ricksteruk

I'm using my Helix a lot in 4cm with my Hughes & Kettner switchblade combo. I am getting all or most of my distortion or drive tones from the H&K valve preamp, which then feeds through a Helix Cab sim block and into headphones. It sounds fantastic and I can really rock out at 2am without bothering anyone. I do use the Helix overdrives sometimes in front of a clean real amp and it sounds good to me. I've not tried a real OD pedal in front of Helix yet.. and as I want to keep my rig as small as possible I probably won't even bother trying! The Helix OD pedals work well enough for me. :)

YES FIDO this is right - the HELIX 1/4in OUT needs to go to the return of your Y cable. This will bypass the preamp of your bud amp and feed the Helxi straight into the power section. If you were connecting the HELIX and the Bud in 4cm the HELIX SEND would go to the front Guitar input on the Bud amp. Then from the Bud's Y cable the Send would go into the HELIX return. Finally the Helix main 1/4 out goes to the Y cable's Return on the Bud.

Lots of folks seem to use and like the Alto speakers here, so I'd suggest getting a Helix first (or AX-8 if you prefer) and an Alto speaker soon after. Remember at gigs you can always connect the Helix to the PA system for extra volume and probably better quality speakers.. so your Alto will be a monitor for rehearsals and small gigs with no stage monitors.

Sounds like a good idea. Voted :)

So you've found tonal differences between the aux and guitar inputs? I wonder if it's because of the input impedance... I seem to remember the aux has a 10 Meg impedance, but the max the (variable) guitar can do is 1 Meg. You might find that the mic input with DI box is or can be made to sound similar to one of the guitar or aux ins - however it might not!! I would borrow a DI box from someone and try it if I were you (or try at a shop) - IMO most active DI boxes work well these days and even the cheap ones sound pretty good.

Very cool! I've got Loopy on my iPhone but never used it for anything serious. Might be fun to try that out.

I've found the accidental touch block selection a bit irritating as I might touch a foot switch with my arm while I'm trying to turn the joystick and end up changing block on the wrong switch. So I've just disabled the capacitive touch foot switch option now. I just navigate to the block with joystick. Slower but less likelihood of mistakes.

If I was going to be moving the Helix out to gigs on a regular basis I'd get a separate audio interface. I'd make sure I got one with SPDIF or AES/EBU so I could connect Helix digitally. If you have a MAC you can create an "aggregate audio device" which means you can plug both Helix and another audio interface in by USB and use them both at the same time. Not sure if a PC has this facility??

BRAVO! Well said sir. It really is as simple as that. You have a multi block some ON and some BYPASSED... how does the Helix know if you want the light dimmed or on? Just select a block in your multi that is in the state you want the switch light to be.

Every setting? There are only 2 settings for the pad I think.. on or off. Press - Menu, Then Knob 6 - Global settings - Then use Knob 1 to turn "Guitar In Pad" to "ON" It should attenuate the guitar signal a bit and might help. If that's not working I don't know what to suggest sorry.. Good Luck! I hope support can sort you out.

Interesting article thanks for posting - I will have to listen to those new test clips on my studio monitors and see if I can identify the degradation properly. As to the use of two A/D and two D/A converters in your signal path a live setting - I absolutely would not worry about it in the slightest!

Sounds like clipping to me too, rather than any processing artefact. Have you tried using the Guitar input pad?

^ good article I am using my Helix in 4cm mainly and I use the overdrives and Rat a lot in front of my clean tube amp quite often - I like it :)

I do love Tom Petty - I must listen to more of his stuff.

Too much?? I've not even mentioned triggering off keyboard pads via MIDI messages on the Helix, or using Helix to control a Mobius based looping system for the whole band yet. ;)

I agree :) I love the Helix. It's just so wonderfully user friendly. THANK YOU LINE6. (even if I complain about niggles sometimes I still love it!)

Not currently but it might be useful if it's possible. Could it be done by using a "hold" long pedal press

Yes I've been experimenting with that... It does worry me that if one of the two switches doesn't activate it might be tricky to recover whilst I'm also singing the lead vocals!

