zooey

http://www.guitarcenter.com/product-detail-page?productId=site51500000000031631

^^^ this, constantly. Yesterday we had a Boston Helix users "meetup", and all my patches were seriously dull, had to whack the global EQ a lot. At home, I feel like many of them are on the edge of obnoxiously bright. Same Alesis FRFR.

Hey Jason, IR Manager looks awesome, very cool, thank you! Definitely will check it out when there's a Windows version. Couple questions, not to be taken as complaints... - There's been some discussion about the editor seeming to sort by title metadata rather than file name. Is that how IR Manager controls IR order, by setting that? To put it more directly, are you finding that dragging the exported files onto the editor reliably leaves them in the order you specified? - It doesn't know anything about what patches or IRs are on your Helix, does it ? - If it does, is there any way to see which slots are and aren't used in your existing patches? That's key to reasonable IR management. (Not that this isn't useful without it, just would be a great feature.) (Side note, first time I went to look at this, it was 404, and I wondered if was a cruel April Fools joke! But I think it must have been while the site was under construction.)

Very nice, thank you!

Yeah, makes sense that that semi-clean sound is a pretty high-gain setup with the guitar turned down, sounds like it. The full-on gain tones in that are really different than the "record" of Winterland, more top end rolloff. Cool player too.

Just out of curiosity, where in Helix would you look for a drive tone like at 0:30 here: https://youtu.be/VBp3gxQn1qA?t=27

Not posting this here for any particular reason, just an appreciation... Doesn't sound as good on YouTube as in a better quality format, but you can still hear it: I just LOVE the "clean" tone at the beginning. When he's gentling it, it's got wonderful top-end sparkle, clarity and beauty. When he digs in a bit more, there's this completely amazing thickness to it, zero fizz or mess. Best word I can think of is 'chewy'. Love it. When he switches to a more overdriven sound later, that's also really great, fat, powerful, but still wonderful clarity. Those open low Es, they're like almost clean, except for how fat they are, and still the higher notes are super fat for the range they're in. And the octave fuzz in the mod section is just so cool and semi-controlled. Dig the tune itself too, a lot. I've had that song almost on repeat lately. Great stuff.

Quite the setup Inerzia!

Just be aware that whatever the hardware, psychoacoustically really quiet is going to sound different than mid or high volume.

Did you try the suggestion to download the installer again? Maybe it got​ corrupted when the power went out.

A three digit prefix works well, 001, 002, etc. Pay attention when you drop them back on the the editor, make sure you get what you expect. I've had weird stuff happen at that point sometimes.

What's that saying, if BugCount < LineCount, you're doing well?

The parts of me that have to pay for stuff, carry it around, and maintain it are not wishing for it. The parts of me that play guitar think it seems awesome, and I liked the sounds I heard on Rabea's demo a lot.

Part of me wishes I was...

Are you using this Brad? Do I gather it's working well for you? I got involved briefly back when they were looking for early testers, and it was very much not soup. I bowed out, didn't have the time to deal with it in that state.

Went to the GC one exit from work on my lunch hour, and suddenly they had an Elite and several Pros. Played the Elite and one of the Pros, some things were clear, others less so. Mostly I agreed with the opinions shared by folks here and on TGP. - The Elite was set up so poorly it almost doesn't count. Action super high and with too much relief, especially weird with 9s on it, not a lot of fun. Fender really shouldn't​ ship a guitar like that, especially in that price range. - The Elite neck is interesting and cool, as reported. Not positive what I think of it in the end, need to play more on one, but it's very different from every other strat I've ever played. Thinner, more modern maybe, different shape in general. All other things​ being equal, which they're not, yeah, I'd do that. I think, maybe. - Pickups are tricky to think about. The N4s on the Elite were a little duller and had less bite than the V-Mods on the Pro, but they definitely weren't bad, not at all. Noise is tough to judge in that environment of course. Again need to play them both more. - The S1 switch is not my joy, as others said. Shame, because I have a lot of fun with the coil switching options on my current guitars.

You can also reach out to tech support, on the phone even if I'm not mistaken. They'll help you out I bet.

The IRs "DB" is probably just an array or object of filenames. There's no other​ metadata besides the IR .wav files themselves, and it'd be strange for the export to include those, since as it stands now at least, you need to menage them as files anyway.

I disagree. There are some big weaknesses that convention doesn't cover: - You can't easily see what slots are actually used by a given universe of patches and which aren't, or tell Helix to dump all unused ones. That matters when you want to use or try some new ones and need to free up some slots, without breaking existing patches you care about. - You can't audition IRs without first loading them into your Helix, or using an IR loader on your computer. - IR names in Helix are too short to accommodate the full file names used by commercial libraries. What's needed here is an integrated solution that's aware of your whole IR library on disk, as well as but separate from what's currently loaded into your Helix. It should let you audition from disk (or pretend that's what it's doing, using a hidden buffer etc). It should let you easily manage which ones you want in your Helix, and warn you if you're taking IRs off that are in use by any patches on it. Ideally you'd have room in the filename length to prepend a short manufacturer prefix too -- OH=Ownhammer, RW=RedWirez, 3S=3Sigma, CP=CelestionPlus, AL=Allure, etc. Even better, it would understand a given directory in your library as belonging to a manufacturer, let you assign a prefix to each one, and automatically prepend it to each filename when you moved the file onto your Helix. Or even more better, IRs on Helix would be inside "folders" too, preserving that structure without monkeying w filenames. Also ideally, there would be way more total IR slots on Helix, so you didn't have to be so careful about which ones to load. I'd gladly give up a bank of patches for that personally.

Hey, thanks for driving this! Folks are interested, but it takes somebody DOING STUFF to actually make it happen.

We're talking about bring guitars and Helix, right? Any kind of monitoring, or phones, or use what they have? Never been there, no clue what that is.

I vote 2-5, but I'm flexible.

Saturday is marginally better for me, but it looks like the majority want Sunday so far, and I'm flexible, so that's fine. Between 1 and 5 works for me too. Again I'm flexible, but family would like me home in the evening if that works for everyone. Guess that means I should put my guitar back together by then, huh?

I'd love to meet up, not 100% positive I can, but probably. I'm not on Facebook though, and don't want to be. Can we coordinate here instead? Or a Google group, of we want emails beyond what a subscription here dues? Not to volunteer other people for stuff, but would it be too weird if our first meeting had a Kemper/Helix comparison as part of it? I for one would be interested, and we'd hopefully get fenderod out of his dilemma. Maybe try to set that up for another time?

Any opinions about the tone of the N4 pickups in the elite vs the Tim Shaw V-Mods in the pro? All other things being equal, of course I'd rather less hum and buzz, but not if it doesn't sound good. Haven't found an Elite around here to try (Boston area). Anyone here who's played both?