HonestOpinion

Are you on Windows 10? I believe I have seen that kind of behavior before.

No additional software or interface required, all you need is a Variax (Ethercon) cable to connect the Variax to the Helix and you are off to the races. The Helix powers the Variax. More fun than a barrel full of mermaids. If you purchase a new Variax it will include a gig-bag, battery and charger as well as an Ethernet to USB connector so that you can hook it up to your computer for firmware updates and to use the Workbench app for custom designing guitars. The Workbench app requires you to register the Variax with Line6. You will need to purchase a Variax or Ethercon cable separately. I got a Variax recently and highly recommend it, among many other compelling features contained in the fashion the Variax communicates with the Helix is the simple ability to have it force the model as well as an alternate tuning on the Variax from a preset. So for instance, I have presets named Rickenbacker, Banjo, Dobro, Sitar, Martin D-28, etc., that immediately bring up instruments I would not ordinarily have on tap. You can have a Strat or other model come up with an Open D or other alternate tuning. The corresponding model and tuning on the Variax is automatically selected when I click the Helix preset. You can also control pretty much any parameter, e.g. the distortion drive level or delay tempo from the volume and tone controls. All these features are old hat for Variax owners and you can find a ton of information on the Line6 Variax forums.

You are getting some "swell" sounds here. I noticed that you had the volume block set to "Linear". I have found the swells to be more "musical" and easier to control with the volume block set to "Logarithmic".

Aaargh, it looks like klangmaler has a point about reverb IRs. They will be severely truncated in terms of the reverbs tails but they can be loaded and might be useful in certain applications. You may find them more useful in a DAW where they can be used to their full potential but they are kind of cool to play around with in the Helix as well. Btw, the vocal reverb sounds pretty good on my acoustic guitar preset, particularly in combination with a Helix reverb to compensate for the truncated Reverb tails.

Thanks for the clarification. Yep, too bad about that sample length limit, that definitely puts a damper on what you can do with reverb IRs but I have to say that I am finding them usable nonetheless. I guess they will have extremely limited application.

I don't believe that is the case, reverb IRs can be used with the Helix. I was able to import these reverb IRs into the Helix with no issue and I have to say they sound good. For those of us hungering for some more quality reverbs on the Helix this may not be exactly what we had in mind but it is a start. Give it a try. UPDATE: Reverb IRs with tails longer than about 1 second get truncated in Helix. You may still be able to use them, particularly in combination with a Helix reverb that makes up for the truncated tails but they may be best employed in a DAW that can take full advantage of them.

Free "Reverb Pack" IRs from 3Sigma and no login or email runaround to get them, you can buy some cab IRs if you like them. These are reverb IRs, not amp cabs. Some of them are targeted towards vocals. Would love to hear back from anyone who tries them with a microphone through the Helix. Thanks 3Sigma! http://www.3sigmaaudio.com/free-reverb-impulses/ UPDATE: Reverb IRs with tails longer than about 1 second get truncated in Helix. You may still be able to use them, particularly in combination with a Helix reverb that makes up for the truncated tails but they may be best employed in a DAW that can take full advantage of them.

You will love your new Helix, just a great piece of gear! I am not totally confident in the switches yet as the first Helix I purchased had two switches that failed. To be fair it was one of the first ones to roll off the line. My retailer was great about it and got me a second one out immediately and it has had absolutely no switch problems. The Helix construction overall is incredibly high quality and Line6 tends to be very good about support so if it turns out that the switches are problematic across a wide swath of units (perish the thought) hopefully they will take care of you. Given the quality of most of the rest of the build you may never have to test that theory.

Btw, although I like setting up multiple "same" amp channels in the same preset for clean and crunch/lead sounds, mixing and matching works great also. For example a Fender or Hiwatt for clean and a Marshall or Soldano for the chrunch/lead sounds. Another way to switch from clean to dirty is by the use of the Multiple() assignment footswitches. Assign a distortion pedal and some of the amp parameters such as Master, Drive and Treble to the same footswitch. That way you can kick in the distortion and simultaneously change the amp parameters to jack up the drive on the amp while lowering the master volume and treble. Hitting the switch again turns off the distortion, lowers the Drive on the amp and restores some volume and highs to give back a clean "sparkle".

