zooey

Love it for previewing IRs too, just step through them. I use it some in general and like it, but those two things I mentioned are less than great.

I don't think so either. That bundle way predates the Boutique stuff, and there's a list of everything that's included in the paragraph about it, doesn't include Boutique.

You can adjust the parameters of a model that's already there, but you can't for instance change one amp or cab or wah block to be a different one. Too bad if true, but it seems to be. Or I'm thick and need a clue. You also can't insert new blocks I think, or move them, but that's a more understandable limitation of that UI, since once you're in pedal edit mode, you're either choosing a block to edit, or editing one. And $0.000002 nobody asked for... I initially didn't take pedal edit mode very seriously, seemed slow and fiddly, but after having a Helix for a while, I've come to appreciate and use it. These days I mostly have my Helix on the floor, not table height like at first while I got to know it, and it actually is handy to be able to tweak stuff from a standing position. There is a bit of a hang with higher resolution parameters. You can either step through 128 or whatever number of values + or - 1 at a time, or use the pedal. +/- 1 is great for IRs, for instance, but not so much for others. The pedal is cool for big changes, but once you move it to some intermediate position, when it jiggles slightly it outputs the value where it is, which might not be anywhere near the current value if you've fine-tuned with +/- after pedaling. You could tighten it way up, but it's comfortable for me as-is for more typical uses like value or wah.

(no time to even try to answer your actual question, but there's a bunch of us antiques here, no worries...)

Now that's cool, like a Sustainiac setup you can move, and that's not part of or mounted on one guitar. Aside from cost and a bit of setup hassle, why *wouldn't* you want to have those options available? Sounds great too, really organic, because it is, just magnetic feedback instead of acoustic.

In my case it was the USB port. I now know which one to use, no problems since, knock wood.

Hah, never heard of the guy, and can't listen to the whole thing now, but the first bits are some righteous doo-dah! Didn't know BOC sounded anything like that first clip either, guess they haven't been asleep since I last checked them out. Cool beans...

Got an email from Glen this morning with a PayPal link to buy these, and when I clicked to see the price, it was half the price on his site (at that time at least), low enough that I just jumped in. When I downloaded it, the zip was named "GlennDeLaune-12Hour-Boutique-Amp-Pack-Volume1.zip", so I'd guess this is a short-term intro price. Neither the email nor the site say anything about that, and of course I'm not an official spokes-anything for Glen, so it's totally possible I'm wrong, or even that the price I got was a mistake that's fixed now, but it's worth a shot if you're sitting on that email planning to deal with it it later.

Hmmm, sorry you're having so much trouble. You need to be more specific about what exactly you're doing, assigning a footswitch to bypass a block is a basic thing that really does work :) Couple things to look into... Are you using snapshots? If so, there's a global setting for whether changes you make are kept or discarded when you switch to another snapshot and back. Both modes are handy, depending on what you're trying to do, but you do need to be aware of how that's set. When a switch says Multiple, it just means there's more than one block it's set to bypass, like you'd guess. It says that as soon as you make a second bypass assignment, unless you've already customized its label, in which case it won't change until you change it manually. Cusotm label or not, I can't think of a scenario where a switch would change from some other label to Multiple just from navigating to another sound and back, whether it's a preset or a snapshot. There has to be something else you're doing to assign something else to it. Similarly, a footswitch assigned to a bypass block and saved shouldn't unassign itself. There has to be something else going on. Maybe make a video of this happening if you can? If not, go really slow and describe every micro-step you're doing, I'm sure someone here can help get to the bottom of this.

Just to be clear, Glen's patches don't "simulate feedback". He's using enough gain and monitoring loud enough that he's actually getting real feedback. Doesn't have to be that loud with a bunch of gain and sitting close to your speakers. One trick I've done in the studio is put a ton of compression on the guitar monitoring chain, only, not recording it. Feedback for days through lowly NS10s.

