erniedenov

Yeah, it's not as easy as you would expect. I play some straight ahead jazz gigs (in addition to pop/rock cover bands) and use an Epiphone Sheraton (an ES-335 type guitar) with flatwound .012s. I spent a couple of hours trying to get a decent jazz sound and I wound up using the Cali IV Rhythm 1 amp model with a 2x12 Interstate cab sim with a 160 Ribbon mic (the Fender Twin model didn't work for me either). Had to do some low cut on the cab. This is not necessarily the be all, end all jazz tone and it might not work for you at all for various reasons. I'd suggest you keep trying and combine different amp, cab and mic models. I think there may very well be a better jazz sound for me in there too; I've hardly exhausted all my options. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful, but I believe your sound is in there somewhere!

Wow! Sometimes I think of a Helix question while I'm using it at a gig, then I forget about it after the gig is over. And this is one of those times! Thanks for asking, harosha... and thanks for answering, HonestOpinion! I just took a look in the manual and it's right there; DOH! Then I immediately pulled my Helix out of it's (backpack) case and set tempo to "global." I always wanted the tempo to be global. The last thing you want to do when you switch to a lead patch and charge into a solo is tap the tempo in. I'm a bit embarrassed that I didn't think of this a couple of months ago, but grateful that it's been asked and answered here. This is why I lurk much more than I post around here!

I think you're just going to end up having to choose for yourself because there's a bunch of great sounding clean amps in there! My favorites are Matchless, Vox AC-30, Mesa/Boogie Mark IV clean, Fender Twin and the new Paul Reed Smith Achron.

Cool! The limit light wasn't on in the speaker and there was no clipping. I had both the speaker and the Helix master all the way up and it just didn't seem that loud. My Vetta combo is louder than that at just past 9 o'clock. I'm going to see what happens using the quarter inch jack. If it's still not that loud, there's a bunch of ways to increase the output, like on the global EQ. We'll see how it goes. And I'll keep my eye on the limit light. ;)

That's good to know! Been wondering why my Alto powered speaker isn't that loud for having 550 watts, but I've only used XLR. Will a regular instrument cable work or should it be a speaker cable?

I suppose. I was initially worried I'd get unwanted feedback from my high gain patches, but that wasn't the case as it turned out, probably because I use some input gate on those patches. I did that reluctantly, since I always hated noise gates, but with the right threshold setting it's not that bad. And those high gain amp models can be as noisy as their tube amp counterparts!

A couple of months ago, a buddy (who's the first call Broadway show/musical theater guitar player here in Chicago) found out that I got a Helix and he was interested in comparing it with his Fractal Audio Axe-FX II. He brought a powered FRFR speaker (I didn't have one at the time). We A/Bd some of the same models using the same speaker sims, set to the same tone/drive/volume settings. There were subtle differences, like one would break up more with identical drive settings... stuff like that. But actually, I was pleasantly surprised at how similar they sounded. When he left, I had the impression that he favored his Fractal, though he readily admitted that Helix had a much more manageable UI. A month later, I found out that he bought a Helix and put his Fractal up for sale. Let's not get all sensitive about this; it stands to reason that along with Kemper, these are products that are bound to be compared to one another... and each has their pros and cons. Of course they're competing with each other; a lot of Line 6 devotees jumped ship when Fractal came out. Then Line 6 had to get competitive and learn some stuff from Fractal. And shortly after Helix came out, Fractal introduced their AX8, at a very similar price. Sometimes competition is healthy; either way, we win!

Yeah, they're kind of like the audio version of a spork. :) Well, I bought a pole for my Alto TS212 and redid the global EQ because it was indeed much less boomy and bright than it was sitting on the floor. The only problem is that the shortest I can make the pole has the speaker right at the level of my head (I'm 5' 5). I have a gig coming up that I do annually with 5 other guitar players, bass and drums. I'm going to feel a little funny having my speaker towering over everybody else's amps, like I'm trying to be the loudest or something. Oh well, guess they'll just have to deal with it. I'm bracing myself for the jokes when I show up to the pre-gig rehearsal.

He said there shouldn't be a sub-forum for non-FRFR users and I agree with that. He mentioned starting one's own thread to talk specifically to those users. I just think it couldn't hurt for it to be a "sticky," which Lachdanan0121 suggested. To me, that's something different than a sub-forum. It wouldn't have to be a sticky either; if it gets enough responses it'll be a "hot topic"... close enough! I don't really have strong feelings about it one way or the other, just trying to be a peacemaker before the amp/cab users and the FRFR users declare a civil war. :unsure:

