homegrownbuddy

13 hours ago, zooey said:

Forgot to mention, use the volume control on your guitar!

With the recent amps especially, there's a whole range of great tones to be had just by going from nearly off to full tilt, amps react beautifully. Wonderful stuff, props all around.

This^ It can really make a difference and open up all kinds of different tones ESPECIALLY if you have hot af pickups like the texas specials or hotter. I use pickups I wound myself and they are extremely hot like not even funny kind of hot and I get more variations out of my volume knob than ever before. I'm not 100% sure if it's something that changed or just my ears getting more accustomed to the helix but it certainly does SEEM like there is more subtlety in the tones these days. 

5 hours ago, DunedinDragon said:

First things first...TURN OFF YOUR GLOBAL EQ.  Let's get that out of the way right now so it's not confusing the issue.  If you don't know how to do it simply hold down the BYPASS button for a couple of seconds until the little rectangle graph next to the Snapshots icons disappears.  This way you won't be worrying about global eq affecting your sound.

Thanks man, I tried this today and it really added more punch to the sound. I still don't fully understand exactly how I managed to get it so far out of whack and to make matters more interesting, the moment I disabled the global eq I suddenly remembered how it used to sound. So it's probably been set that way for some time without me even really thinking about it too much. So I think I will have to go back and adjust all of my patches to accommodate and in the future just stick an eq block for tweaking instead of mucking around in the global. 

Thanks for the reply, I have actually tried a few things. Going helix-return. going helix- straight to input- and even bypassing the blackstar head altogether thinking that may have been the culprit. I honestly think I just mooked with the global EQ  at some point and got it on the thin side. I could probably start from scratch but just seeing some of your global eq screens would help me spot the issue.  I'm honestly not as concerned with fattening up the sound as I am with just understanding how I thinned it. I'm trying to learn the subtle nuances of the device and understanding just what went wrong will help me more than a quick fix. 

The way I did this was just setup a parameter to push the drive or channel volume and set it to a footswitch so that I didn't have to change snaps just simply activate the pedal and it goes from clean to fuzz with zero gap. None of the other amp settings change and you get a seamless switch.  Unless I am misunderstanding you. 

I was under the impression the HX was just an effects unit and not capable of cab sims and IR's...Strange times to be alive man...strange times indeed. 

I have watched many a youtube video of guys using the helix for this and that, and they always seem to get a much fuller richer sound than I do. I have come a long way in understanding some of the caveats of the helix. However I still don't understand what is getting in my way here, I half suspect it is down to global EQ settings. I am curious, would any of you fine gentlemen be willing to post a screenshot of your global EQ settings to give me an idea of where I might be going wrong.  For what it's worth I am pushing a Strat through the helix lt into a blackstar 50w. In theory it should sound pretty beasty. But it just sounds buzzy and thin compared to what I hear elsewhere.  YouTube compression aside, could I just have the wrong global EQ settings? I wish I could figure out how to post my settings here but the last time I posted a pic in a forum...photobucket was the hot sh*t . Yeah..I'm  computer "old" ...any help would be much appreciated.  FWIW I am set at 1m impedance and don't seem to be clipping at all.  Even when I match the settings step for step with the guys it always just sounds thin.  I'm not sure what else to look at beyond global EQ at this point. 

I noticed a similar thing when I was scrolling through some of the factory presets. A few of them don't work for me at all, they play like the cable is bad constantly cutting in and out with the signal. But it only happens on those few. I can't recall which ones they were now. The djenitrified one I think was one of them. I don't really go for that sort of sound I just thought it was interesting and a strange issue to have. I played around and replaced all of the cables I had going just to be sure it wasn't me but I kind of knew better before hand when all of the other patches seem to be just fine. 

SNAPSHOTS

To be clear, the Snapshots for your Preset are still there in Preset/Stomp. They are just hidden. As long as you don't mess with them, they won't get in your way now. Every time you change Presets, it will load the Snapshot you were in during your last save.

 

If you accidentally switched Snapshots, simply switch back to the intended one and hit save to revert to that Snapshot as default when you load that Preset.

 

UPDATE

Like DD has said, if you want to update, follow the instructions word for word and don't deviate, then there should be no problem. Whether it's worth it or not is up to you.

