Kilrahi

Yes, that works perfectly.

Unfortunately, no. The Spider doesn't have any sort of workable interface between it and the Pod. Now, you CAN do stuff like that . . . kind of . . . but it would require more careful planning and control. You would have to create the signal chains you want between the two of them, and save a preset for your Pod, AND a preset for the Spider, and then essentially select two presets instead of one in order to have them work together. So it's not as simple as a one button push, but it is doable. As someone who shares the DSP between his Firehawk 1500 and HX Stomp, it can be worth it. However, I do have the FBV controller for the Firehawk 1500 (that also works for some of the Spiders) that makes it easier to switch presets. Having an open app all the time isn't nearly as smooth.

Yeah, the Spider V has the same type of setup so I think you figured it out. That's a good point about the volume output potentially blowing your ears away.

Are you saying it's dangerously loud for a second but if you tap the volume nob it resets to a different loudness? I want to make sure I understand the problem, because it's probably true that each preset channel has its own volume standard volume. So if the volume knob was at 9 o'clock on clean and you switched to insane at 9 o'clock it would likely sound louder on insane than clean. If you're saying it's only TEMPORARILY louder and a slight jiggle of the volume knob resets it . . . well that's a bit weirder.

The Helix gives you the power to recreate a studio scenario, but it still can take a long time to dial the whole mess in. Studio recordings in particular often have massive amount of production involved for the lead, the rhythm, the second rhythm, the second lead . . . and on and on. Everyone above is correct that your answer is snapshots. Hell, with the Helix I think you get 8 snapshots vs. the Stomp's 3 so you have plenty of room to dial in every single nuance your looking for. The work to get there will take a while, but once it's finished you'll be able to instantly move from part to part.

To me what you're describing sounds normal. It's hard to know what exactly you're hearing "buzz" wise, but if the original amp has it, the model does too. One thing I like to make sure people know about, most of the amp models have some interesting parameters meant to simulate these sounds. For example, the "hum" parameter recreates the actual hum of an amp. I'd make sure you've toyed around with the hum, bias, bias x, sag, drive, and other settings on each amp to see how they react to see if it's related to the buzz you're hearing. Also, keep in mind that the Helix has a built in noise gate which you can activate to reduce a bunch of additional fuzziness - useful in the same way a traditional noise gate is useful.

I definitely agree with you that the HX Stomp advertises like it should work with pretty much any expression pedal, so you'd hope there's a setting that makes it work here. The main thing I've found as I've experimented between my official Helix Mission pedal and a combination of dual foot switches is that the settings have to be EXACTLY right for it to work. Have you made sure you did all of the following? 1. From global settings under "Controller Assign" assign the position parameter of volume pedal and pan blocks to "Exp. 1." 2. From the global settings "Bypass Assign" menu assign the switch parameter of volume pedal and pan blocks to "None." 3. From the global settings "Bypass Assign" menu, assign the switch parameter of wah and pitch wham blocks to "Exp. 1." I would make sure you've done all of those, and if that still doesn't work I'd reach out to Line 6 support to see if they're aware of any tricks with that pedal. I know I couldn't get the official pedal to work FOREVER after I'd attached a dual footswitch earlier (and it was doing very similar parameter mess-ups like you describe), and I was pulling my hair out because surely the official pedal was fine, but it turns out I had just one step off and so the whole thing was borked. Make sure you've done all three steps above before you give up.

First thing I could recommend is to try and recreate what is familiar. When I got the Stomp I initially tried to recreate setups I liked from the Pod 500x. That helped me both enjoy what I was doing and learn about the strengths the HX platform brought to my old methods. I also printed off a list of the HX amps, cabs, and effects so it would be easier for me to both learn the new names and not have to keep hunting through web pages. Finally, recently I've this site directed me to Jason Sadites channel on YouTube. He has a lengthy series of videos on the subject of "How to Create a Perfect Tone." I hoped they would be worth watching, but they were even better than I thought. For me the biggest strength was learning what a lot of the Helix parameters actually did.

Arguing, "Yes, Line 6 could easily make it better for no extra cost, but then they wouldn't make as much money off of full Helix sales" really isn't persuasive from a consumer perspective.

I don't believe that that amp has a specific forum, but you can ask here and see if any of us know the answer.

Do you mean as one of the presets? None of us here would know since we're just users of the device, but why not just create your own or download one from the cloud?

Thank you for the link. The more and more I use the Stomp the more I just think this makes sense. If something about Helix 3.0 blows the barn door of my brains wide open and I'm like, "Oh, that's why it has to be six" then cool, but until that day it just seems like Line 6 is forcing its toddler to stay in size 6 diapers even though it is ready to #?#@ or get off the pot like its older brothers.

