zappazapper

OK, well, that might have been their intention when they designed it but the way most people have used it is to add more gain and definition, and it's been particularly useful to those players looking for tighter and more effortless palm muting when using high-gain distortion. I mean, that's how I found out about them - I read that for Kill 'Em All, James Hetfield put one in front of his Marshall JMP, an amp that doesn't really come with that kind of tight palm muting sound on its own. Maybe other people have used it differently, but it's always been my understanding that that's its most useful application. And back when I got my X3 Live, I did exactly what you did in your video and put a Tube Screamer model in front of every amp in the X3L, and I think I reached the same conclusion you did - it doesn't have a sound of its own, at least not if you use the settings most typically used (gain 0, tone half, volume full), it just gives you more of what the amp already does, and more importantly, makes playing feel more effortless. And so again I'll make the case that your test of running a loop through a Tube Screamer in front of every amp on the Helix only tells half the story because you're missing the opportunity to compare how every amp FEELS with and without the TS.

I don't know where you're getting that. My understanding of the typical use of a TS, and indeed the way I use it myself, is as a gain boost to drive an amp into saturation or distortion. In this case, the amp is the critical element in the chain. You can put a TS in front of any amp and it will make it sound like MORE of that amp. Beyond that there really are no similarities. Every opinion that I've ever heard of the TS's own sound that results from turning up the gain knob is that it's nothing special. I don't know who's saying it's got a sound of its own. But I wouldn't say it doesn't mean much. It's the only pedal that does what it does, even if it doesn't really have its own sound. It's the first pedal I reach for when I just want MORE of whatever I'm hearing.

I mean, cool, but for me the main thing that a Tube Screamer does isn't so much the way it sounds, but the way it feels. It makes it so everything feels lighter and easier. So playing a loop 72 times through 72 amps kind of misses the point for me. You have to PLAY through those 72 amps to really get a feel for what it can do.

There aren't any videos that I'm aware of. There's a manual but it's a Russian company and it's a really bad translation. But it's actually a really simple device, you shouldn't have any trouble. There's a 1/4" TRS jack that you use a splitter to connect to the switch jacks on your amp. I connect it so the left switch selects the Rhythm or Lead channel on my amp, and the right enables or disables the 5-band EQ. Then you connect the MIDI In and MIDI Out to your Helix. By default, the left switch uses CC14 and the right switch uses CC15. So for example, when I push the left switch to change channels on my amp, it sends a message on CC14 to the Helix, with a value of 0 for the Rhythm channel (light is off) and 127 for the Lead channel (light is on). Then I can use this CC message to, say, control the bypass state of a distortion block so that it turns on when I switch to my Lead Channel. It also responds to the same CC messages FROM the Helix. If I send CC14 with any value between 0-63, it switches to my amp's Rhythm channel, and if I send a value between 64-127, it selects the Lead channel. You can send MIDI CC messages from the Helix either with the Instant Commands or with a footswitch. Instant Commands are great because you can change their value per-Snapshot, so for example, Snapshot 1 could be Rhythm channel with 5-band EQ off, Snapshot 2 could be Lead channel with 5-band EQ off, Snapshot 3 could be Lead channel with 5-band EQ on, etc. The only downside is the way the Helix treats incoming MIDI versus its own footswitches in terms of block bypass. A Helix footswitch can be set to control the bypass state of multiple blocks, with the ability to have some blocks enabled and others disabled for a given footswitch state. So for example, when a footswitch is dimmed, you could have a distortion block be off and a chorus block on, and when you press the switch into its lit state, the distortion will now be on and the chorus will be off. However, if you control a block's bypass state with an incoming MIDI message, it will turn the block off when it receives a value between 0-63 and will turn it on when it receives a value between 64-127. So there's no way to, say, use the switches on the FS2-MIDI to turn a chorus block on when you switch to the Rhythm channel on your amp and turn it off when you switch to the Lead channel. The only way to have this kind of behavior is to use a Helix footswitch to both control the bypass state of the chorus block AND send a MIDI CC message to the FS2-MIDI, because you can have the chorus block turn off when sending a message to the FS2-MIDI to select your Lead channel, and vice versa. It's kind of a waste of a footswitch but it's the only way to do it. At any rate, it's a pretty handy little device and it's pretty easy to use, and like I said, it frees up the jack on the Helix to use a second expression pedal if you should want one.

The LT with an amp is pretty incredible. If you're looking for a complete solution for 4CM, I don't know if you'll find much out there that's better, even if the amp switching doesn't work properly and you have to get something like the FS2-MIDI, which is just going to give you two more switches to use and free up the EXT AMP jack to use a second expression pedal anyway. I just played my first gig with it on Saturday and my amp sounded as good as it ever did plugging straight in, plus I had virtually limitless effects options and a super versatile way of controlling everything. There are a few minor things that I'm hoping are addressed in firmware updates but all things considered, I'm very happy with it. If L6 releases a new flagship processor in the near future, the only reason I would get it is out of curiosity, not because I need something better.

Currently at 24 upvotes and officially "trending" BUMPITY BUMP BUMP

@DunedinDragon get yer popcorn...

You're not suggesting that Phil will be always right because he has more posts, are you? Phil is often right, he's a very knowledgeable guy but I often disagree with him myself. Am I wrong because I only have 305 posts? At any rate, Phil is right in this case. It wasn't a bug, it was a design flaw. It functioned exactly how it was designed, it's just that it wasn't designed properly. Now it is (well, sorta... read my post above). And you can take that to the bank, along with my three hundred and SIX posts!!

