ricksteruk

Exactly. If I wanted to use the Helix as a slightly larger version of the footswitch that comes with my H&K and do nothing else other than switch amp channels I am golden. Doing anything else is the problem. Either you have to use the Helix in Preset mode and that means no spillover, or use it in Stomp mode and that means you can't switch H&K amps and Helix FX at the same time.

I just found an Ideascle for this that was made in Dec 2015.. to go straight back to 10 switch Stomp mode from selecting preset... http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Default-to-10-switches-IA-s-upon-selecting-preset/796488-23508 I find that when I'm singing and playing I want to make sure I hit the right foot switch in a hurry. The easiest one to get to in a hurry would be the bottom left one as there is no worry of hitting a footswitch on the left of it by accident!! So that forces me to use 10 footswitch mode. Which is slightly less elegant in it's multiple presses needed.

Good show, glad the message is getting through! ;) You no like the bumps? OK fair dos!

My Editor did crash today on my mac not long after I had updated to 1.12 But to be fair I had kind of forgotten the editor was still connected to the Helix and used the Helix Preset button to scroll through about a million presets on different set lists in rapid succession. When I went back to my mac it said "unable to communicate" I think. (I am still using 10.9.5 by the way. lol)

I believe that Path 2 has a little bit more DSP horsepower than Path 1... (I think the Path 1 DSP also has to do the UI) If I were you I would use Path 1 merely for the things that go before the amp block.. like Wah, compressor, fuzz, etc - and then send the whole thing off to Path 2. You can then set up the split block and the two amp blocks on path 2 Hopefully this would work and you'd have enough DSP in Path 2 to do what you want.

I am using my Helix mainly with my Hughes & Kettner Switchblade amp. It has 128 Presets controlled by MIDI. At the moment I am primarily using it in 4cm, so I'm getting the majority of my drive tones directly from the amp. However, it is not currently possible to set up the Helix to switch channels on the amp in a useable way within a Helix preset. What I mean is that yes I can send MIDI PC messages to get the amp to change channel, but those buttons then effectively choose a "scene" on the amp. They are single press buttons... you do not press the same button again to turn off that amp sound and switch back to the first. You must press another button to send a MIDI PC to recall that amp setting. This is of course at odds with the way Helix works to switch FX blocks off and on. You cannot assign one button as "ON" and the next as "OFF".. you must use one button as a toggle. While this works fine (for the most part) - it really falls flat on it's backside when dealing with amps and MIDI PC. So I use one tube amp preset as the core tone for each song. I then use Helix's drives/fuzzes/boosts etc to get more gain when required. I can even be clever and switch in a Gain block set to -5dB before the AMP Send/Return to get less gain from my tube amp :) I have one out going to 1/4in and the Switchblades power section and speaker, and before that a split to another path with an EQ and a Cab block which feeds to the XLR for PA, (and headphones for late night practice!!) I have also experimented with using a Helix amp block to simulate my H&K tube preamp with very good results. I set one footswitch to toggle between the Helix amp and the Send/Return block so I can easily tweak the Helix amp to dial in the closest copy of the tone. I have to say I am really impressed with how close I can get the Helix to copy the real amp and, once I have carefully copied all my 35 odd settings that I use on the H&K into the Helix, I could happily gig without the H&K amp if I needed to travel light! I think the Helix is a great piece of kit :)

EDIT: I just posted in another thread about one reason why this might help solve problems for people. .... I am using my Helix mainly with my Hughes & Kettner Switchblade amp. It has 128 Presets controlled by MIDI. At the moment I am primarily using it in 4cm, so I'm getting the majority of my drive tones directly from the amp. However, it is not currently possible to set up the Helix to switch channels on the amp in a useable way within a Helix preset. What I mean is that yes I can send MIDI PC messages to get the amp to change channel, but those buttons then effectively choose a "scene" on the amp. They are single press buttons... you do not press the same button again to turn off that amp sound and switch back to the first. You must press another button to send a MIDI PC to recall that amp setting. This is of course at odds with the way Helix works to switch FX blocks off and on. You cannot assign one button as "ON" and the next as "OFF".. you must use one button as a toggle. While this works fine (for the most part) - it really falls flat on it's backside when dealing with amps and MIDI PC. ..... If we could simply set the Footswitches to send things like "ON", "BYPASS", "5kHz" or whatever was needed it would enable the Helix to work with MIDI controlled amps by enabling basic scenes on the Helix

Interesting... I will have to try cutting the bass before the Helix amp block and see if that gets rid of the nastiness!