Is there an overdriven amp or preamp after it? Since the signal is already clipped in that case, mostly you'll get more overdrive, maybe not even noticeable, not more volume. Big picture, think about it like real-life physical gear. Pretty sure you've never put your wah after your amp, so don't do it in Helix either, unless you're after some sort of unusual effect. Plus of modelling is that you *can* do that, where a real wah fed with a speaker level signal instead of guitar level would quite likely die in .001 ms. Whether you're trying for more volume or more amp drive, you should be able to do it in Helix pretty easily, unless there's some special mojo to the Pigtronix. If you're trying to overdrive an amp or a distortion block more, add a block with additional gain before whatever block you're trying to push. If you're just looking for more volume, put it late in the chain, and make sure you're not causing digital clipping, since that'll both sound crappy and not increase the volume as much as you mean to. For straight-up volume boost, have a footswitch change the level of the final output block, or insert a gain block late in the chain and switch it on and off. You get more flexibility using an EQ block instead, since you can boost or cut whatever frequencies you want, in addition to increasing signal level. Also several of the distortion blocks in Helix are quite commonly used with low gain settings to push amps or other overdrives harder, plus add a little drive of their own, and maybe tailor frequency response somewhat. More than one slight overdrive in series can be really nice. Teemah! and Minotaur are probably the ones most commonly used that way, but try any of them, see what you get.

Hadn't heard of these guys, not that interested in metal in general, but they're pretty cool. Got a foot in a bunch of universes...

Thanks for that, you're right that's a much better test of course. Did I understand you to say that you *were* able get Helix to match the AX8 bright switch tone, like what's in the video? If so, would love to hear, and ideally check out the patch.

Are your amp blocks typically at unity gain, same level bypassed and not? How about your preamp blocks? You have control over the output level of both.

Marketing is a fact of life in the modern world. Without doing some marketing to above your products and why they're different from others and valuable, nobody would know about them. If you think Glenn's stuff has no value to you, then, wait for it, don't buy it! If you have access to all those amps (or quality sims of them), and some set of tools for creating IRs targeting those sounds, and the ear and time to build good patches around them, go for it! If you're good at it, and set yourself up to be able to support them, you might be able to sell them. With a little marketing ;) Personally, I'm not sure exactly what his process is for creating those IRs, but what matters to me most is the resulting IRs and patches, and whether they're worth the money to me.

You should retitle this thread too.

^^^ this.

There are a couple of Matchless models now. Just sayin'...

Not that I'm aware. Might be more info in the release pack, dunno.

Connectivity is great, but so is third party content, like for hardware samplers and synths for instance. I'd love to see Eventide or Strymon add-ons for Helix, and IK or Scuffham ones from the VST side. Seems really unlikely to happen though, because Helix is unique and proprietary hardware running a unique and proprietary OS. L6 would have to take the risk of opening up a lot of internal info that's currently a huge competitive advantage to third party devs, and those devs would have to invest in tools and learning to be able to port stuff to this platform. There is some precedent, Kontakt for instance, but that at least runs on standard PC and Mac hardware, in the industry standard VST environment.

His clips have iso tracks of "the originals", whatever that means, at the beginning. I don't know where he'd get hold of those if he didn't have the amps himself, or rent them. Or maybe he's matching his AxeFX :) OTOH, if he had them at hand, in any form, you'd think he'd actually play the same riffs through them, or reamp the same recording of them, at least to start, then maybe keep on playing to get across more of the range of tones in the patch.

Trainwreck, Dumble ODS, Cornford, Suhr Badger 35 and PT-100SE, more. He's apparently putting out one demo video a day until Oct 10, when the whole package gets released. Patches and some more of his custom "tone match" IRs are included. More info at the top of the Helix section on his Patch Downloads page. There's a link to a patch list PDF, and one to a video, other vids I think you have to find on YouTube as by him. I'm not familiar enough with any of those amps to judge their accuracy, besides of which I'm just some guy, who cares what I think, but they seemed cool in general. Slightly edgier top end than the original clips he has at the start of each vid, and maybe not as different texture from each other as the originals, but still fun and useful I'd bet. Actually I lied, I did have a blackface Bassman back in the day, sure didn't sound like Geln's version originally. For better or worse, I had it mod'd by Dawk Stillwell, KT88 output tubes, bigger output transformer, yadda, then it was more of a firebreather, but it was always great. Matching some original I can't afford and will never play isn't the point for me anyway, just finding cool sounds and patch construction ideas. Props to Glen for all he does too.

Guys, I know you're just goofing around, but it appears from his earlier reply that the OP already has a Helix, and was just asking the question. He doesn't need to be lampooned for it. Which I know isn't anyone's intent, but he seems to have taken it that way at least a little. This forum in general is super helpful and friendly, hoping we don't put him off too much.

Bingo! I aim for changing snapshots much more often than actual presets, so the extra press to bring up the patches in this 4-preset bank typically falls between songs, way worth it.

Nevermind, fixed itself, as you were :)