WickedFinger

Now that I am absorbing the method on how this puppy works, I am finding it is way beyond what I expected, and the tones forever and a day shut up modeler haters. The ability to run dual lines of different amps and cabs is just mind boggling fun. I had heard the reverbs and delays were not all that great, but really being able to combine them and tweak out stuff is just making the most amazing reverbs and delays I have ever gotten. Does some of the coolest reverb things I have ever used. If there is better than this, I cannot imagine what or how. I am learning to farm out my overdrives to my better hand select pedals which I think is a better way to go, as I am not all that excited about the internals, a few are usable in my pallet. One effect that was bending my brain is the Vibe, wow, I have been a lover of photo cell vibes for ages and I have never heard them throw such a pulse throb on the low end and just sound like real lamps with bias adjust no less. This is a digital mimic?? Bloody amazing, no wonder the amp models are so realistic and responsive. The Wah models are outstanding as well. Pretty much all the effects I find very good, learning the art of arranging and using so many params is really a tweaker's fantasy. All in all extremely impressed by the Helix, I was afraid it was going to be rather PODish but I was delighted in its range of really, really great model sounds and well worth the bucks, as it is indeed 3-4 times better than anything I have had. Seems like it will take a century to really load up some great sounding patches as I just cannot stop experimenting. What a cool unit. Helix is the deal. So glad I decided to get it. Looking forward to an infinite range of tone ideas as I get better and better at the programming. Thanks L6 you guys really engineered a wonderful machine. Any ideas how to make my Explorer 11 run the install file? I think I will try it on Chrome to get around the file opening problem.

Well this was an idiot thing to be sure, turns out the guitar was in the wrong jack and the input structure was all off. Once I got everything right when I moved the unit, presto, major tones. So all is cool, just a little overwhelming at first getting used to it. To add to that I lost my PC in a massive crash and burn and just got a new PC so I was working on several fronts trying to get everything going. My new PC Windows 10 w Explorer 11 will not open and run the L6 install file for some reason. Some are saying this "Edge" feature is causing it but no notions on how to make it stop. You try and open the file and it is a page of machine language. Not enough trying to get into the Helix with its infinite scope the new PC and loading up everything took me hours and hours today so I blame my other goof on just being exhausted.

Just got my Helix yesterday and bumbling my way along using whatever sources I can find. Noticed on the unit if I turn down the volumes, even slightly on my LP the level just drops off to nearly nothing. Never experienced this on any rig or anything before. Not my guitar. something in the Helix. I am used to changing the controls on my LP for different tones all the time. Do I have something set weird??? I have run things at half way many times in blend and so forth and have never had an issue like this. Now this has been in my headphones as I do not have anything ready yet to plumb into the main rig.

Please no more fuzz. And for those who hate the "boutique" thing when I said the Muff was cheese, FYI the cheap things you buy from EH are light years away from the original that Gilmour used and made sound good. You have to get the boutique versions if you want the better original components or god forbid they should improve the design of its half century low tech issues. Cheap and low class is a way of life, don't hate me because I am pretty. The point of boutique level pedals is not just paying a higher price it is an improvement and better design of the circuit. Why does anyone imagine there have been thousands of mods on the tubescreamer circuit, would you believe they are trying to improve it? What the Helix has is enough for my limited use and I have some outboard stuff if I need it. I just do not want the Helix dumbed down, with cheese effects that are really not very good or musically useful, keep the POD and M stuff where it is and if any like that, more power to you, buy that instead. Keep the Helix on a higher shelf of quality and sound. L6 should improve on the delays and reverbs which is not to say they are not good and despite some of the comments elsewhere they are copied from the POD HD as I read. Not that those were bad, to me it was the best that unit had to offer. Personally, and I mean me, I have no use for the POD thing, been there, done that, took it as far as it could go. Looking forward to the Helix. I know they intend amp models for high gain but there is nothing wrong with a quality high gain for clean amps. And by that I mean NOT a cheese version of a Metal Zone with just basic tone controls. Model a Wampler Pinnacle on vintage and modern, amazing pedal. Fuzz is primarily a single note thing, no articulation, or note definition, a nicely engineered high gain is amp like in feel and quality. Each has their moments and use. I am all about more amps on the Helix but wondering just what is the theoretical limit on how many they can do? Does not bother me to have just a few that really sound amazing verses those that do not. Cleaner amps are as important to me as any high gainer. Modeling seems to do well on super clean and super gained up but the mid ground is where it is hard to render that edge of breakup and a little hair around the notes which is true tube response.

