the base unit .  If the board or anything inside the base heated up which it shouldn't, my pal thinks that could be the problem but feels it's probably not.  The power consumption in the g10 is so small that it should not get warm at all.

I kept asking him if he thought the board I purchased on eBay could have failed but with his years of experience in electrical engineering and repair, he believes  these boards almost always work fine.

Since the failure, he mounted the board to the side on the working unit and so far so good on the two reamining working g10's.

Dump the 9 to 5 and go straight 5V, no issues.

I agree with your thinking and suggested that to my tech.  I was told those step down boards work well and appratnely they are used in many electrical devices and there was no signs the malfunction was caused by the step down board. 

The board was tested before and after my until stopped working and is still working as designed.

**** Please read this ******

As I stated earlier, I had a very knowledgeable engineer perform the mod suggested by Joe. My engineer thought Joe's idea was outstanding. The mod was done to all three of my g-10 units and all worked fine until Monday. The unit I use for band practice is used once or twice a week for about 2.5 hours each practice although I usually charge the transmitter separately. Instead of charging it using the base, I use the separately-sold Line 6 charger that's designed to get power from a usb port (more on that in a minute).

The g10 I use for daily practice (about two hours each day) worked fine until Monday. It was time to recharge the transmitter so I left it charging in the g10 base for about 4-5 hours. I saw the unit was still functioning properly, and I pulled the transmitter from the top of the g10 charging base. Next I turned away to plug the transmitter into the guitar and then realized I could not get any sound. Turns out the g10 base was no longer working and nothing I could do changed that. Without it working, there will be no sound as we all know.

I tested another g10 base with the existing ac adapter that that worked fine so that shows the ac adapter worked and was getting current. The non-working g10 base did not work with any power supply and I tried a few. My engineering friend took the unit apart hoping to find a loose wire but everything looked fine with the work he did and the new components used seem to be working fine when he tested them.

It's possible the unit failed for other reasons, but it's likely that the modification might have had something to do with this failure. Now regarding charging the transmitter in the line 6 stand-alone usb charger, I wonder if my other units have not blown because they are never on for 4 hours or more of continuous usage. As I already mentioned the new components were tested on the non working system and they appear sound, yet the system will not power up. Any thoughts or suggestions?

I have three g10's, and one broke so I had the mod done on all three. The one that broke, was also attached on a peddleboard but that did not prevent it from breaking. The input jack faced the outside edge of the peddleboard so the wire often was off the board. It got lightly pushed and the pushing pressure sent to the power-jack was enough to loosen it and make it no longer work.

Since doing the modification, I now have turned the unit so the guitar output and power source no longer face the edge of the peddleboard. If you are gigging with one or both units it's only a matter of time before something silly happens and you lose the unit.

I've been using the G10 a lot recently and the only issue I have is the USB power supply. I was thinking how much more practical it would if it could be powered from your pedalboard power supply eg 9v adapter to G10 charger. Does anyone know if an adapter like this exists and what it would be called? Or if I'd be able to get one built at an electronics store or something like that? Thanks

there is a design flaw with the way the female power jack inside the unit is attached to the main board. many users of the g10 have complained about how their jack broke during routine use.  there are 1 - 2 semi-active subjects in this forum section that have dealt with a better long term solution and how to modify the unit internally

to accommodate a better power solution that will not break as easily as the original design.

Check them out and see if they are a better fit for your situation and perhaps you may not want to wait until your system breaks as so many of us have experienced.

----------------

You remind me of the engineer who made the three mods on my units (I say that in a good way, not a bad way)

He like you, had concerns...  He worried if the unit would have the identical wireless range after the mod.

I can assure you that the the output sounds fine, and the range is fine, and the boards recommended here by others work.  While the noise was not tested or measured, the sound sounds fine to me, even at the loudest levels as I play out and rehearse with my band all the time.

Last, my engineer friend worried about variances in the output voltage from the board and was very impressed that no matter what he threw at it, it returned 5 steady volts when he measured it with his equipment.

Guys, don't overthink this, it really works!

