zooey

Yes I'm using the rotaries as replacements for a cab, because that's what they are functionally, and because they have that extreme high end filtering like a real one, which you don't want happening from a cab too. But frequency response isn't mostly what I'm talking about, it's the modulation in fast mode. Just sounds completely amateur to me, not like a real one at all, or like most of Helix.

Well frankly it sucks. Has anyone been able to get anything not cartoon-like out of it? I've messed w the speed, even looked up and tried to the speed of the originals, no joy. It's way overmodulated maybe, just completely artificial and fake to me, nothing like the original, which I love, like for instance this: You can't change the modulation depth, and lowering the mix control doesn't make sense, both in terms of what's being modeled, and because it's so band-limited, mixing it with non-Leslie tones is and sounds completely wrong. I'm picking on the fast speed because it's so awful, but neither model is that great slow either. One kind of has no bottom end, the other no top without some overdrive, but in some contexts the slow speed works kind of ok, and so far, for me, the fast speed just doesn't. And how come the speed parameters of the two models are from completely different universes? Makes it much harder to switch from one to the other keeping "the same" settings. In all fairness, a Leslie isn't a trivial thing to emulate. In VST-land I have several Leslie sims, most of which weren't the cheapest, and they're varying degrees of succesful depending on the application, but none of them really have that thrill a real Leslie gives you, fast or slow. Some eat a ton of CPU too. That said, Helix is where I am these days, and I really wish this feature was better sounding, especially the fast speed. If anyone has any thoughts on how to get something un-cheesy out of it, by all means enlighten me. Line 6, if you're looking for rough spots that could use some TLC, IMO that's one, and I hope it gets some attention.

Yes, the rotary effects really do best on their own, replacing a cab. It's odd that they're not actually cabs, like they are in Amplitube, would make much more sense to me.

Yes, and that's what I typically do. It's a little inconvenient, because if you change the initial value, you have to update it in both the preset and the footswitch, but it's certianly workable. And ricksteruk is also right that in some circumstances, that 3-state behavior could actually be helpful, if it happens to be what you want.

Sorry, but this is definitely not right. First off compressor attack time controls how long it takes for volume to be REDUCED when signal above its threshold comes in. Longer attack time means more of a peak gets through before the compressor clamps down. Sometimes that helps preserve attack transients in a good way, sometimes it's just ugly. Second, 200ms is 200 milliseconds, 2/10ths of a second, not 2 seconds.

Completely different DSP chips, nothing like a direct port. Although they clearly do have some understanding of what's involved in decent verb design.

A bunch of my patches do this, very useful. One thing to watch for: The value stored w the preset isn't necessarily either the min or max set by the controller. If a footswitch used this way doesn't have its min value matching the preset, there are really three states in play. When you first recall the preset, you get its saved value, hit the footswitch once, get the footswitch's max value, hit it again, get the footswitch's min value. Nothing you do short of recalling the preset again gets back the preset's saved value.

Personally re #1, I think a program change should ALWAYS recall the saved state of that preset. It should NOT do nothing, because that leaves any footswitches and controllers you changed while the preset was loaded in their current state, not how they were saved in the preset. (And not that it needs to be said, but it should recall patch 0 either, that's just wrong.)

Before Helix, I was an Amplitube guy, just solid loved it, better than any amp I've ever had, and it's a collection of them, plus more pedals and rack fx than I could ever afford. The newer Mesa and Marshall amps in particular just bang my thing. Scuffham is awesome too. Plus there are so many great VST FX out there, a bunch of which I have, if I'm willing to run a DAW or something else that loads them (instead of AT standalone), it's really tough to beat the possibilities of that environment. But I don't want to deal with a computer at gigs or jams. As a matter of fact, I found out about Helix talking with people online about ways to do that that wouldn't suck. Yes it's possible, but there's so much I'd rather be thinking about then than all those pieces to wire up, reliability, etc. Helix means all I need is just it, a guitar, and one or two FRFRs, and I'm Done. So what do I think of Amplitube now that I've spent a month w Helix? Dunno, haven't turned it on :). Partly that's intentional. When I first got Helix, I tried really hard to match the sound and feel of some of my Amplitube patches I found really special. But after a bit, I was just playing Helix, tweaking sounds there, and having a Really Good Time. I've played more in the past month than I have a long long time (ex pro musician, sound and custom electronics guy). At some point, I'll go back to Amplitube and see how that feels, probably great, hopefully not so much so that I feel bad about having bought a Helix I can't really afford. But for now, I'm exploring Helix, and its incredibly practical form factor, wonderfully fluid UI, and connectivity options make it really hard to beat for anything besides sitting at home in front of a computer.