A lot of people seem to use Soundcloud although it is not free. You could upload it to Youtube for free. I also have been working on trying to get a great Variax acoustic patch. I think it will probably look significantly different in a month. I am using the Variax 1959 Martin D-28 model with the Jazz Rivet amp (amp only, no cab) to good effect with the drive way down, cut mids, the bass and treble slightly above 5, and a bit of presence and bright dialed in . I have a couple of acoustic IRs to choose from in the signal chain (not PeterHamm's, looking forward to trying them) but I often get a better sound without them. I have been experimenting with the delay and reverb. I chose a very short delay time with lots of repeats (feedback 50%). I use two different kinds of reverb in parallel, I found adding a second reverb vastly improved the acoustic sound. I may do the same thing with a second delay. I chose room & hall reverbs with little to no predelay (sound bounces off the inside of a real acoustic guitar rapidly after the string is strummed), high decay time, and raised the high cut way up in the reverbs to get more reflections on the high end. My objective is to emulate an acoustic guitar sound with the immediacy and complexity of the guitar string's sound bouncing around in an acoustic guitar body; that is why I think the delay and reverb settings are so critical. Getting a fairly good acoustic sound from the Variax now although as always I find it more convincing as an acoustic for finger picking than strumming. Still working on this preset and I may upload it to CustomTone when I am done but I am always self-conscious about my own presets and they may sound like crud for someone else. Hence the description above of what I am trying to achieve as it will inevitably be executed better by someone else.

I would not want to see critical other functionality sacrificed for the sake of the looper although a bit longer duration would certainly be nice. The looper on the Fractal AX8 units does have more functionality and a much longer max duration (mono 4 minutes) although I don't believe you can save the loops (loop saves would be a great feature for an editor!). The Fractal FX8 can also disable the looper to "save CPU cycles". I am not sure how Fractal pulled it off but they did manage to incorporate a much better looper with similar hardware to the Helix. I have no idea what sacrifices this cost them however in other functionality. It does give hope that perhaps there are still some improvements L6 could make to the looper although I find it adequate for my purposes now. I do understand that single and duo acts who use looping to carry rhythm parts, or even musicians who use them creatively in small or large bands may not find the looper on the Helix sufficient for their needs. I know it is cold consolation and not what anyone wants to hear but I think an external looper pedal is probably the way to go for these musicians. I have the Digitech JamMan Solo XT and it does a great job as well as having flash card storage for as many long loops as anyone could ever need. Not that I would not love to have that functionality built in to the Helix. The Helix's looper seems like more of an afterthought and it looks like it may have shown up as low priority in L6's market research. I do think in future iterations of the Helix a more sophisticated looper with flash card capability would be an awesome addition but I just don't think it is in the "cards" right now (pun intended). But hey, who am I to rain on anyone else's parade. If L6 can figure out a way to beef it up without taking away from other features and functionality, I hope they do just that.

The first thing you may want to do when you intend to really load up a preset is to set up a "Super Serial X2" route. You can use preset 01D in the Templates setlist as a guide. This will get both DSPs chips into play. You are going to have to spread your block choices across routes 1&2 in such a way that you are roughly distributing the DSP usage across the two routes. It may take some juggling before you get everything you want into the preset. Remember that amps & cabs first and foremost as well as some of the more complex "Mod" blocks tend to use the most DSP; they often need to be on separate routes. You may need to put one amp/cab on one Route1 and the second on Route2. You will also need to figure out which routes to use to split out your effects.

Added it to Ideascale, please vote it up: http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Footswitch-assignments-screen-on-Helix-Helix-Editor/824908-23508

Does anyone else feel that it would be incredibly useful to be able to display all the footswitch assignments at once on both an optional main screen page on the Helix and also on a screen in the editor? I would find it particularly useful when there are "Multiple(?)" footswitch assignments in a preset. And.. if we ever get scenes it will be even more important. It is impossible now to get a decent view of the footswitch assignments. The closest you can get is by going into pedal mode and again, this does not provide a decent view of multiple assignments. Tapping your way through using the cap sensitive switches is a poor substitute for seeing all assignments at a glance.

Your current setup is probably fine although there are a ton of great options out there as far as equipment. I would just work on EQ and high cuts to get rid of the nasal sound in your current system.

