Paulzx

Hello All, Quick question on something that just came up watching one of Jason Sadites' videos. He was talking about how some people use his custom tone patches but don't get similar sounding tones that he gets, that led on to a whole thing about how some of us may not have the Helix set up for optimum results to begin with. One of those observations was how loud you have the actual unit turned up. He said he runs his Helix volume fairly hot, so he has the volume knob turned up quite high, then compensates elsewhere to cut it down a bit. This caught my attention because the volume knob on my Helix has always been at the 9 o clock position so basically only up a quarter of the way, I adjust the rest via the patch and my Alto speakers. I noticed in some youtube clips that some people have the volume knob up at the 3 o clock or three quarter way up position, which is really loud, I tried it today and no doubt it has changed the way my patches sound, but here's the thing, to do it without blowing the windows out in the room, i turned my Alto speakers right down, literally just slightly up from zero, and then had to turn some master volumes down on the amp blocks I was using. From a practical point of view here, is it wise to be creating patches using this volume, whereby they are going to all be mega loud by default, which means if I don't remember to either reduce each amps default volumes or limit the output signal, just each time I make a new patch, I'm going to probably blow my own head off by mistake at some point. It seems a little bit of a hazardous approach. So how are you guys handling this and have you also found that your tones sound much better when the Helix is louder at the signal end rather than the speaker end? Bear in mind I'm mostly playing high gain and that seems to be where it affects the tone for the better, as far as I can tell for now at least.

I still think that's a bit harsh, you might be right it might be the majority I don't know but I was having difficulty with it on and off some time ago and I was definitely following instructions properly and there were times when I had to run the update 5 or 6 times to get it to go through so, doing the same thing each time, so when it does work, you knew it wasn't you, it was some other variable. I was a bit suspicious about the USB port on the Helix for a while because even HX edit would lose connection quite often outside of updating, until one day I bought home a handful of USB cables from work and tried them all. One in particular worked straight away and has never lost connection on the editor or update since, so we may never truly know why it happens but that worked for me at least. I'm not criticising anyone here, I'm just saying there has for some, been a genuine issue.

So it's practically double the price, you would expect it to be a bit better at least wouldn't you for that

Oh no you've given me a problem now haha.. this is what i've always wondered about the Fractal, Can you get easy high gain tones straight out of the box and are they better than the Helix? Can you expand on that a bit because it does sound like it's easier to get great sounds out of it quite easily, the Helix in my experience does take a bit of tweaking. How much more expensive is the Fractal? I think there's no doubt that the Helix must be the best the all round option, particularly for the price, and I have had some good results with mine, but I'm never 100% happy with the high gain stuff. Whenever I go back to a favourite patch, I'm always thinking it doesn't sound as good as it did before, it's just not easy to get great tones easily - don't get me wrong, there are far better people here at dialling in tones than me, and knowing how to get there quickly, but that's what makes the fractal interesting to me, are the tones just better out of the box? What I do like in the Helix is the flexibility to add things that can help your tone, which i assume is all in the fractal too anyway.

Can't believe I wasted my time clicking on this post.. but seeing as I'm here, as amusing as it is to see people mocking those who have had trouble updating their Helix, I can categorically state that there have been genuine issues with that. I've done some that went through perfectly and some that took multiple efforts, the easy ones have been the recent ones, but I still maintain it is to do with some usb cables in the Helix. If it's ever been on the software side we'll probably never know but all the other variables made it a bit hit and miss. I know some people just don't read the steps properly and that's their fault, but it's not really accurate to suggest all of the problems with updating are due to that. For anyone still getting this issue I would recommend buying a few USB cables and trying them all until you get something reliable.

