BBD_123

Yes, sure. As Codamedia says. Crank up the drive (or compression) and you need to compensate by lowering block Level to maintain unity gain.

Tone Sov / KOT is brilliant, no doubt. But don't forget in all the excitement to try the Heir Apparent. After some careful thought, I swapped out the TSov for the HA on several patches. Sometimes less is more. Sometimes not :-)

Good point, but what I do to avoid walloping blocks downstream from the amp is to establish something close to unity gain right from the outset. I start with an empty patch, then add the cab block and A/B for parity gain (it's often necessary to increase the cab block output). Then I add the amp block and do the same using amp block channel volume. Once that's done, there's no danger of accidentally blasting anything downstream. Also, most patches tend to come out within hailing distance of each other gain-wise, which is an added bonus :-)

Best to use the amp block Channel Volume. The Master Vol controls the amp's power stage and for amps that don't have a master volume IRL it should always be set to 10 and left alone, or you mess up the tone. The Channel Volume sets the output level for the block as a whole without affecting the modeled power stage at all.

Then turn down the headphones output volume and see if the buzz goes away and let us know... In the manual - which I recommend reading when you have issues - on page 18 you will find reference to the input In-Z option which can alter input impedance: https://line6.com/data/6/0a020a4010c935bb66a4c0c44f/application/pdf/HX Stomp Manual - English .pdf

Well, be sure to start by intonating your bridge as near to perfectly as you can, or it's all a waste of time :-)

Litigator's great too...

Oh, I'll play - it's Sunday afternoon and it's raining :-) The Deluxe is great, the Cali IV is great, but if like me you play a Strat quite a lot, you might fall for the wonderfulness of the Bassman. It's got that bit more mid body than most and it's expressive, if you know what I mean. Stick an Heir Apparent (half a Tone King) in front when you want drive, and light touch Ganymede reverb after the cab block. Maybe a bit of LA comp at the end of the chain. Clean up with your guitar volume pot as needed. Triffic :-)

^^^ This, plus the fact that not all that many bridges are intonated well enough for fractions of a cent to be a rational concern during tuning :-) Just my .2 cents... :-)

:-) I'm eventually going to do the reverse. I've got floor, which is a fantastic piece of kit (what everyone else said, basically), but I want a Stomp for holidays and jamming with pals so I'll be picking one up in due course. I still use the Pod HD for travel at the moment, but I think it's probably time to move on.

It very much depends what else is in the chain. For example, I run Helix floor into a Yamaha MG06 mixer in my practice room rig (1/4" cables). Anything more than about 12:00 on the Helix master volume knob can cause the mixer input to clip.

Greg, what is your master volume knob on the LT unit set at?

A really basic thing for me is trying to stay fairly close to unity gain within Helix itself. It is *very* easy to accidentally introduce a lot of dB of gain into the signal chain, which can result in a mushy or even clippy mess. What I do is start with an empty patch - no blocks - to establish the baseline for gain. Then I add the CAB block and turn it on and off to A/B with the empty patch. I tend to find that the CAB block needs its level at maximum (+6dB) for parity with the dry signal. Then I add the AMP block and on/off A/B again, using the AMP block Channel Volume to dial in something close to unity gain. Once this is done, you've got the backbone of the patch established. If you add gain in front of the amp or you crank the amp pre / power stages you use AMP channel volume to dial back the extra dB so that you stay fairly close to unity gain with the dry signal. YMMV, but for me, this approach delivers the best string definition and generally realistic, amp-like tones.

^^^^ This. Starting with the AMP BLOCK alone. Set the amp block Channel Volume so that there isn't a big jump in gain when you turn the amp block on and off in an otherwise empty signal chain. Also true. I managed to run the Helix a bit too hot into a Yamaha MG06 mini mixer and *there* was the source of clipping - the mixer, not Helix. Once I turned down the physical Volume knob on the floor unit, the problem went away.

A question only you can answer to your own satisfaction...

