ricksteruk

I've heard that Helix does not work with the Silver Jubilee (which is a bummer as I really have my eye on one) My old Laney AOR combo from the late 1980s does the same as you describe, with the LED dimming - but it does actually change channels, albeit the normal channel is very quiet - and there is a colossal hum. The problem is caused because Helix does not use relays to switch the amp circuits on and off - a LOT of amps don't work properly with Helix. (including MESAs ... see below) There are two options: 1) buy a MIDI amp switching unit (e.g. the RJM gizmo... http://www.rjmmusic.com/products/switch-gizmo ) or 2) make a box like this with relays I'd go with the second option as I am handy with a soldering iron and it's a lot cheaper

A simple way to do this is just to pop a "SEND" block just before your cab / IR block. The you just plug your stage amp into the SEND socket you've chosen. The only down side to this is that you can't then use the Big Helix volume knob to control the volume of your stage amp - but as long as your amp has a volume control you're fine. I have posted an idea scale for allowing the choice to direct the SEND block to go to more places like the 1/4in out (or USB) which would allow use of the Big Volume Knob. http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/SEND-Block-to-more-places-e-g-1-4in-for-easy-IR-bypass/818624-23508

It's just a little irritating to load 100 patches in quick succession if you are looking for a preset somewhere.. on a set list somewhere. Unless you are at your computer using the editor you will have to use the Preset/Setlist button... try it.. you will see!

It must be to do with stereo width, as scale does not appear at all in mono delay blocks.

Yeah that would be good. As far as I know you can only use the bank up and down buttons. I happened to be looking at the Preset/Setlist page and tried to scroll down the list to a preset near the end and the poor Helix Editor that was connected via USB had a mental breakdown bless it. It totally crashed. Had to relaunch it.

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.