Excellent info! I went back and read mike shipleys old post about recording the guitars on hysteria with the rockman and he did say the sound of the X100 on its own was pretty awful, but layered up and going through palmer speaker simulators, it worked, plus the fact they notched some frequencies etc. Clearly, its not going to be possible to match that sound, but going back to your point about the Boston tone actually being multiple tones, I think most of us chasing that tone on a modeller would be happy with something that had that rockman characteristic, but sounded more rounded out, almost like a composite of all the different Boston or hysteria tones without being specifically any one of them. I didn't know Leppard used the XPR on the hysteria tour, I know they were using Randall solid state amps, I know of someone who has one of the very ones used, so is the XPR just a processor then because even as a big Leppard fan, I never thought the guitar tone on the hysteria tour was particularly good, very harsh and treble like. All the following tours were different story though, fantastic huge sounding guitars. So if we're trying to get some of those X100 characteristics in a helix tone, have you got any tips on how to do it? Should we be boosting 800khz or adding a static wah etc?

Yeah I know what you mean. Helix does a very good job of getting close to a lot of this stuff. I've got a self created Angus tone that I'm quite pleased with now, I think in a lot of cases that last little bit of difference can just be in the dynamics of the volume. It seems obvious thinking about it that if I'm playing through a modeller at relatively low volume and trying to get close to an album or live tone being played a he'll of a lot louder, I'm probably not getting all of the same dynamics, therefore if its sounding pretty close, I'm probably doing a decent job of it. Funnily enough, I've got a hysteria tone now also that is starting to sound good. I started to realise that part of that rockman tone is actually achieved by cutting some highs on the EQ. I think we all knew it was accentuated on the mids, but cutting the highs and lows does get it in the ball park

Excellent find.. I'm now becoming obsessed again with trying to mimic the sound with the Helix! The wah rumour does make some sense because the tone was quite a nasal compressed type of sound wasn't it? Also there's not much bottom end in the tone is there or at least not on the Hysteria album. They seem to have extracted the basic rockman tone but dialled out all of the bottom end, which does give it an almost unreal cut through the mix type of sound. I find this stuff quite interesting. I was watching a rig run through with Angus Young's tech last night and couldn't believe what they do to get his tone, using real Marshall heads, about nine of them! But there are other subtle devices they also use to affect the tone. I think it basically gives him that big sound but running the amps quite low, they just use a lot of them

I've not found any rockman related patches or IR's that really worked well, no doubt they sound amazing on some people's setups but not quite right on my gear. It's a very difficult sound to replicate, didn't Tom Scholz just put a very exaggerated EQ on those rockman's? Maybe if you're a whizz with EQ you can replicate it on the Helix without a dedicated IR - or just using a standard IR?

Good suggestion on the cuts - I usually leave that as stock, but I'm nowhere near 50% mix. I only use a small amount of reverb but even that just seems to take a slight edge off the attack of the distortion. I'm probably a bit over sensitive to it compared to most because I'm always trying to get maximum bite and attack from my high gain tones so what has stood out to me lately is that I've been leaving reverb on all the time but if I switch it off on my dry patch, it does sound a little better, it's just not my 'go to' way to build my patches, I pretty much always put an active reverb on every patch or snapshot. We all know that when you temporarily engage a delay or some other modulation effect, that will affect your high gain tone, but I never considered reverb to compromise it slightly, and I need to check all my patches now to see if it's happening anywhere else. I don't think it's anything wrong with the Helix or the modelling, it's probably just the way I'm setting it up, and perhaps just being a bit too fussy. Worst case scenario is I turn it off altogether.

Yep I know what you mean - I'll try and get some audio

Yours is a touch more dialled down, I'm around 30% mix with 4.5 decay

I don't know why its doing it, I just know it is. I'll try some of the above suggestions. I think I'll check my other patches for comparison

Haven't checked the mix level but it would be unusual for me to ever use it as high as 50, but I can I can say with absolute certainty that it is slightly muddying the bite of the distortion. Its only slight but it is apparent