Just watch the channel volume on the amp block. I think some of the more vintage delay models might not like too hot an input (although IIRC there's a headroom control to deal with input clipping on at least some of them).

Great post from amsdenj. I have Helix floor but I still use an old POD HD for holidays*, plugged in to a Roland Cube Lite sprouting Beyerdynamics. Edit is via a Dell notebook. A bit Heath Robinson, but it has served me well for a number of years :-) But it's long in the tooth and I'm going to get a Stomp. I know I'll be fine with Stomp because I'm a follower of the 'fewer blocks, better tone' school :-) I also understand the DSP limitations from the perspective of a Floor user and to me, at least, they don't present a problem. So Floor it will be, and bye bye to that fiddly knob interface for HD Edit... I know that it is possible to get excellent tones from Helix Floor using only path A and a handful of blocks and simple linear routing. So I know Stomp will do the trick for me. Of course YMMV but I hope this is useful. * We drive a few hours to a rental cottage on the Cornish coast. Stuff we take gets packed into the back of the car. No airports are involved.

IDK but perhaps the decision to limit to six blocks was based on DSP limits, as it represents a reasonable 'typical use'. Since some amp and fx choices could max you out at below six, setting the block limit any higher would result in even more aggrieved customers.

That's not a Leslie effect, it is the sound of approaching black helicopters - from the future... ;-)

Found this thread while researching. I have a POD HD that I use for holidays. I've just replaced the laptop I have used with it for years and... oh dear what a mess. Repeated BSODs, weird behaviour from the POD requiring restarts and so on. I'm using a brand new Dell XPS 15 2019 with a fully patched W10 and nothing much else except an email client and Office - so very vanilla, software-wise. On my previous setup I had POD handling guitar *only* and the inboard audio chipset dealing with music playback. The laptop is connected to a Roland Cube Lite mini combo as well as POD. This was perfectly stable over several years of use. But when I installed POD on the new laptop, the default setup kicked in and POD tried to take over all the audio processing functions. This is the source of the problem. As soon as I forced POD to stick to guitar only and allowed the inboard audio chip to deal with music playback, the horror show stopped instantly and stability returned. Of course there may be other reasons why you might get BSODs, but I can say confidently that this was mine, and the problem was easily solved.

LA Comp adds +4dB so I have its level set at -4dB to shave off the bump.

That's it. I notice that the LA Comp patches will sometimes load quiet with an immediate volume swell but not to the correct level. W10, fully patched, build 1903, correct and successful update procedure from 2.70 to 2.81. Now I'm *not* moaning about this, it is just one of those things with a major update, but it is definitely a thing.

Like you, I waited a while, then upgraded from 2.70 to 2.81. Like you, I read and followed the instructions and encountered no problems with the upgrade. Unfortunately, I can say that I am having issues with random drops in patch volume associated with patches with the LA Comp at the end of the chain. These seem to be impermanent, so one time a patch will load quiet, then the next time, with no Ch Vol adjustment, it will load at the correct, original volume level. I'm not gigging so this is a modest PITA rather than a Problem, but it will be good to see it fixed, hopefully with 2.82. I would also like to confirm that I remain a dedicated fanboi of L6 :-0

Being a bit old school, I tend to take that approach: cranked Plexi for clean (guitar vol rolled back) and crunch (guitar vol full up) and step on an OD for lead tones. This is paying off nicely right now with the new Tone Sovereign / KoT pedal in 2.8x ... Lots of tone control there to 'pre-EQ' the amp as well as add boost, crunch or OD. I'm having no trouble getting the full gamut of tones from fat blues to screaming rawk out of the Plexi 100 head. Okay, not the modern high gain amps Paulzx was specifically asking about, but tbh I'm not sure what I'd do with any more gain than I'm getting - from a Strat - into KoT then Plexi. There seems to be more than enough to go around :-)

Yes, there's a good list here. Scroll down for links to cabs, effects and mics. No! Helix does the lot, from effects to amps to cabs to mics - the whole signal chain - so you can monitor through headphones. And this ^^^^^^^^