I hate to burst the bubble... but I use a H&K switchblade with 128 MIDI presets with my Helix and it's not as good as it may seem. Yes I can set up 10 footswitches to send different amp presets from within one Helix preset.. but I cannot turn any of the Helix's FX blocks off and on with the same switch.. because effectively the H&K is recalling a "scene" when you send it a PC message.. whereas the Helix would toggle an FX block off or on with a button press. And as we all know you can only assign one Helix block to one footswitch... AAAAAARRRRGH. This is why I have to leave my H&K in one preset per Helix preset, then I use Helix boosts / fuzz etc to go from clean to crunch to solos. This is also why I say "Scene Mode FTW ;) " EDIT - and to clarify.. I don't think we actually really need a full scene mode with every single setting for every block. I just wish we could basically make the footswitch send a particular value like "ON" or "BYPASS" or "40%mix" or "2.2kHz" depending on what you were wanting to control. See my idea scale.... http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Scene-Mode-Lite-footswitch-value-assignment/819032-23508

Hey Sikter - Glad you've got a sound you like from your amp :) Assuming all that you have at the moment is on Path 1A, all you need to do is add a cab block (or an IR) near the end of your chain just before the 1/4in output - hit action select it and then drag it to the lower path. Then go to the merge block which will appear just before the 1/4in output, select that hit action and drag it to the lower path to create a second output. Then set that to XLR. You can also add an EQ block on the lower path if you feel you need more that just the IR or Cab to get a similar sound to what you've dialled in for your AC30 to come from the PA. This exact patch would work with no amp as well - just plug into the pa with XLRs and get the soundman to send your feed to your monitor. This is basically how I use my Helix - except I use my amp in 4cm as well, so that I can use my real preamp in a Send/Return loop if I want to, I have a Footswitch set up on each preset to choose between real tube preamp and Helix preamp - so I can use the same preset whether I bring my amp or not. I use one preset per song - as I want to be able to use spillovers for delays and reverbs. It works well enough for me (but it would work better if/when they add a scene mode to Helix)

In before lock.. SCENE MODE FTW ;)

I do feel your pain. I spent about 4 months wishing the Helix had "preset spillover" with no latency - before I finally decided to give it a try and see if it was possible to make it work for me in it's current state. As it is - it's working quite well - I have only 2 or 3 of my 35 song presets I've created so far where there is an issue and I need to press two buttons in a row to switch from one song section to another. I get the hint from Digital Igloo that there may be a solution to this in the pipeline - but even if this doesn't materialise I am still happy with the Helix. AND... I've found a benefit to staying within one preset. Tonal stability! With my previous rig I would switch to a completely different set up / amp channel / fx / everything for different song sections. Very flexible - but at the same time it made the different sections a bit disjointed. Like the solo just seemed to come out of nowhere sometimes as if suddenly a different guitarist had started playing a different rig. With the Helix as I am using it now everything sounds a lot more like I'm one guitarist just stepping on a boost or delay pedal. It feels better to play to me. I could of course set up different paths and switch between different amps if I wanted that total tonal change like I got before.

I'm using it like you zooey, in Stomp mode and then bank to change presets, but I think I'd prefer it if the preset mode could have an option to automatically switch into stomp mode once you select a preset. Saves having to do an extra button push right away.

Yes that's very easy to do. Just press the menu button, go to the Footswitch control page (press knob1), use the joystick to select your delay (and then reverb) and assign them to the same footswitch as the boost. The name on the scribble strip for the footswitch will change to "MULTIPLE (3)" if you assign all 3 things. You can use the "bypass" button on each block to toggle to make sure the boost and delay are ON while the reverb is OFF. Good eh! :) The only downside is that you cannot assign these blocks to another footswitch - so for example it would not be possible to set up another footswitch to turn on your delay on your clean (no boost) sound.

