Verne-Bunsen

I recently shipped my Helix off for repairs due to a failure of the joystick/rotary knob. I purchased Helix through Guitar Center and bought the protection plan, so this was covered work despite being out of warranty. Which is nice. I just heard back from the service station and they report that the Helix cannot be repaired! That was unexpected. Anyone else encounter this? The good news is that I should be receiving a credit for the purchase price of the unit, so in theory I should be able to order up a new one and be right back in business. Assuming that the wait time is not as long as it was a year and a half ago when I bought the first one...

This is really excellent advice!

That's a pretty broad question. What IRs are you using and how are you using them? How are you monitoring? If you are playing Helix through a guitar cab then IRs will be redundant and may not sound good. IRs (and the stock cabs in Helix, which are also IRs...) are there to emulate a cab for going direct to a PA/FRFR/headphones/recording console/etc. If you are going direct and are using a Helix cab in your preset then another IR in series with it won't necessarily behave as expected. Remove the Helix cab and use the IR in its place to hear the IR as intended.

Is there a volume pedal block?

That speaks not only to the hardware but also to the quality of your patches, nice work!

Great stuff all around!

That's one I'd get behind for sure.

I can't remember having seen it, put it up on Ideascale and see if there's interest?

Thanks for the post. I'm very keen to try out the Celestion offerings however all of my IR slots are full as it is. If we ever get an avenue to expand the capacity I'll definitely be checking them out.

This is covered in detail on page 40 of the manual. It's worth reading as there is quite a lot of helpful information in it. You'll probably find answers to a lot of your questions. http://line6.com/data/6/0a06439c975d5787c3e351aa0/application/pdf/Helix%202.0%20Owners%20Manual%20-%20Rev%20D%20-%20English%20.pdf

If I were asked to choose I'd definitey opt for more slots over better management. The IR file management does suck but I can work around it if I choose to. However if all of my IR slots are full, which they are, there's nothing I can do about that. And I'd like to load more IRs. I'd likewise trade a preset bank for another 128 IR slots or however many that would allow for.

I run Helix off the Courtesy Outlet on my VooDoo Labs Pedal Power 2+ with no problems.

Yeah, I'm not sure I'd have agreed to it if I'd known the terms. I did re-start the computer and tried different USB ports, and different cables, and re-started Helix, and re-installed the editor, I was grasping at straws. At the very least I'm glad I was able to get the editor recognizing the Helix again, that had me in a bit of a panic...

In preparation for sending my Helix off for repairs (failed joystick/rotary knob, bummer...), I plugged into the editor to back everything up. I was exporting presets one-at-a-time, as is my way of doing such things, and didn't encounter any difficulty initially. How ever at one point I switched presets from within the editor and it hung up and ultimately crashed with the "Helix has closed unexpectedly" error. For reference, all presets were built from the ground up in Helix, no downloaded patches or anything. This particular patch wasn't even loaded from a backup, it had just been put together. I re-started the editor and it opened, however it reported that there was no Helix connected. I re-started the computer and the helix and tried again. The first time the editor crashed immediately, the second time it again opened but reported that Helix was not connected. I tried different USB ports and cables to no avail, but this very setup had been working fine just moments before. I attempted this several more times while spitting profanity and the results were always the same: editor crashes immediately, then editor opens and reports no Helix. I re-installed the editor, but there was no change. With the Helix connected but un-recognized, I attempted to change presets on the Helix itself. The Helix froze solid. I disconnected Helix and re-started, then successfully changed patches on the Helix. I loaded the patch in question without any difficulty and re-saved it in another slot for grins. I connected to the computer and loaded the editor and it immediately crashed again. I disconnected and re-started Helix again and loaded a different patch then connected Helix to the computer again and loaded the editor and it opened and established communication with Helix as per normal. I was able to navigate between patches in the editor without any difficulty until selecting the one that initially started the grief and, again, the editor crashed. Here's where it get's interesting. I disconnected and restarted the Helix, loaded the troublesome patch and noticed that the selector was saved on the output block. This struck me as odd as I generally save with it on the amp block, really not sure why it would have been saved there of all places. I moved the selector back to the amp and hooked Helix back up to the computer and the editor loaded up just fine. It appeared that everything was suddenly back in order, but a bit more investigating showed that all controller assignments (with the exception of bypass) had been removed. Just gone like they'd never been set up. Which sucks, because there were a lot of them. So at this point I'm not really sure which is the chicken and which is the egg: did a corrupt preset crash the editor or did an editor glitch corrupt the preset? It seems unlikely to me that the preset was corrupt since it was built from scratch all within the Helix itself, but who knows. I'm not sure what to expect when I get my machine back and re-load this preset, but either way this has been my first run-in with the editor gremlins that I've been reading so much about. I didn't like it. The fact that my Helix was already broken and that I encountered all of this while preparing to send it back didn't help. I guess the moral of the story is that if a preset is crashing your editor, try moving the cursor on Helix and maybe it will then be able to load it at the cost of erasing all of your controller assignments. Does this string of events sound familiar to anybody else?

