zooey

Plusses and minuses, kind of, but this is the kind of situation where the fact the Sweetwater rocks really matters.

Another thing that would be helpful along these lines is of changing to a different amp kept your current settings, as best as possible, including controller assignments. Obviously some parameters don't exist in all amps, even more so in stomps and FX, and even if they do exist the same settings can have radically different effects, but I'd still like that option. Keeping controller assignments would be flat out better IMO.

Put the amp on the floor pointing up at you like a monitor?

Upvoted for the assign-all option. Would like that on Helix itself too.

I replied on TGP with the results of my cab filters vs EQ filters experiment, we'll see if Ben can enlighten us further.

Quantifiable measurements of how Helix processes IRs vs other reputable IR loaders would be really great. If anyone has the time and tools and knowledge to do that, please have at it, with much gratitude from all of us. Even as it stands, the anecdotal evidence seems pretty strong. Maybe folks who've observed this first-hand should file an issue with support? Or maybe we need some IdeaScale entries? DI does hang here some, but this isn't an official Line 6 attention-getting, product-changing portal. Lastly, what happens if Line 6 acknowledges some sort of IR processing behavior that they agree should be changed? The sound of everyone's patches would change, possibly for the better maybe, with potential for even better than that once you'd adjusted your patches for the new approach, but if I were a gigging musician, I sure wouldn't just press Go on that upgrade, without making certain I had time to revisit every patch my gigs require. I'd suggest that if an IR processing change becomes reality, there should be a per-patch setting for Old Style vs New Style IR handling, so you could migrate your patches one by one.

@iamgeorge, my apologies for suggesting the overly obvious actual second pickup, but as they say, the simplest solution is often the best. Not everyone who shows up here use as experienced and sophisticated as you, basic ideas are sometimes helpful. Also apologies for not explaining how the position of the pickup affects its tone -- opposite problem, I thought that was pretty obvious to anyone who's played a guitar with more than one pickup. Bottom line, no disrespect intended, only apparently ineffective help.

That opposite problem is what happened to me. Several blocks looked inactive, which they shouldn't have been, and weren't.

Thanks, worth looking into. Wish I could see it in the flesh. Ignore the lower shelf on that, you're thinking?

That typical roll-off info is great, thank you @jnysen! Where did you get that info? Nice work. Leads to some questions and conclusions: However the built-in cabs are implemented, I think it's clear that the hi cut filters aren't anywhere near that steep, on cabs or IRs. Ideally they would be, if they're intended to adjust cab tone while "keeping it real". That could be responsible for the high frequency artifacts that bother some people. Even the hi cut in the parametric EQ, which seems considerably steeper than what's on cabs and IRs, doesn't seem like 20db/octave. I wonder if the "optimization" that Line 6 has said their cabs have over standard IRs results in less steep rolloff. The point you make about "should not need extra filtering if the IR is doing its work properly" applies both to built in cabs and IRs. I've always wondered why any sort of filtering was required to make a cab sound like what the cab is a model of, and the same is true of IRs. If those slopes are pretty consistent across various cabs and speakers, what's responsible for the differences between them? Is it mostly in the narrow-band "uneveness" you referred to? Many physical systems that have some sort of roll-off have some degree of a resonant peak before that, and I'm pretty sure that's true of speakers. It'd be great if the Helix filters let you control that.

I'm ignorant about convolution maths, but on a gut level, that's not what I hear, I think. Just seems like the roll-offs aren't very steep, not that there's unfiltered signal getting through regardless of filtering. So we have two questions here: - Is IR processing in Helix somehow different from other IR loaders? - Are the Helix cab and IR hi cut filters able to reproduce the behaviors of nicely mic'd real-world cabs? One interesting bit of research I don't have time to do would be to examine the published response curves of various guitar speakers (ideally in some typical cabs, though that info may not be as available, and I'd bet the cab doesn't affect highs as much as mids and lows), and see how steep the hi end roll-offs actually are that we're trying to mimic. Really, since we're talking about the whole recording chain, the mic and mic pre are also in play, and since we're talking about "standard" recording industry practice (yes I know there is no such thing), typical mix processing is also involved. Each of those elements has its own inherent and/or commonly used hi frequency limits, what we're used to hearing is the net of all that. If I'm not mistaken, the simplest electronic filtering (a cap to ground) is inherently 6db per octave, not very steep, don't know if that's true in the digital domain.

