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Hey roscoe5, tell me a bit about how you use Amplitube and Helix together. I'm a big Amplitube fan, it's what I currently play through 95% of the time, but the idea of using it live (really, of setting up, dealing with, and counting on a computer in that context) put me off, so I'm waiting on a Helix. - Are you playing live, or is this studio/home only? - What sort of computer setup? - Are you connecting the computer to a Helix effects return? - How would you compare the sounds and feel of Helix to Amplitube? I can't stop worrying that I won't like it as much as AT, which I love, and it's so much money for me (not a pro any more).

Measuring the net frequency response of a TS isn't going to tell you a lot, since as said above, there's more going on than static EQ, like frequency dependent distortion, and post-distortion filtering. I'd guess you'll have better luck comparing your proposed EQ curves with the Helix TS by ear.

Hey mikisb, great answer! Not sure I would have responded with that level of detail and background, but you did, and made it super clear and understandable. Nice work! Just to say it, an active buffer in your guitar, or (some flavors of) active pickups make cable, amp, and stomp loading much less important, because they lower the output impedance of the guitar, so it's more able to drive whatever's out there. Active output also keeps the impedance low when you turn your guitar volume down, preserving the highs you'd otherwise lose to cable capacitance, more and more the further down you go. That's why I typically use a buffer, to keep the tone consistent, at any volume, and in different environments.

Well, it clearly does have a physical preamp, to amplify a guitar-level signal enough work well with the rest of the circuitry. And it emulates a variety of amps, including their preamps, power amps, speakers in cabs, mics to mic them, and to some extent, the room the speakers and mics are in. But NO, it DOES NOT have an actual amp, it can't drive speakers itself. You can connect its output to a powered FRFR setup, in which case you'd use its whole emulated chain, or use it as an effect with a normal guitar or bass amp, in which case you probably want to bypass its speaker and mic emulations, since you'll have real guitar speakers in play. Like spikey said, read up, watch videos, then figure out what specifics you need more info or advice with.

Exactly this. Free for a while, then I'd pay some reasonable amount for upgrades or expansion packs, and stop if it doesn't seem worth it any more. This is the same as with ITB software. I paid for the Amplitube 4 upgrade, and the Mesa pack, which weren't as cheap as I would have liked, but were so totally worth it to me. The AT Mesas, and AT itself too, kind of really changed my life. Playing through them just feels like me, simple as that. Wouldn't be looking at Helix today if it wasn't for how awesomely great sounding and organic feeling that stuff can be, and with all those options. (OTOH, I'd so love that as an actual amp, probably wouldn't be looking at Helix if it existed and wasn't out of reach money-wise.) It's in all of our best interest that L6 finds a business model that lets them support and evolve this great box over a long period of time. If they need to charge for that, it's not unreasonably costly, and still a good choice amongst the existing alternatives I "can afford", I'm in.

I got a pair of Alesis Alpha 112 powered speakers off ebay last year, they're 31 lbs ea. Haven't gigged them or used them a ton at home, but they seem pretty good, reasonably roadworthy, and a great value. Only the 15" version is on ebay now, you might be able to find them somewhere, maybe used. There was a similar model from Alto, a little bit lower power, smaller drivers, etc., also not current production I think.

Understood, good point about blank-out time changing presets. I'd like to think that wouldn't be too bad IRL, but I know many people find that it is. Also, I lived with the multiple-footswitch tapdance for years, and all those stomp combinations gives you tons of flexibility in an easy-to-understand format Regardless of anything else, I'm super excited about a rig consisting of nothing but a guitar, Helix, and one or two powered FRFR boxes. I've designed and built some pretty complex full custom setups back in the day, really would prefer simple and stock today. (Leaving aside my guitar anyway...) Definitely going to see how working with just Helix feels before convincing myself I need *anything* additional.

Sounds like, wait for it, a "preset" ! Of course saving whole presets for this sort of thing gives you completely flexibility and control, and I may end up going that way, at least some of the time. Part of the question is how you footswitch it, and how you organize it in all in your head. I'm certainly not going to remember hundreds of presets, seems much more feasible to know 10, and have the stomps each on comes with labeled by their scribble strips. Before Helix, heading towards Amplitube and Scuffham, I'd been thinking about one of those big 18-button plus bank select MIDI footswitches, probably set up as 10 patches, each with 5 stomp options. (Forking expensive things, those are...) Frankly, Helix doesn't have enough footswitches for my taste, may use an external MIDI footswitch with it for that reason.