As someone who recently missed the download as well, Line 6 should make the download link much more obvious and easy to find additionally, if the editor program can show you the firmware version, it should check to make sure the editor version and firmware version are in unison and give you a warning message when they are not.

just to update my story (I had posted here about a month or two ago) and I had the conversion done and was thrilled with it.  The mod was done to my broken unit that was on my peddleboard and that I gigged with.

I own two other g10's that stay in the house and I worried that at some inopportune moment one of them would break too.  As was discussed earlier here, it is so easy to break these units that the argument that you don't gig with one and/or the plug is never removed is a week argument. 

So I had the last two done and now all three work flawlessly.  the parts cost a couple of bucks from ebay and I would recommend since the bard costs $.99 and the jacks about the same, that you order 3-5 incase you break any or get another g10 down the road (perhaps a broken one for pennies on the dollar).

every single board and jack worked fine, and the units are working and now much better built than the day I got them!

there is another thread on here someplace where I ordered the boards and parts from ebay.  they components are excellent quality and cost less than $10.00.  because the main board needed is about $.99 each, I ordered 5 of them.  all work and I have had my three g10's modded and each work great!

I can not recommend this solution enough - my peddle board now works flawlessly and I can gig again with my g10.

Being a huge fan of that Eddie Van Halen recording, I had made my own version of the tone for the Helix, but it stunk.  I checked out the VHII tone and it was OK,  but found the delay and phase were not correct. 

I modified the phase 90 setting and put in two different delays to work off of each other and I think I have a tone that is much better than what I had done on the helix a year ago.  The new tone may closer to Eruption than VHII.  I really like the "spacey" feel of the tone and it does remind me of the original recording.

Perhaps you may want to scale back the delays, as sometimes when I play it, it seems like the guitar is playing itself without me.

I uploaded it this morning to the Line 6 download area - my first tone submission.  Please note I am using a Marshall 1960 4x12 cab ir that is commonly found on the internet.  I don't recall where it was downloaded from, but honesty, just substitute any Marshall 4x12 cabinet (preferably a 1960 model) and you should be fine.

I agree with PeterHamm. Double check this.

 

Note that the main editor window displays the version of the firmware installed in the connected Helix. To determine the editor version in you need to use the Help..... About Helix menu in the editor.

that was it!  I was seeing the firmware, not the editor version.  I downloaded the new editor and now it's working fine.  thanks so much!

 

 

 

Any add'l feedback on still using my Marshall is appreciated

Ok, you asked for it....

I don't know anyone else that runs a rig quite like mine but it works.

I have two helix units, one for gigs and one stays home.

on the home front I use two marshall stacks, one for left side, one for right.   - I do not play loudly, but the two stacks on opposite sides of the room fill the room nicely with rich sound.

I buy the very cheap, used solid state marshall heads and try to amplify the sound to drive the cabinets without any added overdrive.

the system sounds awesome - and I use the helix for the cleanest cleans to the 5150 amp heads - all the sound charasterics are derived from the helix not the marshall.

I have had quite a few guitarists over and they all rave about the sound

no reason a helix can not be set up this way and work fine with some tweaking

and I do not use effects loops, i go directly from helix to the guitar inputs on the two heads using 1/4" cables

I installed the firmware and line 6 helix editor weeks ago to 2.20 and it worked fine.

a couple of weeks ago I downloaded some of the newer tones from custom tone and about a third of the tones would not work.

Today, I downloaded the newest tones and about half of them do not work, because editor gives me a message "model specified in file is not recognized"

looks like a model inside the tone is not found in my firmware or editor, yet both things were updated and both say ver. 2.20

going though the line 6 download/update screens is cumbersome and a puzzle sometimes.  Did I leave out a part of the update?  I reset globals and did the resets after the firmware as advised and again after the editor upgrade just to be safe.

two of the files it happens on is Castellorizon ,  scream.period.lead 

any help would be appreciated.

thanks!