I agree with the comments about using Global EQ primarily for adapting to the particular room or equipment you are playing for a specific gig. I find the most important thing to EQ is to dial in the low and high cuts somewhere in your signal chain whether it is in the cab or in an EQ block. Hopefully from there you should be able to mostly get the sound you like with the right combination of amp settings and your preferred cab or IR. That may be all you need unless for instance you always like "scooped" mids, or have a guitar or amp with specific EQ requirements. The less you have to do in the way of additional EQ blocks other than the low/high cuts the better IMHO although they are there if you need them. As is so often the case with EQ, less can be more. The amp tone stack and cabinet/IR are already setting different EQ curves for you. If you are having problems with mud in the low end you may want to experiment with increasing the distance settings on the mic in the cab blocks (proximity effect) and reducing the bass on the amp setting. Another thing to keep in mind with high cuts is where you set them on reverbs, I find they can make a difference between varying instruments. For instance, I like setting the high cuts on reverbs higher on acoustic guitars emulations where they seem to offer some of the effect that the sound bouncing around in the body of the acoustic would have. In general you are right about the high and low cuts in the cab and an additional H/L cut in an EQ block being potentially redundant. It would depend somewhat on how you have routed your signal chain. For instance, you may have mod effects after your cab capable of generating a signal that may require a high cut.

Thanks!

Great stuff, thanks! If you feel so inclined it would be great if you could post them on the topic below as well. Trying to keep all the free IRs consolidated until ideally we get a permanent repository on the HelixHelp.com site or a pinned "Free IR" topic. Thanks! http://line6.com/support/topic/17076-links-for-free-impulse-responses-ir-here/?hl=free+impulse+response

Looks like you have a fellow forum member with the same guitar who has an alternate solution. Surprised to hear the Aux input is an issue with the PRS however as I have used it with no issues with my acoustic guitars with piezos. I have not found the sound to be dull or lacking in dynamics. I will have to try my acoustic guitars through a return input to see if the sound quality is improved. Do you know what the impedance on the return inputs is? The LR Baggs Venue preamp is also a 10M input (same as the Aux input on the Helix). You would assume their preamp would be matched to their pickups and the Helix "Aux" input's exact impedance match to the LR Baggs preamp would be ideal. Here is a quote from a page discussing proper impedance for piezo transducers. The 10M rating for the Aux input would be at the top of the range recommended for piezos according to this page. http://www.gollihurmusic.com/faq/11-PREAMPS_DO_YOU_NEED_A_PREAMP_WITH_YOUR_URB_PICKUP.html Ultra High Impedance: Piezo transducers sound best when their input load is within the 1-10 million+ ohms (1-10 megohms) range.

I was wondering if there is a way to select the preconfigured custom tunings on the Variax that are assigned to the tuning selector dial? I know you can dial up a custom tuning with the Editor using the Custom setting but it seems like it would be a lot more convenient to be able to select for instance the "Open D" tuning from one of the already preconfigured alternate tunings on the Variax than having to dial it in string by string each time you design a Variax oriented Helix preset. Can this be done? I know I could use a template but it would be a lot easier and more flexible if I could just select one of the alternative tunings already set up on the Variax.

Sure, connect the mags to the "Guitar" input and the Piezos to the "Aux" input. They can both be active or you can have presets where only one or the other is active.

Sorry you had to take the hit for the rest of us. Thanks for the warning, I will be diligent in taking precautions to carefully frame just how I go about singing the praises of the Helix to my wife. ;)

Such a cool world and one of the few decent paying jobs for a musician unless you reach stardom. Only the most talented, dependable guitarists who can play well in a variety of genres get to do this. Congratulations! Thanks for a great glimpse into that universe. When does the full documentary come out? :P

They will not necessarily be categorized as Line6 IRs or even mentioning Line6. You just want the ones that have the specifications Line6 recommends for the Helix or that can be converted by the Helix. http://line6.com/support/page/kb/_/effects-controllers/helix/impulse-response-irs-r759 Quote from the Helix manual: The Helix app updates the Helix hardware's IR list automatically. Helix can load and store up to 128 IRs at a time. 48kHz, mono, .WAV type IRs are supported.

Thanks for pointing that out, I am indeed referring to those cuts (often on both the low and high end) being most critical when going direct to the PA or monitoring with full-range PA or FRFR cabs. A guitar amp combo or head and cab may already be making those cuts for you by virtue of its preamp and tone stack or more likely its speaker's characteristics; but a PA/FRFR speaker is capable of returning a much wider frequency range. I will admit though that even with a guitar amp/cab sometimes it still sounds like the highs/lows need to be cut when feeding it from an MFX unit capable of delivering a signal across a range closer to 20hz-20,000khz.