You may be right about really wanting the editor once I've used a Helix. Plan so far is that when I'm by myself messing around, writing, practicing (do I do that?), prospecting for tones etc, I'll put the Helix on top of the cheap plastic roll-y drawer thing I have in my "studio" for Stuff, so it'd be roughly waist height. Don't need to footswitch it all the time in that environment, and it'd be easier to edit. At rehearsal, soundcheck, etc, it'll be on the floor of course, but then I don't need or plan to do a ton of deep editing, more tweaking things. We'll see how that actually turns out... Just to clarify though, are you saying that the editor will let you adjust things you can't change on the Helix itself? I thought you could do everything from its own UI, the editor only made doing it some amount easier. Is that wrong?

Frankly, as a not-yet-owner, all this editor lust is weird to me. The UI right on the Helix is supposed to be such a huge deal, and clearly is on a whole other level from literally everything else. Yeah, it's on the floor, which isn't as handy as editing at desktop height, but it's designed for that, and you don't need a computer at rehearsal or sound check, big win. To me, the editor will be a great option to have, not a game changer.

Too bad. I get that that kind of flexibility could be confusing, so it really needs to be set up to be as easy as possible to manage. I gets worse. With my Amplitube rigs, I sometimes want to turn several stomps on and off together, like an EQ-distortion-EQ chain, which Amplitube can do in response to a MIDI controller. It can also toggle between the configured min and max values when that controller is seen (rather than use the controller value itself), and/or reverse the sense of a controller (switch the min and max values). All of which means a single controller number can turn some things on and other things off. It has a whole UI for setting these things up, and you can create both global and pre-preset controller-to-stomp-parameter linkages. The way Amplitube handles this is pretty awesomely flexible, and to be honest, not really confusing at all, once you figure out how the UI works. In an ideal world, Helix could do something similar. Without that, you can have sexy color-coded labels on your footswitches, but you still have to do the multiple-footswitch tap dance between the verse and the chorus. Any idea of such a thing is being considered, or with what priority?

(Don't have a Helix yet, this might be obvious if I did...) For an amp with several overdrives in front of it, can some footswitches be set up to turn each drive pedal on, and the the others off? I think I maybe read here that each effect can only be controlled by one footswitch. If that's true, then it's not possible, which would be a shame. Do I have that right? Hopefully not.

FWIW... - Personally, I'd rather not wait 5 years for additional amp and stomp models. If paid ones from L6 showed up before then, I'd be pleased :) - The third-party amps and stomps universe really could have two levels: Stuff built from the existing components built into Helix, and new components. My guess is that modeling many amps accurately would require custom transformer models at least, unless the existing models have enough flexibility to cover at lot of transformers that are different in the real world. Supporting third-party development on either or ideally both levels would be truly awesome.

If L6 was me, I'd make backwards compatibility a 100% requirement, so the max I'd do to existing models is add additional parameters and fix bugs. Adding new models has no such concern, just go for it. There are a number of amps and pedals I'd love to see in Helix, in fact that's one of my main concerns coming from Amplitube and Scuffham ITB, there's so much variety there. Never in a million years could I afford all that in hardware, not to mention that lots of it is discontinued and rare, I wouldn't have any place to put it, and vastly prefer the setup of a minimal rig anyway. But once they've sold Helix to everyone who's interested, what's their incentive to add more to it? To maintain its rep, sure, but that doesn't directly pay the bills and fund further development. Only real answer is paid add-ons. I'd resent that on one level, especially if it happened right after it came out, but if it keeps new stuff coming for another x years, I'm in. What'd be even more awesome is if a whole third-party ecosystem grew up around this hardware, UI, and firmware OS. There would have to be docs and developer tools and all the things that make developing software possible on a platform. I'd love to see what some of the great ITB sim companies could do. If there was a PC in this form factor, I'd be on that faster than a Helix, just because there's already so much software available, and more coming all the time. Hmmm, do I want to cannibalize a Helix to build one for myself? Unlikely...