It's fantastic when your rig just inspires you to want to play! Congrats on a good find :) I'm absolutely loving the combination of my Helix with my Hughes & Kettner Switchblade 50 TSC combo. I also feel inspired to play.. I swear I have played more in the last 3 weeks since I got Helix than all the rest of this year.

I find my Helix to be an absolute joy to use and program and have managed to dial in some tones that are almost identical to my tube amp. I have played more guitar in the last 3 weeks I've owned the Helix than I had the rest of this year.

That kind of wah sound that comes in at 1 min 40 secs - sounds a bit like an autoya / vowel formant thing

Very nice! Those clean and breakup tones are really good. I did enjoy the Autoya? drop down sound about halfway through as well :)

Nice Al :) I really like using my Helix Compulsive Drive and the Timmy in front of my Laney AOR set on clean or my H&K switchblade clean also.

Yeah I agree Al, the 2204 isn't one of the main offenders for the digital grunge - but it isn't totally innocent either :)

So here's a recording. https://soundcloud.com/ricksteruk/helix-v-hk-scale?in=ricksteruk/sets/line6-helix-vs-hk-switchblade I had tried to make my Helix sound as much like my H&K switchblade as possible and try to dial out the nasty noise. I used an 11kHz hi cut. The first riff is my actual H&K preamp (in 4cm), the second is the Helix. Third is real amp on left, Helix on right If you concentrate on the Helix one with headphones, what you are basically listening for is a mid/high frequency fuzz/buzz that just sort of echoes the main notes. This sound is present all the time - it's just this palm muting style playing makes it more apparent.

Fab - and scribble strips will be even better :)

Hi Guys, I've been checking out my Helix's amps today and I've tried to dial in a copy of my favourite H&K crunch preset. Recorded through the Helix's USB - the H&K is in 4cm with the Helix and it's same Helix preset either using the H&K in one of the Helix's Send/Return Loops or the Helix's Brit 2204 preamp (and an extra EQ block to help make them sound the same) I "reamped" the guitar using Helix so it's the exact same guitar playing repeated 3 times. First is the H&K Switchblade 50 TSC combo, Second is the Helix Brit 2204, Third has the H&K on the left speaker and the Helix on the right side. All recordings are going through the 2x12 Interstate Cab as it sounds closest to my H&K combo even though it's only a 1x12. https://soundcloud.com/ricksteruk/sets/line6-helix-vs-hk-switchblade I noticed a bit of a harsh high harmonic / overtone while trying out the Helix amps today and tried to demonstrate it in these recordings. The "scale" riff is deliberately played hard and muted to set off this sound. Even the H&K makes a few nasty buzzes on a couple of notes but the Helix does it on every note. I set a high EQ cut to try to reduce it but this was the best I could remove it without spoiling the guitar tone. I believe this high harmonic is what causes some people to be put off of the Helix's drive tones. The harmonic has too much high frequency content (sounds a lot more like a sawtooth that it really should) - and it also should not happen on every note that is played.

I tried your test and yes I do see what you mean. I have heard that sound before, I think it was from one of the Helix's drive pedals when I was trying to use it with the gain on 1 to just add a little grit to my amp. I am using my Helix in 4cm with my Hughes & Kettner Switchblade 50TSC Combo (great piece of kit) - so I've not really explored the Helix's amps that much up to today - but as you suggested I created a new preset - added the Amp&Cab block and listened through headphones. I tried out all the Amp&Cabs Yes there is a sharp and abrasive tone that is noticeable on a lot (all?) of the Helix amps once you know what you are listening for. You can dial it out a little by using a HF cut block set around 11kHz which is a compromise that reduces that sound without cutting too much treble from the guitar tone overall. This does not really bother me as I use the Helix in 4cm so I am using real tube distortion - but I feel for some of you guys! It would be good to have the ability to go amp less to a tiny gig and get exactly the same tone as with my amp... I made some comparison recordings and will post with my thoughts on the subject in a bit.