I'm pretty sure I remember Geordie La Forge saying this exact thing when Picard was inquiring about reconfiguring the forward phaser array...

I'm pretty certain that Helix enforces a limit to the number of cabs you can have on a path regardless of actual DSP consumption. 2 Helix cabs or 1 dual cab, 2 1024 IRs or 1 2048 IR. This has been my experience consistently for the 14 months I've had Helix. I've had four cabs in a patch, but to do so you've got to use a dual cab on 1A, split upstream of it and run 1B down to 2A then split and run parallel cabs on 2A and 2B.

I just initiated a claim with the Guitar Center "Pro Coverage" for my failed rotary joystick, glad (for once) that I sprung for it! Hopefully it's a smooth process. I was leary of that knob from the get-go, voted it "most likely to fail", and sure enough. Could become a pain if it's a recurring failure...

Just as with the current auto-engage, you'd have to work around the limitations. The current configuration leads to constant nuisance switching if you linger too long around heel-down. It's a compromise however you cut it, but some compromises may work out better for some peoples techniques than others. Just about having options.

Voted. Mine shat the bed today as well. Worked fine one second, no rotary function the next. I'm still in the window of my Guitar Center protection plan, so hopefully it can be rectified painlessly...

Not as yet, it's strictly based on the pedal position exceeding a set threshold. I'd like to see what you describe implemented at some point, I am told Axe FX has it as an option.

Ah! I had an acronym conflict that made this thread very confusing initially. Like Datacommando, MIAB made me think Message In A Bottle, by the police. Which made zero sense as the Angry Charlie is a high gain pedal. It finaly dawned on me that MIAB is also Marshall In A Box. That said, the Helix 2204 is a model of JCM-800, which is what the Angry Charlie is voiced after, so I should think it would get you pretty close to where you want to be.

Right on, enjoy!

I've been thinking about it more and maybe that switch could be made to work? If it switches like I think (center common, switching between connection with the two outer lugs, which is just a guess without putting a meter on it...) then I think you could run two wires from the jack sleeve lug, one directly to one of the outer lugs and one with the 10k resistor inline to the other outer lug, then run the center lug to the jack tip lug. In this way the path from tip to sleeve would be a dead short in one switch position (through the direct wire) and 10k ohms in the other (through the resistor). If you have some alligator clips it would be pretty easy to give it a whirl, check it out either on a meter or just using EXP position indication on Helix.

Attached here is the FW 2.20 version of Texas Flood. The forum software may do some funny business with the file extension, you may have to change it before importing. It should be simply "Texas Flood 2.20.hlx" edit - it won't let me upload "files of this kind", stand by.... re-edit - I dunno, seems like a .hlx file would be exactly the kind a guy SHOULD be able to upload here? I've put it on my Drop Box, you should be able to get it from there without any trouble: https://www.dropbox.com/s/p5pso6u1g6hku6f/Texas%20Flood%202.20.hlx?dl=0

Hmm... I'm not familiar with that switch but at a guess I'd say the middle is common and it toggles between the two outer lugs. I don't think that will do it for you, as you need to route both tip and sleeve through the switch and that will only do one...