 

Key features:

- 2 new amps (the Lonestar is one of my new fav)

- New HX reverbs

- Added Legacy fx from older Line6 products

- New category of FX for all the Legacy stuff. E.g. Mono, Stereo, Legacy. Old reverbs are legacy, so moved to Legacy folder

- Read full changelog for more details

Yeah I am not sure it is worth it when I read into what everyone is facing. The lone star amp sounds appealing though, I have been waiting forever for a steel string singer, I have been using the litigator since it seemed the closest but maybe this one sounds good? 

​As for the above response regarding IR's I have not upgraded or changed anything simply because of this. Those IR's are so important to my sound I am 100% scared of losing anything. I need to understand how this works before I do anything.  I really want to understand it, and I am trying to read up on it everyday but it just seems so damned difficult. 

You're still confusing snapshots with presets.

Before, there were NO SNAPSHOTS. Only presets. If you change a block in preset slot A1, it will not affect slot A2.

 

Snapshot is a "layer" within a preset. You don't have use it at all. Just stick with presets if you don't mind the switching gap.

 

Set footswitch mode to preset mode. Keep us updated on it. Good luck!

Yeah I realized late yesterday I was way over complicating things. I figured out how to clear the useless snapshots off of my footswitches by changing to preset mode stomp only. Then organized the presets how I would like them so I could just hit the up and down toggles to get what I want. Helix is hard but it has like a Tony Hawk learning curve. It's like rocket science at first but then it all melts way and becomes clear. In the last 48 hours I have gone from feeling lost in the sauce to mediocre af. I really appreciate all of the help on this. I really have a new respect for the guys that have mastered this machine. 

​I'll leave one last off topic question here because why not...After being gone for a year I am still on software version 2.20?(I think?) Should I update or no? I see some issues in the forums about the new thing being buggy and freezing and stuff. Is it worth it? Or should I just stick with what works? 

​edit: Ok I lied, another question lol, is it possible to upload my user preset that I created from scratch to the custom tone thing? It would be really great to somehow have a backup of that patch because I spent so much time tweaking it, I could never do it again if I had to. I don't know how to go about it but would love to backup that specific patch. It has the downloaded Ir's in it so I don't know what to do.

 

 

One way to think of snapshots is as if you had eight identical pedalboards, all with exactly the same pedals on them. Each pedalboard though can have a different combination of pedals activated/bypassed as well as having their controls set to different settings. Each of these "pedalboards", all with exactly the same pedals but different bypass states and settings, is a snapshot.

 

OOOHHHHH. That makes so much more sense. So basically then...I'm just an idiot trying to do something not even possible, and even going about that the hard way. Shux lol. When I think about it like that as 8 pedal boards all clones of each other it puts the whole snapshot thing into light. 

​What I should have done a year ago when I first learned it was build my tones as patches not snapshots. Hey one last thing, do you know if it's possible to swap the up and down buttons? I can't remember if it's hold them both down or tap them both. Or can those two even be swapped? Maybe it will just take me in and out of preset mode over and over lol. 

​Thanks everyone on this thread for all of your patience and help. I fully understand the differences now, I'm so happy about that  :D I've got some work ahead of me to get things set up properly.  ^_^ 

Yea that why I corrected myself below that. Sorry if I confused you.  :)

I think I'm just confusing myself at this point  :D 

​This would all be so much easier if I could just pull a single snapshot out of a user preset and move it to another preset. Or delete snapshots within user presets.  I guess the ol' drop back and punt method would be to just take pics of every setting in every block and rebuild the thing in another preset. But when I think of the hours it took dialing that snapshot in I shutter to think of doing it all over again.  Is it normal for all the snapshots to be sync'd like that? I mean if that is true then what is the point of snapshots if every change you make affects all of them. I don't get that part of it at all either. I also don't recall it being that way when I left, I remember being able to treat each snapshot like it's own entity adding blocks to snapshot 3 that weren't in snapshot 1 and so on but now literally anything I change in snapshot 3 like say dialing down a fuzz setting, applies to all of the snapshots at once. It's weird. I don't understand the point of snapshots if they are all tied together in that way. Like if I wanted to go into snapshot 3 and remove a block and replace it with another block, this should work right? without changing that block in every snapshot simultaneously...In my mind it should anyway. 