Bank btns is the only way I know. Why isn't that ok? Are you working w the rack but w/o the controller?

If you don't get an answer here, email L6 support. Under the circumstances it's a very reasonable question.

Related wish list: Ability to save named settings for an individual block, so you could insert a block with those settings, or recall them into an existing block Ability to save default settings for each model, so it uses those settings when you initially set up a block using it

It'd be great to have another mode, maybe '10 Switches Auto Stomp'. Works like 10 Switches mode, except that when you hit the mode switch to enter Preset mode, then choose a preset, it automatically reverts to 10 Switches. Doesn't seem super hard, and would be a really useful hybrid of existing capabilities.

True. Still would be a change to my way of thinking, which so far has been that I hit a bank btn to change presets, then I'm in stomp-land. Whether I need to turn something on or off right away, I have my palette for that preset right there as soon as the preset loads. I just need to try it, see how it feels IRL. Just wanted make sure I understood how it works first :)

Thanks Phil, that's what I figured. But the cool thing about the Bank btns is that once you pick a preset, you're automatically back in stomps mode. That won't happen in this case, you're "permanently" switching to Preset mode. Right?

When you're in Stomp mode and the global 10 Switches setting isn't active, pressing Bank Up or Down temporarily switches to Presets mode, where the current bank's presets are shown on the switches, and pressing any switch recalls that preset. (You can also use Bank Up and Down to navigate through banks, of course.) As I understand it, if you're in 10 Switches mode, the Bank Up and Down switches become additional Stomp switches, which I'd love to have. But then how do you change presets? Is there a different magic trick to temporarily show Presets, or revert the Bank Up and Down buttons to their "normal" function?

You can't by any chance plug a Launch Control directly into the Helix USB port, can you? Requires a PC? Would be very cool if it'd work standalone.

Bingo, this, exactly! Any thoughts on mic stand mounting? Is he right about wanting a 10k mono pot for Line 6 stuff, specifically Helix? (I assume so, just checking, if anyone's actually used one w Helix.) And L6, seems like we need a model of his Pearl pedal :)

Thanks guys. I know about the Launch Control, does and costs more than I was thinking about, but hey, needs always expand to fill the capabilities, right? Far as a gain block at the end, couldn't you control the final output block's level instead, the one that's always there?

Ach, my bad. You're right, that's what I said, but not what I meant. I WAS actually meaning to talk about separate amp and cab vs not. So Duncann's answer was appropriate.

I'd like to have a volume-tweak knob attached to my mic stand for on-the-fly adjustments. Does anyone know of a suitable single-knob MIDI controller? Or I guess a simple analog pot in some sort of stand-mountable box could plug into an expression pedal input and be used like that. Anyone have such a thing? Like what? How's it working out?

Is it folks' experience that a combined amp/preamp sounds the same as that model's separate amp and preamp (assuming the same settings of course)? Any difference in DSP usage? Trying to get my head around why I'd ever use the combined versions. I'm still gradually making it through the factory stuff (spending a lot of time with my own variations of some of them), and it seems like when I find one I'd like to explore, I should just immediately split out the amp and preamp. First off, why not, if they do sound the same? Second, you can put fx in between (though I'm not sold on how important that is, amp verb notions aside). But most importantly, you can mix and match different amps and preamps. Is that what most people do? Any downsides?

^^^ This. End of story.

Spent some time checking out various options. First, I replaced the ZED head with the Rivet, clean clean clean, so it's not something else in the chain, or an overall gain staging issue. (Nice amp for that of course.) I also messed more with the Zed amp gain, turns out that much of that has the same "fuzz" as master gain. Guess I like its overall tonality, and how it sounds driven some, if I don't listen too closely, but in detail there's something unnatural about it, to me. Then I tried making sure all blocks were roughly unity gain. They most certainly were not, the amp stage had quite a bit of gain. When I removed everything but the amp/cab, and made its volume the same as with it bypassed. the patch was way quieter than it was originally. In fact, it was quiet enough that I had to deck the headphone volume to be comfortable, and I'm not into blowing my ears out. So... Does every do the unity-gain-everywhere thing? If you do, does the headphone level end up kind of low? How about the 1/4, XLR outs, etc?

The stability of the display is useful -- it doesn't jump around a lot -- but the tradeoff appears to be that it's stable because it's pretty low resolution. It says things are in tune when I can hear that they're not. A global Tuner Resolution setting might be useful, so people can make their own decisions about where they stand on that continuum.