erniedenov

^ Yep, this! Although I did initially build my presets with the headphone jack. This forum convinced me to get an FRFR powered speaker to use with Helix, so... when I started working on adapting those patches to work with the powered speaker, I immediately had to use some hi and low cuts with the global EQ (and yes, I was playing at a similar volume to what I would use at a gig; thank God my wife and I bought a house 8 months ago; I don't have to rent a rehearsal space to do that anymore). I cut highs with the global EQ using my brightest clean sound and lows using my thumpiest distortion patch. Then I still had to do some patch to patch EQing, but the global got me in the ballpark. And I'm loving my live sounds now! Like I said, I've had a lot of tube amps and playing Helix live with my powered speaker doesn't leave me wanting more.

I've had lots of tube amps and lots of Line 6 products, the last one being the Pod HD500. I think the Helix is miles ahead of anything Line 6 has produced previously. And yes, there's a lot of clean and semi-clean amp options in it including a wonderful sounding model of the Vox AC-30. Semi-clean/dirty models were something that I used to perceive as problematic with Line 6's DMAs, but not anymore! I think the amp models are at least 95% as responsive as their tube amp counterparts and Helix is way more fun than any all-tube amp because it can do so much more! The only thing you might miss is the "plug in and play" factor. You can tweak a great tube amp to taste in a matter of 2 minutes; it's going to take more effort with Helix. But a little patience and determination is going to be well worth the effort if you ask me! For the first time ever, I don't have any nostalgic impulses to go back to tube amps.

In complete agreement! Besides, I don't want my patches to be at the same volume, perceived or not. I try to think of how different tones would be mixed on a record. Clean rhythm is generally lower in a mix than distorted rhythm and leads are significantly louder. When I'm tweaking at home, I'm just guessing and it always takes some "on the fly" tweaking at a few gigs to get the volumes exactly where I want them. I always set up my patches so I can get immediate access to whatever will control my volume; if the channel volume is on 10 and I need more, I have the cab (or third party IR) block ready on the menu.

How about "The Prophet's Song?!"

Just by chance I stumbled on this video of Richie Castellano playing "Killer Queen" with his Helix in a band called Band Geek. Pretty darn good!

The first thing that came to my mind.

Does it happen when you first switch on a patch or just randomly? One of my first posts here was about going to a patch and having no volume. What it turned out to be was that I was tweaking on the fly at a gig and while doing so, I unwittingly had the expression pedal at the heel position. When I'd hit "save," that's how Helix would "remember" the patch. That probably isn't what's going on with you, but just in case.

Nice job! Ditto! One of my all time favorite rock guitar players!

Quite good! I noticed that on the F# chord, you slid the G# up to the A. When I learned that tune for the cover band I tour with, I assumed (for no particular reason) that the F# chord was barred at the second fret and you catch the A note on the (barred) G string. It's not so easy to do with a Fender scale length! So out of curiosity, I checked out a few live Police videos on YT to see how Andy played it. I never did quite figure it out (since most people who film concerts seem to have ADD), but... I noticed that he was playing a different guitar in each concert; a Strat in one, a Tele in another one and an ES-335 in yet another. Obviously, they all sounded a bit different and the amount of gain was subtly different each time too. It made me think that if the original artist doesn't care to nail his exact tone from the studio recording, why should we sweat about it?! Just rambling! But at any rate, nice job!

Lucky! I got one a week after I got my Helix, long before that offer happened. Nothing lasts forever, but I think this thing will last for a good while. And when it dies I'll probably get another one.

Starz, the only premium cable channel I have has been showing it.

Saw it; enjoyed it!

Now I think I feel sorry for you. Great to see so many Zappa fans here! Being as old as I am, the first two albums I ever bought were "Meet The Beatles" and "Freak Out!" I saw The Mothers of Invention in the '70s when Ainsley Dunbar was the drummer and Flo and Eddy were the lead singers. It was great, though I wish I'd seen him much more than that. As for recommending Zappa to a newbie, I'd pick "One Size Fits All." Or if you want to dig in deep, get the 3 disc set, "Lather." It's a lot to absorb, but you'll get the full scope of what he was all about, from do-wop to progressive rock/jazz fusion to smutty comedy and/or political satire to modern classical music to rock 'n roll... and on and on. His musical scope was all over the map!

I'll admit that I've had much more experience playing live than in the studio, but in a majority of my studio experiences, the engineer close-miced my amp (and sometimes used an additional mic a half foot or so away from it, depending on the situation, like whether I was tracking by myself or live with a band). You're right in that I shouldn't have said "whenever a sound engineer mics a speaker." Still, in the Helix, I'm betting that we'd get more usable sounds by virtually moving the mic across the speaker rather than away from it. I have to wonder how many of us ever use that parameter to go more than six inches away from the speaker. To me, it starts sounding like there's a pillow in front of the cabinet.

I don't know, to me, on/off-axis distance is much more important than distance from cab. I've never seen anybody use a "room mic" for a guitar speaker by itself in a studio. I don't know if you were talking to me, but I am rather satisfied with Helix in general. That doesn't mean that there isn't room for "more satisfied"... ever!