If I am understanding you correctly, If you have your LT connected to a computer and have the editor, you can rename the Snapshot back as "SNAPSHOT", and then just remove all the blocks in that snapshot, and then save. The same thing go's with a preset> goto a "new preset" and export it out to your saved preset folder. Then whenever you wish to remove the patch from your user setlist, just import the "new preset" patch into that slot. Hope this helps!

I tried to do this today but for some reason when I start removing the blocks in the useless snapshots it just removes the blocks from ALL of the snapshots. Even the one I want to keep. Not sure what I am doing wrong. Any changes I make in any snapshot seem to be applied to all of the snapshots. Helix is hard :( If I could just delete those blocks without affecting the good snapshot I would be home free. 

 

 

The bottom line in your situation is this, if you had a snapshot on a button and then changed to a different patch with another button, your original snapshot would be gone because you now selected a different patch.  You would have to switch back to the original patch in order to have that snapshot available.  Your best bet would be to have the preset containing your IRs that you use 80% of the time and the rockabilly preset as sequential presets in your setlist.  Then to go to the rockabilly preset using the normal preset up button, and use the preset down button to return to the original preset containing your snapshots.

 

 

That sounds like a way to accomplish my goal, how would I go about setting up these two tones as sequential?  It doesn't seem like I can move either of them from the software screen. 

Hmm, I'm  more confused than ever lol. 
​Ok let's ask it this way, can I have footswitch 1 set to a snapshot, and set footswitch two to a factory preset? 
​Like what I can't understand is if my snapshot is set to a footswitch, why can't I set a different footswitch to like anything I want. Like a factory preset. 
​I literally just want to keep my snapshot I built with my IR samples I paid for set to fs1 and then add the rockabilly preset to footswitch 2 so that I can switch between the two (gap or no gap) by stepping on the switch.  I really like both of them. I use the one I made for like 80% of my stuff and then I like to load up that rockabilly one just for fun. 
​I realize it's more difficult than just going through and assigning footswitches to things but I really feel like this should be possible with this machine. 

​EDIT: also as if I haven't asked enough could someone thoroughly explain the point of snapshots vs patches because I don't think I get it.  I want to guys, I'm trying. 

​EDIT TWO: Maybe I am over complicating this, would it  be possible to just delete each block out of the snapshot I don't need and then rebuilt it with whatever the rockabilly preset uses? 
​Also I have a question about bandwidth, may also be called DSP? anyway I was told the helix LT has two of these chips,  so I wonder, is this dsp(?) shared between snapshots? like if I have a snapshot using custom IR's and the whole bit, using massive dsp or whatever.... and I change snapshots, does this dsp get reset? or do I only have so much dsp to use between all 8 available snapshots?  And AND! What is helix native and helix hx? I was in Kabul when this all happened but it all seems very cool. 

If I am understanding you correctly, If you have your LT connected to a computer and have the editor, you can rename the Snapshot back as "SNAPSHOT", and then just remove all the blocks in that snapshot, and then save. The same thing go's with a preset> goto a "new preset" and export it out to your saved preset folder. Then whenever you wish to remove the patch from your user setlist, just import the "new preset" patch into that slot. Hope this helps!

Thank you everyone for your replies. This is all helpful stuff. Going off of the above, could I assume then it's possible to have a snapshot made from scratch AND and factory preset tone assigned to footswitches? What I'm really trying to do is hit footswitch 1 to have it load my made from scratch snapshot, then hit footswitch two to have it load something from the factory list. If I do what you said above this is kind of the same thing right? 

​Honestly guys I feel kind of silly even asking these things. I bought my helix over a year ago and got pretty familiar with it, enough anyway to build snapshots from scratch, assign them to footswitches, and so forth but then I got deployed for 11 months and when I got back home it felt like I hadnever even seen the thng before. It all feels so complex now. It did then too but I feel totally lost with it after so long. Thank you guys for having my six on this one. 