The high end in your version has a similar character, to me, but it's missing some fullness in the lows or low mids. Not a ton on the original, but more than you have.

Hah, I was just thinking about that the other day, wondering how Helix would do for Butterfield-like harp. Which BTW totally kicks it... One of the bands I was in in high school is planning a reunion(!?!), and we did a bunch of Butterfield. Don't know if our singer still plays harp, but theory is, I should have my Helix by then, and it's got a mic input. (Whole thing is kinda seriously scary, as in, I haven't played with or for anyone in, oh, 35 years or so, but maybe it'll get me back into it. I do still play a fair amount, and dig it, a lot, so we'll see how it feels. Yee ha!)

Fletcher-Munson?

PM'd you yesterday with some questions, no reply so far, check your msgs.

Apologies for stoking the interflames, ignore if you want, but if you're considering a Fractal product, check this: http://www.tonymckenzie.com/axe-fx-II.htm Specifically, check the GS link near the bottom of that page, and the threads spinning off from there. Whatever you think of Tony, the linked threads don't paint a picture I'd be super happy to be a part of. Shame, really. Nice tech, from what I understand. (Not that I've 100% crossed the Axe off my list of possibles myself, but close... I'd much prefer the Helix to work out, when I get one.)

I just got a forum msg at my OLD forum email adr. Apparently none of the steps I took to establish the new adr are affecting how my (new since then) subscriptions are set up. Can't think of anything else to try (except restarting the forum software, hah). Seems like a forum bug. If anyone knows who to poke about manually changing my subscription to this forum, I'd appreciate it. (Less important, for now, but my old adr isn't getting all forum msgs either, just some. It's set up to send emails immediately.) Are subscriptions working in general for people? Or do you manually check yourself?

Sorry for the OT, but I changed the email adr I'm using for this forum, and now my subscription to it doesn't work, I'm not getting any msgs. I've confirmed that email, unsubscribed, then logged out and back in and resubscribed, still nothing, when I can see that there are new msgs since then. Any idea how to get this working again? Is there someone I should ask to intervene? There's a link at the bottom saying this forum is managed by 'Line 6 Expert', but the link is just to the forum members list, and searching for that doesn't find anyone. Halp?

36 months at Sweetwater: http://www.sweetwater.com/financing/#financing_36_months You could also just make on down to the crossroads, work out a deal ;)

It'd be really awesome if Amplitube had scribble strips like Helix too! Just sayin'.

Hmmm, interesting idea. I haven't been planning on about integrating AT and Helix, thinking I just won't use AT any more. Kind of a shame, since I have been quite happy with it, but I just don't want to take a computer to jams or gigs. It has set a bit of a high bar sound- and sonic flexibility-wise, I'm hoping Helix can keep up. I know there's a crowd of people who think hardware modelers inherently blow away software sims, but I've never played one I liked anywhere near as much as Amplitube or Scuffham. Then again, I've never played a Helix, Ax-FX, or Kemper. Helix is essentially a high-powered special-purpose computer with awesome interface and connectivity features. Problem is that it only runs proprietary software, instead of the pile of VST fx out there, of bunch of which I own and like. Now THAT is BY FAR my biggest Helix wishlist item -- the ability to run standard VSTs!!! It's not going to happen though, I know. Don't get me wrong, I am really psyched for my Helix to arrive, and hopeful that I'll really love it. I'll just have to see how it goes...

Thanks for you thoughts. I've been able to get sounds I like out of a bunch of different amps in Amplitube, so I'm hoping the same is true in Helix. I'm not totally confident though, because a lot of the Helix sounds I hear on the web are the side of Marshall I don't care for, lots of high-end hash, and (intentionally) not much "give", not what I'm after. I'm kind of taking it on faith (and store return policies...) that there's stuff in there that's more up my alley. The AT rectifiers have the same stiffness and lack of give you're talking about in th Helix version. Not that I never want that, but I like the Mark II and IV much more for what I more typically do. Anyway, this is really just me worrying, when it actuallygets here, it'll be what it is, and I'll see :)