I have had the Helix for 6 months and spent countless hours messing with it. Purchased tons of IRs, watched tons of videos, purchased Glenn DeLaune's entire pack of presets. Programmed dozens of patches. After tweaking patches for hours on end, you kind of convince yourself that it sounds good. But when you come back with fresh ears, you realize it's not. I don't like the effects, no depth and intensity to them. I'm till trying, I still want to like it, and I am hoping to stumble across the secret sauce to make this a viable live rig. That you have to put a noise gate on every higher gain patch is my biggest complaint. I also find that there is no sustain, no feedback at stage volume, no ringing metallic clang of strings. It is digital and harsh sounding. In fairness, you are constantly fighting that problem with any digital modeler. But so far there is no high gain sound that I have set up that doesn't require squashing it with a noise gate. That immediately kills the tone, sustain, harmonics, the notes just die, etc. You can get good cleans and mid crunch tones, but high gain is tough. Once that noise gate is on, the open sound goes away. I purchased the HD500x about a year before and it suffers from alot of the same issues, but I was able to get some usable patches, still nothing I want to take on stage.
I used an ADA MP1 for most of my career as a full time touring guitarist. That went into the Boss GX700, a BBE, and a Mosvalve power amp out to 2 4x12's It wasn't the greatest but it was MIDI which was a must, and it did the job. The Helix is beautiful for sure. It has so much cool stuff and versatility that I want to love it. But I am near the giving up point.