 

back in the old days of line 6, they had an amp with a 4-channel footswitch. Others advised that "A" should be clean, "B" a little over driven, "C" distortion, and "D" full distortion, primarily for guitar solos.

that stuck with me on the pod hd and now helix, so my first four tones are labeled A and name of the tone i choose to represent A, B, for a mid-1960's distortion, "C" for classic 70s, and "D" for more hard rock.

i am in a cover band too and these four work for about 80% of our songs. I was never was happy with the wah and boosts in the helix, so I use the send / receive option and hook up a boost and auto wah and they work quite well.

with the remaining 4 tones available on the helix without having to shift, I use each for special sounds perhaps found in 1-2 songs each that we play.

This was the mod I had done so I could power my G10 from a standard 9v pedalboard power supply without damaging the G10. And as the unit was in situ and wasn't going to be moved I didn't feel it necessary to modify the USB input.

 

http://line6.com/support/topic/21552-how-to-power-g10-from-a-standard-pedal-board/

very clever design solution, but someday if the wind blows and your ios female plug gets pushed in or broken like the rest of ours did (and yes, it could happen easily someday, so never say never) you may want to do the modification shown above.  The modification internally is a more solid solution.

I'd like to share my experience on upgrading the base unit from the usb jack to a 9 volt solution.  Joe's documentation and solution works 100% well!

I have three units - 2 at home that are never touched and should hold up, and one unit on a peddleboard that broke after I gigged with it.  First off, I ordered the 9v to 5v step down on ebay and the recommended female dc plug. 

The boards cost about 99 cents each on ebay so I ordered lots of extras in case I screwed up.  All these parts are from China and the person who did the mod for me tested the step down board and could not believe how well it worked (producing an exact flow of 5 volts which he thought was astounding!)

First off, I was going to send the item to Joe, who I know would have done a phenomenal  job (and he has the parts, you don't need to send them to him).  However, my bass player insisted I give the project to her boyfriend who is an electrical engineer and does these kinds of repairs all the time.  Reluctantly, I had to tell Joe I was not sending him the project and he was such a gentleman.  He was fine with it and told me If I had any questions or problems, I could contact him.

So I printed out the notes from this forum and went to see the local electrical guy.  The screw was stripped on the until, thanks to my other guitarist in the band who took the unit home to see if the plug could be put back in place earlier, but it turned out to be broken.

It took the engineer forever to open the unit.  The single screw is under the label on the bottom.  eventually he had to drill out the screw.  So my unit is no longer 100 % and at this point in the evening I wished I sent the unit to Joe.

However, the soldering and upgrade took less time than opening the unit.  I know nothing about electronics, but if you are going to do this project, you will need a huge magnifying device and some nifty soldering tools as this is not a simple soldering job.  It is a tough and small soldering job.

Now that the upgrade is done, the unit is working 100% and I am extremely confident it will hold up! 

Here's an added bonus about that 99 cent board.  it can handle 9v, 12v (I think), and 18v adapters and will automatically step them down to the needed 5v.  When I went through my stash of old orphan power adapters, the smallest one I found was an 18v and because it was smaller than my others, it fit nicely on my peddleboard power system.  So just because you are buying a 9v step down, you have additional options with voltage.

Joe was awesome and I would recommend him in a heart beat if this project is beyond anyone's knowledge or ability.

the big thing you're missing, is that you can record the dry tracks and reprocess the entire thing through a while different setup in software....

you can use a dry track and a pair of headphones to create tones from your living room that you can transfer to your helix for live use....

you can also use any of the effects elsewhere in your recording at relative ease... add compression or reverb to the odd track....

 

but yes.. pretty much what you said at the end of your post. :)

Wow, I never thought of that.  Recording a dry track and then having the power of Helix to shape the exact sound I want is a great tool.  I imagine I can even make changes throughout the recording by bringing in different effects and different settings?

I see there's a lot of excitement about the Helix Native and I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't quite get why this is a huge enhancement. 

So, If I use my helix to play-out, and don't mind bringing it into the studio for recordings, then there is really not a huge advantage or game changer for me?

Reading other topics on the Native, I can see why certain users would be thrilled, no longer having to bring their Helix from the road to the studio.  And it looks like there will be more amps coming?  Hopefully those amps will be included in future updates for the Helix units themselves in addition to Native?