I don't understand why you would think either thing; FRFR being the perfect "bedroom solution," or that the majority of participants here don't play out live with bands. I haven't tallied it up, but folks are frequently talking about their gig experiences with Helix here. Some of them may be "weekend warriors" and some (like myself) play guitar for a living, but either way, I get the impression that Helix's are getting out and about more often than not among us. As for the perfect bedroom solution, I would think that would be headphones, not FRFR powered speakers. Married folks with kids aren't likely to be blasting their powered speakers at home unless they have a soundproofed room. And there are some ways that those P.A. like speakers have an advantage over amps and cabs, like the the way they disperse sound over a wider field, or how much closer they may come to duplicating what's coming out of the FOH. Though I've decided to go the FRFR route myself, I'm not necessarily biased towards that and I get the whole "pushing air" thing, having used tube amps and cabs for decades. I'm actually intrigued by reports about good results using Helix with the Vetta combo, since I still have mine. To be honest, I haven't tried it because I'm afraid I'd like it too much! One thing about my FRFR speaker is that it's weighs less than half of what that combo weighs and I'm 63 now; a little too old to still be loading that beast into dodgy club entrances. But you gotta love how versatile the Helix is; seems as if Line 6 seriously considered the various ways people want to set up their rigs, or record... and didn't leave many stones unturned. I agree with this; we all have the Helix in common after all. I think the sticky non-FRFR thread might be the best solution for keeping everybody happy.

It's accurate, just "jumpy." I find that if I mute all the strings except the one I'm tuning with my right hand, it works a little better. Emphasis on "a little."

I'm old school too and that's pretty much how I do it. I explained online to some guy who was on the fence about Helix that it can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. Me; I keep it simple. I start with just amp and cab blocks (is there any other way?). I'll usually put a wah first in line unless it's a patch I'll never use it for (and I only use a wah if I have to). Next, a compressor, and I don't use them for clean rhythm playing very often; mostly for clean leads. I'll use subtle compression and generally it's more for a boost. Then a distortion pedal; sometimes it's set to "on" if it's a crucial part of a lead patch, but usually it's laying in waiting on some type of rhythm patch and used to get a lead of a different flavor than my high gain lead patch. After the amp and cab (what would be the effects loop in the tube/analog world), volume pedal goes first, then some sort of modulation (a chorus more often than not), then reverb, then delay. No delays on rhythm patches unless I have that distortion pedal in waiting. They're not all set up like that, but most of them are. And when I say "all," I mean 8 patches; that's all I need. Clean rhythm, semi-dirty rhythm, power chord/riff rhythm, high gain lead, faux jazz patch (not easy to get a Strat to sound like a big box archtop, but I try... and that one has an EQ block for obvious reasons), ambient (lot of compression, chorus, delay and reverb, mostly for volume pedal swells ala Holdsworth or Frisell), clean rhythm with all different effects than the other clean rhythm patch (I suppose I should use a snapshot for the regular clean rhythm patch, but I don't, at least not yet) and a wild card high gain lead with pitch harmonizers, one set to a diminished scale! I can certainly understand using several guitars, but I just use one; a Suhr Strat with a humbucker in the bridge. It covers everything I need to do, though a 'bucker in a Strat will never be a 'bucker in a Les Paul; oh well! I do use an Epiphone Sheraton with heavy gauge flatwounds for jazz gigs; I have one patch for it. That's it; bonehead simple, but it works for me. BTW, I LOVE my Helix!

I was having a similar problem at the first couple of gigs I did with the Helix. It turned out that when I would do a couple of tweaks on the fly, I had the expression pedal at heel position and when I hit "save," the Helix remembered the patch as having the expression pedal (which I mostly use for volume) as being in heel position, hence "off." All it took was hitting "save" again with the pedal in toe position. Maybe that's not what happened to you and it IS a bug, but thought I post this just in case.

Good, interesting read! I finally got around to checking this model out a few days ago and decided to make it my "go to" semi-dirty amp. It responds so nicely to picking dynamics and the volume knob! One of my favorite guitar players is Scott Henderson and he does a lot of stuff where he's playing complex chord types with a slightly overdriven sound. It's hard to find that balance where all the notes in those kind of chords speak when you're using some grit... and for me, The Litigator is the right tool for the job. The patch I made for it has a Vermin (Pro Co Rat) with the drive set fairly low lying in waiting for leads. The two together have a nice vibe; kind of nasty, but not quite rude. Whatever... I'm really digging it and I hope Ben creates some more "virtual amps" for Helix; he definitely has a talent for it!

Oh yeah, definitely!

Interesting. When I first got mine, I was a bit shocked by how much bass I was hearing from a flat response speaker. Granted, my patches had been made with the headphone jack and I expected to hear more lows (and highs) from the speaker, but not THAT much! So I tweaked my patches to be suitable at gig volume and used a lot of low cut. I figured the sound I was now getting from the Alto 212 would be somewhat close to what would come out of the FOH, but when I finally got a chance to stand in front of the FOH with a wireless guitar, those patches sounded like crap and there was a very pronounced deficit in the low end. I went back to the patches I'd made with the headphone jack and they sounded much better, albeit with a bit too much bass and treble. I started a thread about it here a couple of months ago and nobody was sure why those patches worked better, but I think you just solved that mystery for me: I've never mounted the Alto on a pole or put it on a box. I don't lay it on it's side, I have it standing upright. I hadn't thought about it until now, but those bass frequencies are probably resonating on the floor and that's why it sounds so "boomy." So I think I'll need to get a mounting pole or some kind of stand and re-EQ everything (globally and probably individually as well) for that. Then maybe it'll sound closer to what I'd hope to hear coming out of the FOH. I know you didn't intentionally set out to solve my problem, but I think you might've anyway, so THANKS!