At a certain point, I had a "duh!" moment when I realized that the mic movement parameter was distance away from the speaker rather than from the center of the cone to the edge. I was wondering why I preferred the 1 or 2 inch setting when I usually hate it if the mic is placed that close to the center of a speaker in the "real world." Then I finally got it; it's distance FROM the speaker! That doesn't make any sense to me. Whenever a sound engineer mics a speaker, it's somewhere right on top of it. I've seen an additional mic placed anywhere from one to fifteen feet from the cab to capture the room sound in studios, but we have a parameter for room in the cabs, not to mention a room reverb. So yes, having the ability to virtually move the mic from the center to the edge would really open up the possibilities for the stock cabs. As brilliantly as the Helix was engineered, it's surprising to me that they didn't think of this obvious little detail.

Point taken; I should get my semantics in order. But you know what I meant. I don't doubt that I haven't heard the best third party IRs because I haven't actually bought any yet. I'd like to, but January sucks for most of us freelance musicians and I'm broke! And thanks for the plug, my publicity agent that I didn't know I had! I'm starting to realize that! I'm not knocking anybody who prefers third party IRs over the stock ones and I think it's great that Line 6 has implemented the ability to use them with Helix. I just haven't found any yet that makes me jump for joy. I guess I was also fishing for some solidarity among those who believe that the stock cabs aren't nearly as bad as some folks think. The last Line 6 product with cab sims I used before Helix was the Pod HD500 and Helix's cabs are miles ahead of the ones in that!

I like the Helix stock cabs better than IRs. I'll admit, I only have the free ones from Ownhammer, Allure and Celestion. But after much headphone tweaking this afternoon, I found that I could make a better sounding patch with Helix cabs than I could with the IRs every time. Maybe IRs work better for live with an amp or FRFR powered speaker, I don't know. But this is the conclusion I've come to at this point. The 4038 Ribbon mic has become a close friend. I don't use it on every patch, but I use it on a majority of them.

I started out with just the headphone jack for the first few weeks too. When I got an FRFR powered speaker about a month later, those patches I made sounded bad, too much bass and treble frequencies. I turned the global EQ on (which was bypassed when I was making my headphone jack patches) and used the high and low cuts; basically tweaking the lows on my most bass heavy patch and the highs on my brightest clean patch. Then some subtle adjustments to the global after listening to all of my patches. I still had to tweak everything a little from patch to patch, but that global EQ got me in the ballpark and I didn't have to start over from scratch. At first, I had my powered speaker sitting on the floor and was amazed at how much low cut I had to use. Then someone here that has the same speaker told me that it's boomy when it sits on the floor like that (which makes sense; it's resonating with the surface) and I needed a pole or an amp stand. I got myself a pole and had to start over with the global EQ. It's sounding pretty great now and I'm confident that what's coming out of that speaker is pretty close to what's being heard through the FOH. It's been a learning experience for all of us, but very much worth the time invested!

It obviously does stuff that Helix can't do, but I did stumble on a patch on which I can get most notes to feed back without the gain getting overly muddy. It involves the Achron lead and a Minotaur. Of course this only works live with an amp or powered speaker. Cool that this thing can do that without any amplification!

I generally agree about the Allure IRs, but as I stated above, I found the WhoWatt-100 to be the standout among them and it's really nice for cleans. It's more full bodied than the other ones and just with the amp block's tone controls I was able to EQ it to my liking, reducing the treble and adding some more bass and mids. I didn't think it was that much quieter than the free Ownhammer IRs I have, certainly not to the point where it's unmanageable. It has a real hi-fi quality shimmer that's very appealing, at least to me. Obviously, tone is a subjective thing, but I found that particular IR to be quite usable! I actually like that there wasn't a bunch of variations with various mics positioned in various increments in relation to the speaker; I'm guessing just favorites were chosen. I don't mean to complain about the OH ones (especially not the free demo; thanks,OH!), but all of those choices (many of which the differences are extremely subtle), gives me option anxiety! You could go crazy trying to choose a handful of useable IRs out of the multitudes. Anyway, just another take on the Allures (at least one of them). As with anything, one needs to judge for one's self.

Agreed! I auditioned them last night (only with headphones so far). The WhoWatt 100 is my favorite. I paired it with the Mesa Mark IV clean channel and I think I've made my best clean patch yet! Thanks Allure and Line 6!

Exactly. I bought an Alto Trusonic TS 212 powered FRFR speaker for $300. The name is misleading; it has one 12" speaker and a tweeter. Reading comments and explanations on this forum convinced me that I needed an FRFR powered speaker for my Helix, but I didn't have a lot of money to spend on one. After a fair amount of Web research, I decided on this one and didn't regret it; they're cheap, light, loud enough to compete with an over-enthusiastic drummer and sound great! I know a few other guys on this site have them (or the 10" speaker version) and dig them too.

I knew that, just didn't know about it going between the amp and cab since I never thought about trying that idea. I've yet to worry about wasting DSP power since my patches are relatively simple with one serial path. When I was using a Line 6 Vetta, I used to use two amps and two cabs all the time; just haven't felt compelled to do that with Helix... yet.

Funny, I usually use the Minotaur to get some lower voiced midrange and darken the sound. But with that tone filter, it can obviously work both ways. That and the Vermin are my favorite distortion blocks for very different reasons.