Last, I would appreciate if anyone could tell me if the following use would work out well and perhaps this would be a game changer for me! 

I would much rather put the guitar down, and adjust the helix settings, sitting down at a computer than playing and having to make changes to the unit or the computer editor while strapped to a guitar and playing. 

Could I record my guitar with zero effects and processing, and then feed that sound into the  Helix Native?  Then sitting comfortably at the computer for long periods of time, I could try many different amps and effects and really dive in to how the setting change the sound.  Or will the dynamics of playing in real-time not be identical to a pre-recorded input into Native from the same guitar?

My setlists were acting up prior to 2.11 but my experience wasn't the same. My preset names disappeared and every block was that of the very first factory preset and my Helix would freeze. What seemed to trigger it was trying to move a preset from one setlist to another.

 

No problem since 2.11

Wow, thanks for the post.  Come to think of it, I did move a preset from one setlist to another setlist and my troubles started shortly after that.

Here's one I experienced this weekend and never saw this problem posted before.  Anyone else ever experience this?

I must have have corrupted my Helix device or the set-list files because for as long as I could remember, before this weekend, I could successfully switch presets in different set-lists without any issues.

Over the last few days, when I switched presets from different set-lists, no matter if I was doing it using with the Helix preset knob or the helix editor software, and played for a while, and then moved to a different tone in another set-list the following strange thing would occur:

The new tone I switched to, would have the proper name show up on the lighted display and also on the helix editor, however, the tone I heard was the tone taking up the same residence in the prior set-list. Another words, if I played 01A in one set list and switched to 01A in another set list, I would hear the same tone from the first set-list.  Worse, somehow the blocks and settings from the previous set-list was moved to my new tone and saved.  I repeatedly shut off the helix but it would still be there!

Thinking I must have been half asleep, I loaded up my backup and this happened again and again, repeatedly.  I own a second helix, one stays home, one goes to band practice and gigs and that helix acted fine this weekend.

Using the large display on the helix and the editor software confirmed that the name of the tone remained unchanged but every setting and block was overwritten.

Even worse, I accidentally backed everything up with the ruined set-lists so I almost destroyed my backups.  Lucky I had additional backups and a second helix to save the day.

I decided to rebuild the helix firmware, but as luck would have it, there was a brand new firmware upgrade (2.11) so I installed that and things seem back to normal.

I hope I don't have a helix system board flaking out causing this.  Worse, seems I spend way too much time dealing with Helix upgrades, problems, and learning curves than I do playing and improving on the guitar.

Anyone else ever have this problem?

Talonmm and willjrock,  I apologize.  I completely misunderstood and misread talonmm's post.  My fault entirely.

Thanks!  All is good, now where are those new tones!  LOL

This is exactly the type of comment that causes people to look down on this forum.

 

talonmm asks a question thats important to him, and because it wasnt perfectly worded, you troll on in to call him out on it..

 

You know what hes trying to say, but instead you choose to overlook the context of the post and make a shallow remark about something completely trivial.

 

If its that important to you to visit an online forum every day and get your post count up, to appear to be an experienced user, the least you could do is try and be meaningful.

 

 

 

 

 

Im sure this sounds pretty elementary, but why not just type "hi gain archon" (or whatever) into the search field? That should give you everything you need no?

Thank you for putting into words a much better reply than I could come up with.

If there are forum members that want to lecture me or talk down to me because of a word or two that I used, or the concept that I want to see what others are doing rather than having me build tones from scratch, then please do not reply to my post and just move along to another topic that you feel you can help with or nicely comment on.

Thanks.

Superior according to whom? I mean, who gets to decide that?

Feel free to change the words "superior tone-makers" to "helix tone-makers".  So now it can read "...I'm still hoping to hear what some of the helix tone-makers are coming up with.

Feel better now?

 On Customtone? I suppose there are a few superior tone makers but it's a completely unregulated site. Anyone can post anything and call it what they want. In my experience a superior tone on Customtone is a very rare find indeed.

I have found some gems on customtone.  I am not in a good routine... I download most of the new tones once a week, try them out, and keep the one or two that are unique to my collection and sound great.