That's good to know as I naturally tend to tap about 4 times. Guess I'll have to retrain myself... and concentrate on those two taps being dead accurate!

I'm one of those people who had issues updating to 2.10 and I still think it's worth it; just carefully read as much advice as you can here on updating; particularly importing and exporting. Maybe it's just the "placebo effect," but everything seems to sound better to me with 2.10 and the new amp models alone make it a worthwhile endeavor. I use "real world" (rented) Triple Rectos with my touring band and sometimes I end up with a Dual, depending on what the backline company has available. They don't really sound that different from each other, though the newer Triples aren't as noisy when you turn the gain up. I think the Helix model comes pretty close to the real thing, though tone and drive settings may be slightly different. That model is my "go to" for crunchy higher gain rhythm stuff, at least so far.

Excellent advice just given, I got nothing to add to that! I got an Alto TS212 a couple of weeks after I got my Helix. After reading discussions here similar to the ones above, I became convinced that a powered FRFR speaker is the way to go. No regrets! I made my initial Helix patches using my in-ear monitors and the headphone jack and I did have some work cut out for me with EQing those patches for the Alto turned up to something in the ballpark of gig volume. But it turned out to be a rewarding effort and especially with the latest firmware, things are sounding pretty great! Somewhere down the road I may get a second TS212 so I can go stereo.

Sounds great!

Wow, interesting! I think that's where I screwed up, although I could swear I did the same thing when I updated from 1.06 (I think) to 2.00 without any issues. And this time around, I didn't lose ALL of my presets, but I lost the majority of them. Like I said on another thread, next time there's a new firmware, I'm going to ask a lot of questions (stupid or not) and proceed with extreme caution.

Interestingly, they used the Mesa/Boogie 4x12 Recto cab as the "stock" cab with it. I use that one a lot, even on clean amps. I use a real one with my touring band and theirs is pretty close! I haven't downloaded any 3rd party IRs yet. I may at some point, but I don't think their stock cabs are as bad as a lot of folks do. And yeah, the Archtype is a very nice model, maybe my favorite high gain model in the Helix! As someone said, you don't really need a stomp distortion in front of it, but I'm using the Minotaur (with it's drive set very low) with it just to get the lower voiced midrange I like so much in my lead sound.

Yes, still playing with Gary and the Lt. Dan Band; been 12 years now. Nothing booked in Florida so far, but gigs tend to trickle in and we have played in Orlando a few times (and did that this past year), so I'll keep you posted, Brad. I exported the bundle. Now I'm reading that this isn't the ideal way to back up patches; live and learn! Anyway, I truly appreciate the offer, but as I said in my last post in this thread, I'm okay now and over my misfortune. I really only use about 8 patches (16 if you include those ones re-tweaked for live with my powered speaker). I kept refining those with different amps and cabs and mic sims and saving them to new destinations. I lost all but the original versions of them (including all of the live ones), but I remembered a lot of the changes I'd made and had written down my global EQ settings for the live ones before I updated. So after 5 or 6 hours of work, I've gotten those 16 patches all re-tweaked and sounding very pleasing; actually better than they ever were! So I'm good! But next time there's a new firmware version, I'm going to ask some questions before diving in and then proceed with extreme caution. Thanks again for offering to help!

Fancy meeting you here, Brad! I take it you're a Helix owner; cool! Anyway, I was obviously upset when I made that post, but I'm doing much better now... and really enjoying the new firmware! The patches that I didn't lose were the original patches I made after having the Helix for a couple of weeks. I kept refining them and saving them to new destinations (and those were the ones I lost). But now that I know my way around Helix much more than I did, I was able to tweak them back to satisfaction reasonably quickly. I'm basically a 6 to 8 patch guy anyway. I play rock/pop covers for a living (and jazz and fusion for fun and occasional profit), but I never try to sound just like the records, just try to get the kind of sounds I need to where I like them best. So at this point, I've got my patches sounding quite good; two versions, one group done with the headphone jack and no global EQ, the other with my FRFR powered speaker turned up and using global EQ. I'm happy! There's some magic mojo going on with the new firmware, some of it I have an inkling of what they did and more of it I have no idea. But this thing is sounding really great! Thank you Line 6!

MAN! I don't how it happened, but I guess somehow when I backed up my 2.00 user presets most of them didn't get copied but I didn't realize it until I tried to import my bundle back to 2.10. Hours and hours of work lost. Yesterday I spent four hours tweaking patches for my powered FRFR speaker at volume; now all of that is gone. I'm never updating again. Sometimes you have to leave well enough alone.