Jimmy used an MXR Blue Box octaver and fuzz on that one. Sounds like a synth but it is for sure the Blue Box thing and I am sure one could come up with something cool on the Helix maybe mixing fuzz with pitch shift or using the whammy as a set 8va dwn interval. Even after all this time I still look to Jimmy's work as a paradigm of my music education. I had the pleasure of educating my wife on the who and what of Zeppelin and she really got it and realized, yeah, these guys were on another level. She fell in love with the blues Jimmy does like I'm Gonna' Crawl. Nothing these days gets near that level I miss it so much.

Well, this forum is doing for me what I had hoped. complaints and then some ideas on how to work around and enhance things. I love the idea of the reverb block before the speaker IR seems like a much better idea, heard no follow up on that anyone get better results?? Just a fact there is no pleasing everyone and no pleasing some people, but in regards to many things its often the fault of the pilot not the plane and complaints of the hammer not working is holding on the wrong end. Many of us found with the genius "meambobbo" of the HD fame that one could just turn on various blocks like EQ with no adjustments and it would effect the tone as it ran through them. A lot of tricks and I am sure the Helix is going to be wonderful finding all those little outside the box thinking angles to get things working optimally, many of which the Line6 cats have not discovered. I listened for ages of users loving the POD then the HD and I finally tried one and pushed the programming as far as it could go, was OK but the models did not really seem anything much other than a pedal mimic of an amp if some were that good. Terse problems with the unit like the effects loop not being unity (tested -6db on several units) the Niagara Falls noise hiss requiring first in chain noise gating was just terrible and the digital clipping between blocks. Personally if you're using a guitar amp with something like the Helix on that 4CM thing you should rethink your paradigm. Long story short you could not give me a POD and I so left that behind and I thought Line6 was one of those lines that was a phase for me and moved on. Then I hear and read of the Helix, the steroid modeler that is a ground up rethinking and redo of all the bad POD aspects. And I find they took many of my suggestions in mind with the Helix, coincidence. most likely but just when I thought I was out they pulled me back in. I get my unit later this week and I have the headphones and air tanks ready for deep study and experimentation. Seems to me the various delays and reverbs have to be pretty damn good and certainly better than the POD which its back end effects seemed pretty good really. It's the front end stuff which I never used. Helix seems to have done a component modeling of these pedals which the beloved Klon, and a Trimmy both my requests years back. Do spend the research time and the engineering issues on the amp/cab arena and the delays and reverbs. Please no more wasting time on the exact mimic of cheese pedals I would not use if someone gave me one. I cannot wait to try some routing block ideas to see how they work. Seems to me if something does not work for you or you want super high end studio reverb and what not, pipe it in for gods sake. Concentrate on the best of the best and let cheese pedal lovers or wants of a different delay or reverb loop it in. The downfall of the POD for me was the low brow sound like this band, and cheese effects which 85% were of no use, maybe for a teenager who lacks ability or an ear for that matter. But you have a hell of a potential unit here do not turn it into a freakin' POD.

In the first place I stopped using fuzz as a teenager and do not find them useful much except for weird buzzed out passages. Overdrives for me are the ball game. If you must do a fuzz, for the love of god stop with the model mimic of cheese pedals. Yeah I had a Big Muff when I was 17, really. If you must copy something how about a Wampler Velvet Fuzz. For me expanding on the quality of the Timma and Klon is more important. Copies of cheese pedals I used before I had any money to get good gear is at best for me a regression in my playing I do not wish to journey. How about the DarkArts Pharaoh fuzz, anything but the usual cheese fest which I hated with the whole POD thing. Give me well designed versatile adjust tweaking for anything and you can call it what you like. I would rather have a few really great sounding things than a hundred cheese fest non musical to anyone but teenagers. The Helix promises to be more of a pro high end thinkers unit do not turn it into POD thing. If they want that then go get one. I am hoping the HELIX arriving later this week has the potential I think it does much less to farm out to better drives and such else like my POD phase which will never be revisited, the tone marches on. Concentrate more on the amps, cabs, EQs, delays and reverbs anything cheese box someone can loop it out. How about Shimmer reverb guys while I do love some of the Line6 renderings. Development in that direction over copies of crappy pedals is time better spent. But what I do I know I left being a stupid teenager with no money behind a long time past.