But where does the laptop go? Previous threads have mentioned various Helix-only solutions, but I'm looking for something to hold both Helix and a laptop, stacked vertically somehow, sort of, if such a thing exists.

Great player, but not actually my favorite tones personally.

To more directly save an edited patch to a different location, click Save, ONCE, then before clicking Save again to actually do the save, you can choose a different setlist and/or preset location. I'm not at my Helix, so some of the terminology may be wrong, but I'm sure the knobs to do this are there and are live. I do it all the time.

Put a parametric after the cab on a Litigator patch I've been working on, left the EQ flat, copied the cab block low and hi cuts into the EQ, then took them off the cab. It was absolutely clear that the filters in the EQ are much steeper than on the cab. I needed to raise the hi cut significantly higher on the EQ than the cab to be anything like equivalent. When l did that, it seemed there was a lot more freedom to raise the amp's treble and presence without hearing stuff I didn't like up top, possibly at a cost of seeming a bit artificial. Net result was definitely different, I think in a good way, but I'm not sure. Will come back to it later w fresh ears.

Today's a holiday in the US, not surprised you can't reach Line 6. Try again tomorrow. Also, Sweetwater has it in stock, including a demo at a slightly lower price. Plus they're great... It's possible they might match a GC President's Day coupon, but probably not on that demo unit.

^^^ This also (meaning liking soloing on the neck pickup, another post snuck in). That's what I meant about having enough trouble getting all existing pickups to make sense together. By the time my neck pickup is cool for stuff beyond Wes Montgomery, bridge is cool for some stuff, but not a big fat lead. If I go for a nice full bridge pickup, neck loses definition and bite. Tone control helps, but still. In some alternate universe, I'd try a bunch of different pickup combinations until I got happy, but that's an expensive PITA, and not easy to be productive with.

The question isn't really whether Helix sounds good in a given set of phones. If you also play through FRFRs or a PA, it's whether it sounds like the other systems you use. If you're recording, it's whether the tones you make in phones translate well to a variety of playback environments.

^^^ this, esp if it's custom. I have enough trouble getting the tonalities of individual pickups to play well together when they DO exist.

Probably a ground loop problem. Were the Helix and Trilogy plugged into the same AC circuit? Probably wisest to bring a hum eliminator box of some sort to gigs, in case it's needed. There are some other threads with specific boxes mentioned. This isn't specific to Helix btw, it's potentially an issue any time you have multiple AC powered devices connected to each other esp when they're connected with multiple cables.

Definitely not overheating here. It's winter in New England, my basement "studio" is cool, bordering on cold some days. Mine wasn't on a floor board either, or even on the floor, when it happened to me. Was up on some plastic drawers, since I was editing a bunch. Not this, but something similar.

When I'm doing a lot of editing (which I do mostly on the Helix itself, not with the editor software), I've been putting my Helix on top of the el cheapo plastic rolling drawers thingy where I keep mics, strings, yadda. I put a laptop behind it for backing up, IR management, etc. Works sort of ok, not great. - It's against the wall, not midline in the room, to be out of the way, too bulky for the middle of my little "studio" room - Working on the laptop is pretty inconvenient; it's too far away, too low, and the cables from the back of the Helix are somewhat in the way Does anyone have any great ideas about a stand to hold both a Helix and a laptop? Ideally something portable and/or collapsible, so it can stashed out of the way when I'm not using it? This is just for home, not a gig thing.

The other possible conclusion is that the Helix's amps are brighter than your settings in S-Gear. Is the Helix global EQ in play? Would be cool to measure a completely neutral, flat IR, to know for sure if the IR block has some sort of high end emphasis. I'm not up to speed on making my own, but making one of nothing, with no processing at all, should result in something that could be used for that test.

Guess it's a good thing Helix doesn't model the real world interaction of two amps with their speaker outputs connected in parallel to the same cab. Component modeled sparks, blown fuses, and melted output transformers, anyone?

Done that, it can be cool, but I didn't end up keeping any of those Frankensteins. But that's part of what's so cool about a good modeler, you can just try it! IRL, you have to go considerably out of your way to avoid blowing up both amps, not to mention that you'd have to own or have access to any amps you wanted to try it with.