I'm have a hard time figuring out how to accomplish what I need to do with my helix LT. 
​I have a user preset with 3 snapshots made from scratch, the issue is that I only need one of them, The others are uselessly taking up footswitches for no reason and I can't figure out how to change it. I was told already that I can't delete snapshots so I was hoping to just copy over them with idk say some random factory preset or something. Hmm this is hard to even ask clearly. Bare with me. Picture this: the front of my helix shows the user preset my snapshot is in and then all three snapshots are footswitches 1,2,3. I only need to have fs1 stay as it is. Then I would like to make FS2 anything else like a factory preset. So that I can switch between the snapshot I rely on and then say some Hendrix preset from the factory preset section. I know that's probably confusing, I hope it makes sense to someone. 

​EDIT: I  guess what I am trying to do is have my from-scratch snapshot be fs1, while having fs2 be a factory preset. How do I do this. and more importantly how do I do this with fs2 already having a snapshot assigned to it. 

Three things come to mind off hand. 
One- the update process with the backing up and taking photos of my ir list and bundles and yeah...
Two- No official Dumble modeling, I know they tried to throw some stuff at the wall with the litigator deal but still nothing official. The steel string singer is a MUST have for me.  
Three- The tuner. It shouldn't even be called a tuner. It's not even close to being accurate. 

When I tried to create a snapshot for high gain I used my snapshot one settings and just dialed up the Minotaur to my liking. Saved the snapshot. Now when I switch between one and two they are both set to 10 on the gain lol. Am I a goof? What am I doing wrong.  My brain says this should work. Snapshot 1 minotaur gain at 1. Snapshot two minotaur gain at 10. But it's like whatever changes I make to the pedal saves to both snapshots everytime? help lol

Alright I pulled the trigger and got the LT version. and man this thing is sweet. Can't believe I was skeptical. I have dialed in MOST things to my liking but does anyone know how to change the colors on the actual lcd screen for snapshots? I know how to change the footswitch led colors but on the actual LCD screen where it says the names of my snapshots it just has 4 white boxes with the names. Is there a way to change the colors of those 4 white boxes?

The Helix is really designed for live use, whereas PodFarm is for studio/home use.

Yeah I've been on the fence partly for this reason. I'm just desperate to get away from needing a laptop to jam with my buddies. What would be really perfect lol is finding a floor unit that can do everything podfarm can do. So far helix is the closest thing I can find but even still I am not sure if it can do all the same things the farm can do.  But in a perfect world...load podfarm 2.5 into a floor unit and I will pay offensive amounts of money for the thing. Maybe buy two just for security. I've really fallen in love with what pf2.5 can do and does. But having all of that without a pc would be just top drawer.  After about a year it was cumbersome. two years and it was frustrating, now this far in I am pretty much willing to throw money at the first thing that promises to do all of the same stuff without a pc

EDIT: Am I really the only one that loaths having to "play pc bootup" every time someone comes over to jam? I mean I know 35 is old but is it really THAT old?!? 

I guess the only reason I want to upgrade is simply the joy of picking up my guitar, hitting a pedal switch and getting the tone that I now have to jump through hoops for. Dragging around a laptop, plugging in and booting up windows and launching software before I can pluck a single note. It's just way to many steps in the process. I guess my big hang up with the helix is not knowing if it can actually replicate what PF2.5 does. Like take Dumble amps for example, I don't think they have been modeled for helix unless I am wrong. I am not sure how to reproduce that if I went out and bought one.  Another thing would be A/B/Y/ chains, In pf2.5 I have two heads and two cabs plus effects in each chain running all at once. Can helix do this? There are just a lot of unknowns for me right now with the helix and the price. I want to but I need to know if it can actually do what I need it to do.  What would be really helpful is if someone who owned both could have a go at reproducing what I have below and tell me if it can in fact be reproduced identically. 
If I could get un-shackled from the laptop it would really be a blessing. 

My official tone evolving.l6t

I have owned podfarm 2.5 for a good long while now and have my "sound" dialed in pretty well. However it is becoming a hassle to fire up a laptop every single time I want to touch my guitar. I would like to upgrade to some sort of floor unit like the helix however the hesitation I have is that the amp models used to achieve my "sound" (fender double verb/ dumble special overdrive) in podfarm don't appear to be available in any of the floor units.  Am I stuck booting a laptop for every 5 minute jam session? Before I can drop $1500 on the full helix unit I need to be sure I can get my tone.  Is there some way to navigate away from podfarm 2.5 and still retain everything it does in another type of unit?  And what is the deal with helix native? is that supposed to be a new version of podfarm? or at least function the same way?