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marmatkat

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Everything posted by marmatkat

  1. On a related note: What length and brand patch cable would you recommend to go to the Helix (either Guitar -> tuner -> Helix, or Guitar -> Helix -> tuner)? Sweetwater sold me a Mogami 18' TS-TS Ang/Str instrument cable, which was pricey. I saw this mentioned elsewhere: https://lavacable.com/ . Thanks!
  2. Interesting re: HX Effects - I wonder if they tweaked the tuner program. I'd be curious to see its operation side-by-side with Helix... Thanks for the tip re: the Korg tuner. It's ~$60 less than the Turbo Tuner, but it's not a strobe, which I might be attached to now :-)
  3. (@fredsiegle - thanks for the comments.) The latter. I worry about battery life, and having a wall wart on the floor worries me. Good idea. I explored that and bought one a month or two ago, excited to try it, but I didn't like it and sent it back. The poly and single note modes didn't agree, plus some other issues I can't recall now. Same here, though I've read that common 'strobe' modes in most tuners are actually just a different display of the same underlying 'needle' function, i.e., are not truly stroboscopic.
  4. Thanks! I'll try #1 - the Turbo Tuner claims a true bypass. My reasoning is that I don't have to have the tuner on all the time (like #2 would require). Or, I would have to hold the helix tuner button and then step on the Turbo Tuner button.
  5. If you said the same about any amp in the helix, people would (rightly) sh$t a brick!
  6. Hey Peter, thanks a ton for all your posts. I always read yours. In this case you seem to be making an excuse for Helix, but couldn’t you do the same for any aspect of it, say the amps? “They’ll never be as good as a real amp†would probably not go down well in the Line6 offices. So, I don’t buy lowering the bar for the tuner. Again, thanks for being here.
  7. I bought the Turbo Tuner - it works great! I don't have an AC adapter, so I think I'll just run Guitar -> TT -> Helix, punching the TT button when I need to tune.
  8. I did this a while back, and then submitted a customer service request, which I was told gets attention. I suggest folks do that too, I guess. I just did a very quick ideascale search and found multiple tuner-improvement requests, with a total # votes > 1000, which, if correct, would make it #3. Make what you will of that. Going back to the "you're not using it correctly" comment, I just received a Turbo Tuner ( https://www.turbo-tuner.com/ ) that I ordered per a recommendation here. Now that is a tuner. When they say to turn the peg until the display stops rotating (or simply slows way down) and then you're perfectly in tune, they are correct. Compare that to what happens when you do the same with the Helix (they say you're in perfect tune when the two white <> are on). Try this (I posted above): Detune your strings alternating sharp and flat, and then tune down/up until the second white <> just barely comes on. Just try it for ha-has. Do that at a gig, and you and your out-of-tune guitar will not be invited back. Here's an ideascale idea: Line6: Contract your tuner out to the Turbo Tuner folks! :) Again: Helix is a great product, and for most stuff the Line6 folks are super-responsive to customers. It's just that they haven't got the tuner good enough for a lot of us yet.
  9. I think there's some kind of product design rule floating around here. Something like (help me out here): If you go to corresponding forums for high-performance tuners like the Korg in the video, would you see so many unhappy users getting "the tuner's fine", "you don't know how to use it", "you have a bad ear", and "if you don't like it, buy a different one" replies? It'd be different for a cutting-edge and complex tool, but not a bloody tuner. Here's the user manual: "Play a note, turn the key until green, and repeat." This tuner fails for many of us. Sorry Line6, but your tuner is still kind of a stinker. The rest of the product rocks.
  10. I'm happy someone got the gag :-) Thank you.
  11. Poor analogy. You can't play good music out of tune, and a reliable tuner is essential to that. Line6 included a tuner for that reason. How about this: Assume your BMW has steering that frequently goes out of alignment has to be calibrated regularly before and during every trip. BMW included a steering tuner tool on its dashboard, but lots of users end up with bad steering after using the tool, even with the AC on (a tip that helps some). So often they have to spend time fixing the recommendation of the tool. This when they're in the middle of a race.
  12. FYI Regarding videos showing Helix tuner performance, this one shows basically what I go through every time - jittery and inaccurate:
  13. A question for people in the industry: Is there something exceptionally difficult about programming a tuner function? Line6 clearly has a stellar team around other features, so maybe it's really hard to find a tuner guru to hire. It just seems there are much better digital tuners on the market, and they've all solved (to a better degree) the problem using the same kind of input and DSP features as on the Helix. Maybe they could contract out to Peterson? I'll chip in! (Wait, i already have :-)