My Boss footswitch has the ability to switch back and forth, but it's default was "normally open" and it worked just fine if that helps. Honestly, with the Stomp I don't think it will matter because it's a pretty complex device with tons of global settings - and one of the global settings is the ability to reverse the polarity on the footswitch and I believe it's the exact same control on the Boss footswitch. I haven't tested it though, but I'm pretty sure it can do the exact same thing. You just have to remember to go into the global guts and change them.

I don't have the full Helix/LT, but I have the Stomp and I think it works great. Your spine will love it. The only potential downside - does the full Helix tell you when you're tapping into the DSP power of the second processor? There are times the Stomp can't hit the full 6 blocks because the DSP taps out. It's not frequent, but it does happen sometimes. Something to think about.

As mentioned above, it's based on the body of a Yamaha Pacifica, which generally gets pretty positive reviews. You should think of the JTV line as the more premium version - there's more frills and you pay for it. So how would they compare? I'd expect the JTV-89 to look nicer and feel more premium - but the guitar's modeling will be identical. Personally, I bought a Korean JTV-59 and it's my favorite guitar. I almost went for the standard to save money, but I'm a sucker for the Les Paul design, and I wanted that little jump in visual panache. Guitar players are a pretty finicky bunch. One will adore a build for a guitar - another will hate it. You should basically imagine you're buying a $450 guitar with $400 modeling guts. Some people can never see themselves loving a $450 guitar. One of my fave guitars of all time is a $450 Epi Les Paul, and I'd have no problem buying a Yamaha Pacifica. Most of the time if I talk to someone on a budget that is borderline for the Variax I suggest the standard, and so far everyone who has taken me up on it has been very happy. In fact, even I've been tempted from time to time to buy the Standard for the smaller/lighter profile and the whammy bar as an option since I don't have any guitars with a whammy. However, I keep stopping myself because: 1. I need to stop throwing money after my hobby - at least for a while. 2. It will largely sound identical to my existing JTV. 3. I keep hoping Line 6 will release an updated Variax soon. I don't know that they can improve the modeling all that much, BUT they could make some great feature tweaks to the line. I just know the day I buy a Standard is the day the Gods above will decide it's time to release the next Variax line.

Yeah, I hear you. Obviously money is a very personal thing and everyone has to do what feels right to them. In my case though, I knew I was jumping on the bandwagon of a brand new and complicated piece of tech. It's a scary thought, but the 2 year warranty put me at ease. Don't get me wrong, device failures will make me pissy for a while, but I'm in it for the long haul. I assume if they send it back to me five times each time they'll be bulking it up with the new and improved version, and I'll have my beloved little Stomp back better than ever.