I wish there was a setting that tells the Helix what impedance to use when a Loop block is the first active block. I've found that the 230k setting is best for most accurately representing the way my amp sounds on its own (I measured it to be around 400k, but there's no setting between 230k and 1M, and 230k sounds a little better). But because I'm using 230k on the input block instead of the Auto setting, the input impedance doesn't change when I use a block that needs a much lower impedance to sound right.

Is there some reason you couldn't use an XLR to 1/4" cable to plug the mic into one of the Returns?

Oh... haha... ya, it's a disaster... I'm having a time over on TGP right now... sigh...

Well, I don't know if Ideascale is necessarily a democracy. If we all voted that the Helix should be able to run Doom, they wouldn't do it, and by the same token, I don't think an idea has to be the most upvoted idea for it to be implemented. I think more votes and more conversation around the idea will naturally cause someone at L6 to take notice of it and consider it on its own merits, and I trust that they know what a good idea is and I accept that something like the Helix is a huge endeavor and I don't fault them for letting things that I might see as obvious slip through the cracks, and Ideascale is a good way of filtering out the noise that a typical support forum experience offers to an organization trying to get some useful feedback.

My original Ideascale post, which is about a year old, I think is very much to the point. It got 12 votes in a year. When I decided to "lobby" for it here, I figured I needed to explain why I was reposting a year old Ideascale post, and maybe that the reason it didn't get many votes was because it assumed the target market understood what it was saying, so I thought I had better try to explain it in more depth, which doesn't exactly lend itself to brevity. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I guess.

Will you upvote it now?

You said it, not me. Maybe if you weren't so lazy and read the post, you'd realize it's not rambling. I will, however, admit to succinctness not being one of my strong suits. I'll attempt to be more succinct. I'm suggesting that the Snapshot Bypass feature be applied to every parameter of a block, not just it's bypass state. So I could, for example, have the gain on an amp block be controlled by a footswitch and not have the value of the gain parameter change when I select a different Snapshot. Was that better?

We're up to 20. BUMP!

Ha... I'm in!

I dunno. All I'm saying is I got a thing from L6 talking about the subtle complexities of different types of power tubes. That's never really been a thing that they would have any reason to talk about.

I just got an email from L6, like a newsletter-type thing, about power tubes. Does anyone think that this is maybe a hint that the next update will include power amp models or the ability to select different power tubes in the amps? (Waits patiently for outrage...)

The Helix has an EQ model based on the classic Mesa Boogie 5-band, so it's really not a huge loss to not use the onboard equalizer, especially since you can have a different EQ per-preset by using the model. The only thing I really use the onboard EQ for anymore is that I have an "everything else" preset that I use for everything that I don't have a specific preset for, for which I have a basic EQ shape that I use but will tweak depending on the venue and my mood. It wasn't a deal breaker that my EQ wasn't properly switchable but I found the FS2-MIDI and it was within my budget so I bought it.

The amount of power and flexibility that comes with something like the Helix doesn't always lend itself to convenience, which is probably the main reason why the Pod Go exists, as it's specifically designed to be easy to use in comparison. I don't have any specific experience with either of these amps. I do seem to recall that Mesa Boogie amps seem to have more issues with external switching than most brands, although I can't speak to individual models. My amp is also a Boogie, a .50 Caliber Plus, and the channel switching works fine, but I get a weird problem where it only half disables the 5-band equalizer. I ended up getting this: https://amtelectronics.com/new/amt-fs-2midi/ It's the only 2-button footswitch I've found that sends and receives MIDI CC messages. It switches both switchable functions on my amp, I can control it with the Helix via MIDI and I can control some functions on the Helix with it via MIDI. It might be your only option if the Helix doesn't properly control your Boogie on its own.

Yes, the Helix has an EXT AMP jack which can be used to control the switching on many amps, but be aware that it doesn't work on every amp. I would search this forum for your specific amp and see if anybody has mentioned anything about whether or not the Helix can switch it properly. Helix doesn't have a dedicated output that does that, but it has a number of available outputs and a very flexible way of routing signal to those outputs, although you would have to set each preset up manually to function the same way it does on the Pod Go.

Maybe I'm just getting hung up on terminology. To me, a pedal that provides its own saturation that's intended to simply be amplified is a "distortion" pedal, and an overdrive is something that's supposed to hit the input of an amp harder and with some tonal character that changes or improves the amp's character, rather than an overdrive just being a less intense distortion pedal.

Fair enough. I guess I'm in the one camp. I never liked the sound of a Tube Screamer's gain turned up full. I just like the way it hits the input of an amp when its gain is at zero and its volume is at max. To each his own. I think I recall the Fender Deluxe being pointed out as the ultimate pedal platform somewhere.

Maybe I'm wrong but I always thought the purpose of an overdrive was to drive the input of an amp, the goal being to maintain the character of the amp while providing more gain than the amp provides, and/or shaping the tone before the amp's gain stage to tweak the saturation. So in that sense, any amp can be a good platform for overdrives. When I got my X3L years ago, it was the first time I had access to a "Tube Screamer"-type overdrive, and I used to spend hours just putting it in front of every amp model on the list, and they all sounded good in their own way. So I would suggest running your pedals, with the same setting you would use on a real amp, through every amp model in the Helix and finding the sound you're after, rather than choosing one based on anecdotal reports of compatibility.