  14. With honest respect, I disagree: > Tuner works fine. No it doesn't. Checkmate! > I suspect that this tuner debate would have never existed had l6 never put the upper (higher resolution) meter in there Sorry, but that's ridiculous. We use our ears to decide if it's in tune, not (just) the display. It could have a dancing bear when the guitar is in tune (sad bear if it's not), and it would still be a poor tuner. > Like several have said, ignore the top line. The bottom one is lower resolution and doesn't jump as much. True, it doesn't jump, but it doesn't tune your guitar well. Try this experiment: Detune your guitar, alternating strings very flat (EDB) and very sharp: (AGE). Now tune the flat ones up until the upper white >< just barely comes on. Now do the same tuning down the sharp ones. The manual says "When both arrows are illuminated, your string is perfectly in tune." Now go out and play a gig with that guitar, using this perfect tuning approach. > ... just use an external tuner ... just accept the poor tuner As other have said, I didn't buy the Helix for the tuner, but the tuner is really important. It's a feature, like an effect, routing, etc. It needs to be in the same class as the Helix's other features, and it's not. If it was, there would not be so many unhappy with it. I'm another who has to use an external tuner, which sucks. It adds another 10% of my Helix cost. It's like buying an external reverb because they're all unusable. Not cool. Line6: Please improve the tuner to be on par with others!
  15. Oh I see - your tuner blanks the display if there's no input, but it's still powered on, so it's drawing from the battery all the time (how much depends on its design). Unless you have an AC adapter. bmk5140: Do you leave the tuner on all the time? Do you use a battery? Does the ST-300 blank the display when there's no input? Am I asking too many questions? :-)
  16. Thanks for the comments! The Turbo Tuner looks awesome. So when using the tuner send feature, it means the external tuner has to be on all the time, right? Unless I want to tap dance: 1) Hold the helix tuner button to activate the inbuilt tuner, and then 2) step on the external tuner switch to turn it on. ?
  17. Hi Folks, I'm an LT owner for a number of months, and I really like my Helix, but at a gig last night I finally reached the breaking point where I plan to stop using the tuner completely - I find it too poorly coded to be usable in performance. I would appreciate your advice before buying: Is there a particular tuner you like that has rock solid performance (stability, speed, and accuracy), is durable, and works well with the Helix (i.e., doesn't degrade the guitar signal)? How do you wire in the tuner? I imagine either in-line ( Guitar -> tuner -> Helix LT ) or running to the tuner from the Send (if that's possible). Anything else I should consider? Thanks in advance!
  18. No change that I could tell. Still a weak point in an otherwise excellent product, imho.
  19. Yep, many users find the tuner to be frustrating, and a quality outlier in the Helix's otherwise superb features and tones. Then again, a lot of other people find it fine. I've never had any luck with any of the recommendations like turning the tone control, neck pick up etc - still jumps all over the place. Too bad.
  20. Thanks for all your great comments about everyone. Your points make sense. My gigs with my current band have been outside, but the rest will probably be indoors.
  21. Hi All. Getting into my Helix LT - have played live a handful of times with it. I've never used reverb (I've always played live in my career), but I see that it seems like many folks use it regularly (there's a big discussion of it at When will we see new models and firmware for helix??). I've always been a little surprised that it's the one major effect that amps have had for decades (maybe tremelo is #2), though I've never really used pedals that much. My question is how much would an audience notice reverb in a live scenario? Thanks!
  22. Thanks for the helpful summary. I'd love to know the kinds of tweaks you typically do. Also, details about the patches would be useful - I'm a newbie who hasn't done any sophisticated routing - just a single path through default Amp-Cab blocks.
  23. marmatkat

    harmoniser

    I've never used a harmonizer before, but it would be cool to do something like the Sweet song Fox on the run (2:27 @ ). Do you have to have different presets for each chord, and stomp through the song? Sorry - haven't had a chance to dig into it yet..
  24. I feel the same way. I've tried to get a good tone, but every time it comes out ... meh. Again, I'm sure it's me, but other amps have "popped" right from the start - US Double, US Deluxe, WhoWatt, JazzRivet, and Matchstick to name a few.
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