I really didn't expect to add another reply here. It's too bad I wasn't around when the long time debate on connecting the Helix to the Firehawk 1500 was raging because as said above, there seemed to be such concern about it and I've found it to just be a big freaking nothing burger. Nevertheless, people were perplexed and maybe this stuff would have helped. However, I assume there must be SOME additional Firehawk 1500 owners attempting to attach a Stomp or Helix to it and if any of my experiences helps, saves time, or sparks ideas, that's awesome. My youngest brother came to visit over the weekend and we tried a bunch of different stuff doing dual instruments through the HX Stomp and the Firehawk and we really had some wonderful sounds going. For the first time, I experimented with the monitor ins as well so I can comment on them making this update relevant. So here's some interesting takeaways: * The Firehawk itself seems to support dual guitars IF one of them is a Variax. I tried to search if there were any complaints or problems with this - but I mean, I couldn't find any. Something to think about. I own a Variax and my brother does not so if we wanted exactly (or nearly, depending on the Stomp/Helix settings) identical signal processing we could go this route. Something to think about. Most of the time we didn't go this route, but it was kind of cool to think about it. 1. My Variax went into the VDI setup on the Firehawk. 2. Firehawk's distortion, amp, and cab models were set for my Varaix. I also had modulation and delay ready to go for the Variax if desired. 3. Firehawk FX loop was the final block JUST before the reverb block, and set to active. 4. Signal from my Variax came out of Firehawk FX send into HX Stomp left mono input. 5. Bro's guitar went into HX stomp right input. 6. Y branch was panned far left with right signal panned 100% right and left signal panned 100 left. 7. Path A went out the left/right HX Stomp standard output. 8. Path B was my bro's guitar, set with his amp of choice. He had access to a dual footswitch connected to the HX Stomp. Path B had a TRS Y cable going from HX Stomp send to Firehawk's left and right monitor ins. 9. Dual footswitch connected to HX Stomp. 10. Path A had two blocks reserved for me. Because I had access to the Firehawk's DSP, we left most of the HX Stomp firepower for him. I could only use blocks if they didn't destroy what he was trying to do (but I still had a lot of choices most of the time). My usual go to was a phaser, flanger, distortion, or compressor. 11. Bro had four blocks on path B. His go to was a single amp/cab block, delay, chorus, and reverb. 12. Most of the time we were using simple reverbs, and we were fine using the same ones, so usually him and I just shared the reverb block on the Firehawk. This left him with more choices on his B path for the Stomp. 13. I controlled my two blocks via FS1 and FS2 on the HX Stomp. 14. He set up complex snapshot parameters with his four blocks (volume, drive, blocks on and off, etc.) and controlled them by cycling up and down via the dual footswitch. Honestly, this setup was nothing short of nuckin' futs, but it was also a freaking blast and we played a ton of cool songs together. The Firehawk sounded great at all times. We had to keep it from getting too loud honestly because the thing can bring the house down, so volume was never a problem. It brought lots of hours of great play time and good fun. My biggest take aways, similar to the thoughts from before, were: 1. Firehawk is a very versatile flat response system, and the added DSP for Stomp users is nothing short of helpful. YES, HX effects are probably superior to Firehawk's, but especially with the tuning integration between its inbuilt effects and its speaker system, the difference isn't EXTREMELY vast. Certainly not as mind boggling as the difference between VHS and DVD, or DVD and BluRay. A closer comparison might be the difference between 1080p and 4k video. Point being, your tone won't suffer in a measurable way if you lean mostly on HX quality sounds and fill in with the Firehawk's when needed. 2. The biggest shortcoming of the Stomp continues to be once you buy the damn thing you're so impressed with it you wonder if you should have just got the Helix LT. If I had an LT, I'd never have to touch the Firehawk's effects (which again, no slight on the Firehawk, but why do it if you have massive amounts of untapped DSP in your Helix?). 3. The artificial limit of six blocks within the HX Stomp still feels unnecessary and almost like a push to keep the full Helix more viable (I get that at least one Line 6 rep said that wasn't the point, and I fully understand there are other considerations too, but I also have worked for corporations for years and years - there's usually more nuance here than anyone likes to admit, even to themselves). Especially with our crazy setup above, you run out of DSP pretty fast even if there was no six block limit (if you try dual amps, for example, you zap the life out of that single chip almost immediately), but at the very least we would have liked to have seen what type of creativity could have come out with a few more blocks at our disposal (particularly FX blocks). 4. Even with point three above, the HX Stomp is such a powerful little box . . . wow. Most useful guitar tool ever and one of my favorite purchases in my life. Even if I one day cave and get a full Helix, it would have never happened if I hadn't first sat in awe at the massive power of the HX Stomp.

It hasn't happened to me, thankfully. Bummer man. I'm sure they'll get it taken care of. New tech. Hopefully over all it's reliable. You do worry when you start to think about how much stuff was crammed in that little box.

Your losing the ability for the passive traditional pickups to have that, yes. However, at the bridge are the piezo pickups. These are the pickups used by the software to model other guitars, alter tunings, and alter pickups. With those, you can still model bridge, middle, AND neck pick ups, and it works quite well.

To clarify, there were firmware updates since release to attempt to improve the palm muting. I feel it did ... your mileage may vary. It's true though that the guts haven't been modified since the JTV release.

I personally am not bothered by the palm muting concerns people have. I can hear the differences in videos too ... to me though the Variax palm mute still sounds good, and in fact, all my guitars sound a little bit different palm muted so to me just goes with the territory of a different guitar. Now, does the Variax emulate the palm mutes of a epiphone casino as well as the rest of the epiphone casino? ... no. Is it performable and audiences are fine? Yes. One caveat .... I don't do high gain metal core stuff. Nor have I experimented really. If that's your gig I could see an argument, but then again, the Shuriken was designed by a metal player and he loves and uses it.

You could, but if possible I'd just run post Stomp to save blocks, unless he's wanting to have a stomp effect both before and after it.

Honestly, the pitch shift on the Helix is one area they still need mega improvement on, and to top it off, the Stomp has far fewer blocks than a full Helix. Because of that, I'd still do everything recommending above EXCEPT I'd still keep the actual EHX POG in your chain. I think you'll find it just works better, and saves DSP for your Stomp to excel at other things.

Honestly, this sounds like a perfect time to contact Line 6.

How much do you like the Plus Pedal? I keep debating getting it. I have a freeze but the Plus SEEMS like a big step up. It's also pricey though. You glad you snagged it?