Really, the great god Helix is not pleased. Good high gains are not an easy task and search begins from the proper model that suits your feel, from there it is a study on pushing the amp in the front using less gain on the amp and really not sure compression is a good idea unless you want to try a studio comp down the chain to tighten it up. High gain is already super compressive and too much comp ruins dynamic and articulation. Add to which amp djents the best you have to stop looking at the names of stuff and just try now they sound, spin the knobs increase the SAG all sorts of things to see how it does. You have to experiment the various front end models on the Helix as to which ones have a chemistry with that amp and enhance it and do not over gain the levels on anything. Anyone with the slightest sense of engineering and studio knowledge will tell you back off the over all amp gain and use an OD or clean boost in front to enhance the gain structure and tighten it up. I am new to the Helix myself so I cannot tell you what I have come to as I have to do through this myself in a range of cleans and dirt, It takes some time as there are thousands of options on the Helix. Sometimes a fast delay set low helps thicken the sound without losing the basic attack. I would say over all EQ from the blocks to the global is extremely key. Much less what are you running the Helix into and how is more than key to the overall tone. Modelers do not need guitar amps, not at all. If you are going to enter the modeling magic forest then past ideas of guitar amps are not functional. You have to try various cabs and IRs with that selected amp (not to mention would just the preamp model work better into your rig) and remember stop thinking by name recognition with std amp things, it does not matter, how it sounds and feels is the important thing. You have to get into the over all aspect of EQ control which is a science in itself. A great tone requires a lot of tweak experimentation. I am very sure the complex up to 4 amp capability of the Helix equates to a lot of experimenting trial and error. There is the genius guy who wrote his own user manual on the POD HD patch creation called himself "meambobbo" he knew things about the POD programming that blew your mind. Until such a genius arrives on the Helix we have to experiment but do not think, click, click, click, and presto my tone is perfect. It is hard to think outside the visual and name recognition of things. This is not a real amp and a cabinet it is a massive array of chips, filters, and IR equations which are simulating what an amp does. The Helix will have its own chemistry on what makes it work the best. I cannot wait to don the headphones and air tanks and submerge into it later this week. If I come up with some cool things I will drop them in. An overlooked thing with all modelers is the end of chain sound rig you are using and why. Personally the whole 4CM thing to me is a waste of a good guitar amp and trying to make something it is not. Full range and power amp rigs are the deal with modelers and if you are not exploring stereo panning you are missing a lot of major cool stuff. Guitar speakers are not bad but they are designed for a guitar amp not a modeler. If you have higher-end high wattage guitar speakers they can work well but lower end, low wattage "classic" this is not their forte.

I am puzzled by a lot of things about this discussion. 1.) I do not find this guy all that much of a great player by any means. He flubs several attempts at chords and does a basic volume swell using the knob which is not the Helix. I believe it is a single coil but that does not matter a lot. 2.) The sound really, really is not very good and having been a modeler user and getting a Helix myself later this week, if it this is suppose to be a great tone I will be sending it back. 3.) There are a million options and things you can do on the Helix to improve tones and quality, none are in use here. 4.) The medium upon which the sound is being recorded and transferred is everything, I can listen to a hundred videos on YT and maybe two or three will actually sound good. Check out what Mike Hermans uses of Prymaxe & PGS he gets great tones no matter the effect. The sound medium of YT leaves more than a lot to be desired the overall compressive nature and bandwidth is hard to make anything sound good, 5.) A modeler such as the Helix has a million variables as to outputs and what you run it into, Everything indeed makes a difference, this sales hype fallacy that of you use what some else uses you will sound just like them is more than a little untrue. AT any rate the Helix shows great promise and potential as a modeler, I will begin working on it later this week to see what it can do. Despite being a POG hater for some time I spent a lot of time learning how to create better patches on it using everything capable to improve it, it had dire shortcomings and issues that ended up being a game killer for me. I am promised the Helix is a different animal from the ground up, with all the issues of the POD fixed and much better modeling technique and IR capability. I would like to leave some with the caveat truth in The #6 point: 6.) An accomplished player can make reasonably good tones and sounds out of the worst piece of crap while a hack neophyte player can make the best gear sound not worth the money. Judging gear by most videos is at best a flawed premise from every issue from the player, the gear and the transferring medium. You could have the same exact gear this chap used to record and upload even his PC and still with a few minor settings changes sound totally different before we discuss ones hands and abilities. From what I have done and used from several modeler units this is a terrible tone and if this is what you want to duplicate seems it really is the most basic of default selections except for the delay adjust he does. There is so much better to be had from the Helix which experienced users have matched it to the Fractal level after understanding HOW TO USE IT. This is not a plug and play idiot unit and was never meant to be so. You have to read the manual, understand it and look for tips and tutorials from all sources to glean ideas and techniques. There was a cat who called himself "meamBobbo" on the HD POD site and he made that unit sing like you did not know it was capable until such a Helix genius comes along with an updated user manual like he wrote. We have to experiment and try ideas. Seriously just turning on an amp model and a basic cab is just no way to judge this unit or presume you are even at stage 1 of its possible tone ability. It is more so all what you run the Helix into and how you have it set up that in itself is half the struggle. Modelers just do not need guitar amps at all, and unless you truly get into the element of stereo full range or a true power amp rig you will never hear what this puppy can do.

Most controllable spread split is run a hard panned delay on one side with slight delay (no repeats/feedback) like a few ms, this will pull the sides apart and retain tone.