I will try that too, thanks

Great idea.. never thought of using parallel path! Will try that

Hello guys, Small detail, but hey, we're always discussing small details, we're fussy guitar players right? So I'm doing one of my usual periodic overhauls on a couple of my high gain patches, see if I can tweak a few improvements etc, and my main rythm snapshots are always set up with a reverb switched on. Any time i build a patch, I've always had the overview that a reverb is a given, just for the ambience, slightly bigger tone etc, I think most would agree that's a standard approach. However, as I was A/B'ing the distortion tone with the reverb on and off, I noticed a distinctive difference in the 'bite' of the distortion. When the reverb is on, it takes a slight edge off the bite or cut of the distortion tone, which of course is theoretically undesirable for this type of tone. I never noticed it before either. Delays and other effects you expect to slightly muddy the distortion bite, or cover it slightly, but I never suspected to hear that with a reverb. I will add that the reverb effect is low as well, so now I'm thinking the only way to get the distortion at it's best sound, is completely dry, no reverb. The reverb i'm using is the plate. Has anyone else encountered this at all? I didn't expect the reverb to partly cover the distortion itself, there's no real 'ducking' reverb effect that I know of. I'm also wondering if this is noticeable due to playing at low volume, whereas a live situation at higher volume you may never hear the difference. Has anyone else noticed this and ended up not using reverb as a standard?

I've got those Alto speakers too, just out of interest when you say the headrush is a lot better, how would you define the difference? I use a lot of high gain tones and if there was a speaker solution that transformed those tones then I would be interested, but it depends obviously what the nature of the improvement is

For anyone interested in using the DT50 in the UK, I have one for sale on ebay. Hardly used, excellent condition.

Yeah I liked this one too. Been wanting to use this and at least have an idea what parameters to use now. Just saves time!

I better update this for the record - both Phil and Vivian use the Fractal to replace the amps as well, so it's just the fractal and powered speakers they're using. This happened because Phil heard John Petrucci playing through it when they were doing the G3 tour with Satriani, so he went over to it himself after that. I think it's fair to say that all the well known modellers are pretty good these days, I'm enjoying my Helix but i recognise the Fractal is probably considered the best of the lot, the Helix is probably best value all things considered, however, seeing as I'm not a top international touring artist, I don't necessarily need the absolute best equipment you can buy, like most here no doubt. What does interest me, particularly with high gain tones, is the side by side comparison. For those lucky enough to have an AxeFX3 and a Helix, is the AxeFX noticeably a lot more impressive on the high gain? I'm not interested in accuracy of modelling, just that wow factor when you hear a high gain tone that sounds very impressive - we all know that when we hear it. I would be interested to hear a verdict on that. I don't see myself buying one any time soon but it is an interesting comparison.

Right okay, I'll try and follow this and see how it works out. I'll change back to 8 preset mode - but how exactly are you configuring this in the command centre for the switches, because when I looked at the options you could assign to each foot switch, it didn't make a lot of sense to me.

Yeah no worries about the email mate. Every time I read one of your set up descriptions, I end up like a rabbit staring into the headlights haha - I understand what you're doing function wise but have no idea how you got there! In fact I think I've probably set up wrongly because I enabled the snap/stomp mode 10 footswitch mode, and arranged the top row as snaps and the bottom row as stomps, but I didn't need to do anything in the command centre, so I think you're doing something different obviously. When you go into your global settings/footswitch mode, what actual mode are you selecting? Then in command centre - what options are you assigning to each switch? When I looked in command centre at the options you can assign to the foot switches, it made no sense to me at all. And lastly.. on your crazy train patch just out of interest, what amp/IR/distortion pedal blocks are you using? I take it you're going for the recorded version rather than a more modern Zakk Wylde version?

Thanks for the tips.. well my snaps are reverting to saved state, it's just that they don't override the individual stomps on or off. Yeah I did think about external pedal but don't need it now as I can assign that gain boost to my last foot switch

Hey metallkid, I've got my patches set up now for this and added the gain block to a foot switch and its definitely the most versatile way to go. I've noticed one thing though. My snapshots along the top work independently of the stomps along the bottom so if I hit a snapshot but decide to also use an additional stomp, when I hit another snapshot, the stomp stays on so you would have to turn off that stomp before using another snap. I suppose the stomps are working completely on their own regardless of the snaps you're using. Is that how yours works?