xpios

I agree the Helix is very usable and convenient on a gig. Theyve also done a great job on the models and interfaces. Its just not as enjoyable for me in terms of final tone, feel, and immediate gratification/ease of operation.

These comparisons are valid ONLY with regard to recorded tone. Helix, especially Native are super tools for quickly recording music without needing to mic. Unfortunately, these videos dont do a good job of comparing amp in the room tone and harmonics through a real amp and cab as well as the response of different volume pot and dynamic response, and drive stacking response.

I've had my Helix Floor for about two years now. I've recently started building out my analog pedalboard again and have been doing a lot of A/B. If you are a tone snob like me you will come to the conclusion that Helix is super convenient in terms of single package, and if you spend a lot of time fiddling, you can get the tones to sound really good... Maybe 85-90% of the way to the analog counterparts. However, it takes a lot of tedious tweaking and in the end it doesn't sound or feel the same. Not as enjoyable to play and not as easy to just bend down and dial in quickly as analog. With analog just a couple turns off a knob here or there and wallah you have a stellar tone. With Helix you have to tweak and tweak and tweak often spending more time tweaking than playing. Things don't always respond the same when drive stacking and such as well. The tones are missing some key upper and lowrr end harmonics and always have some irritating freqs in the upper end that always have to be tamed with tons of parametric eq. Im really enjoying being back to a simple analog pedal board that just rocks and feels good out of the gate.

Having a slightly different issue with the tuner. Im on 2.92 and noticing the sound changes after going in and out of the tuner. It may be easier to hear this through a real amp/cabinet, than using monitors because the real amp/cab is much more present and full sounding, but I will try it on my monitors in a bit. Here's the issue. When I first turn on the unit and play on that preset, I hear the expected sound of my guitar and the preset. Then I press and hold to bring up the tuner. Whether I use the tuner or not, when I press the tuner stomp switch again to return to normal play mode, the tone of the preset/guitar is noticeably attenuated in upper and lower frequencies. The odd thing is, if I then immediately press and hold to go back into tuner mode then press the switch to return back to normal playing mode, the sound is back to normal. If I do it again, the sound is attenuated again. I'm not sure if it's attenuated or if the volume is dropping ever so slightly which causes the change in acoustics and then returning back to normal when I go into tuner and back out again. It doesn't work the same way on each preset either. On some presets it immediately attenuates when I go into tuner and back, and on others it does not immediately do it, but does it the second time I go into the tuner and back and so forth. It's really odd.

Helix 2.92 Bugs!!!! AHHHHH! So, after talking with customer support regarding the issue with my presets going completely blank and overwriting/losing all my settings, per their instructions I did a backup. Did the button 9&10 reset. Then restored from backup. Then restarted and let it rebuild presets. Ok So then I started crafting the tone on a preset with three snapshots. A clean tone, a dirty tone, and a lead tone. This is a blues tone. I used the looper at the end of the chain and all seemed well. I spent over 5 hours over the last couple days crafting tone and using the looper and all seemed good. GREAT! I thought it's all better and fixed. However, today after putting the final tweaks on the preset I had built that I was extremely happy with, I saved the preset. Great. Now I also save a preset I'm building to another different slot in regular intervals just in case the current preset blanks out before I have a chance to backup my Helix Floor. So, I saved a version of the preset to another slot. DISASTER! AHHHHH! This last time I saved the preset to a different preset slot, for some reason the saved slot went completely blank. No worries I thought. I'll just go back to my original preset and try again. Not so fast! Now the original preset slot was also completely blank! OMG! I just wasted 5 hours of my life crafting a killer tone and now it's all gone. Jesus F'ing Christ! THIS IS NOT what I call a reliable gig worthy piece of equipment, no matter how good it sounds or how convenient it's supposed to be. I can't even send the preset to customer support because it's GONE! The only thing to note of difference on this preset that might help debug is that the preset has NO PREAMP, AMP, or Cab. This is because I'm using the preamp and power amp of a real amp in four cable method out to a real cabinet and just running overdrive pedal blocks and EQ into the front of it and after an FX loop block some delay and reverb and finally the looper. Is anyone else running into presets just randomly blanking out? I don't think this is caused by the looper now. I think its just some random bad behavior/bug that can occur at any time. Wondering if this is in some way related as in this person's post to the Fx loop send/return I have in my presets. https://line6.com/support/topic/56190-sendreturn-corruption-bug-under-blank-preset/?tab=comments#comment-335978