One was Creep - Radiohead. Intro / verse = clean (with FX), Chorus = Dirty (no FX), End of chorus (I add FX / delay to build the sound and provide spillover delays into the verse) This was not too bad as I only ever have to go Tone 1,2,3,1,2,3 in that order - so I used a controller on a mix block to turn up the FX mix on Tone 2 to make Tone 3... then I press the clean / dirty switch to get back to 1... I just need to remember to disengage the Tone 2 FX before the net chorus. The other one is Everlong - Foo Fighters It's complicated - I'm trying to sound like all the guitars on the recording but in a 3 piece band. Essentially again there are 3 tones. 1 Clean with some minimal FX 2 Dirty (hardly any FX) 3 Dirty with a few FX But this time the order can change 1,2,3,2,1,3,2 that kind of thing. I should mention; 1) Path 1a cannot be used for guitar it ihas a vocal mic on it. 2) I am using my amp in 4cm to get the main tones - (but I will add distortion blocks to a clean real amp if its easier) 3) I need to use path 2a and 2b to provide 1/4in jack outs and XLRS with cab IRs - so I cannot use any parallel paths. Good luck :)

I have an XR18 that I will be using with my Helix very soon. Yes of course get your patches sounding good first.. (surely you won't be gigging until this is true?) As you are running the Helix straight from XLR into the XR18 you obviously cannot use the Global EQ on your stage sound without affecting the FOH sound (as would be he case if you have your stage amp connected via 1/4in as I do) So, I would try to connect up your aux monitor as quickly as possible at sound check and then adjust your Global EQ to get a good stage sound. Then your sound man will have to adjust the FOH mix from there. If you have enough XR18 mixer channels you could run a jack from the 1/4in outs on the Helix and purely route that through your monitor. XLR->FOH, 1/4in -> monitor. Then you can set your Helix Global EQ to 1/4in only and adjust it to your hearts content without messing up the FOH.

What are your favourite cabs njglover?

Hehe... love that bit in Airplane :D Yeah I'm all for auto engage.. voted

I know where you are coming from.. I totally agree that the silence between presets is not really good for live playing - especially in a 3 piece band - so I was waiting until some solution like scenes appeared before I tired the Helix. Of course many people pointed out to me the "Two Tones" preset where you can do two complete sounds in one preset... and after mulling it over I wondered to myself how many FX do I actually need to switch at once... I came to the conclusion that I could probably manage most of my live set within a single preset per song, so I decided to buy Helix and give it a try. I've had Helix about a week and a bit now, and have programmed sounds for 17 pop rock covers so far - all using one Preset per song so no switching latency and full spillover with delays. This has worked very well for all but 2 songs which are rather complicated and require 2 presses to get between some of the sounds. I am hoping the Helix will be updated with some kind of scene modes that solves this issue - but I still prefer to use the Helix than my old rig so it is a keeper - and I would be happy with it even if it doesn't get updated. Helix is great. It is so much easier to program than my previous MIDI pedal board and rack FX combination, and it sounds great! EDIT: I have an idea for a simple scene like facility that would allow you to assign a value to a parameter to a footswitch - like "bypass" or "on" for an FX block or a number for a controller like reverb mix. I believe this simple addition would solve all issues of staying within one preset. Vote..... http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Scene-Mode-Lite-footswitch-value-assignment/819032-23508

Scene Mode Lite - footswitch value assignment. http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Scene-Mode-Lite-footswitch-value-assignment/819032-23508 Having just programmed in Presets for 17 different pop rock cover band songs over the last few days, I have once or twice found a situation where the current system just can't be made to switch between the 3 or 4 sounds in the song easily and I will have to do a tiny tap dance. But I've noticed that I only want to change 3 or 4 things at once - not every setting - and if I could only assign "on" or "off" values to a certain footswitch for a certain function it would all work basically as it does now. So, rather than making a full scene mode where Helix has to remember and recall every single setting for every single block possibly causing switching latency.... Make a new mode where we can set a particular Footswitch to “scene modeâ€. When you try to assign a controller, or an effect block to the Footswitch there will be one parameter “value†- a bit like the way we get “min†and “max†when we assign controllers currently. When you press the footswitch it will send out that value. It could be "On" or "Bypass" for an FX block or a number for a parameter like mix. You should be able to assign many parameters to it - but 8 may actaully be enough. I think Helix should still allow us to assign the other footswitches in the normal way - momentary or latching. Yes...It might be possible to make a mess of the bypass state of one fx block within a group by using some footswitches in scene mode and some in momentary or toggle (as can happen whilst you are building a preset and adding and assigning blocks to a multiple footswitch) but that’s ok! We can just then press one of our scene footswitches and it would sort it out. I think this is a relatively easy way to add scene functionality to Helix without ruining the elegant UI we currently have! - it's actually been rather enjoyable building the presets on Helix because it's just so user friendly :D

Lovely sounds! Nice guitar riffing and that monologue sounds fantastic :) I'm very interested in the idea of making keys sounds whilst I'm playing guitar - this is a great idea.