Kilrahi

Okay, but at the same time, and I'm not saying where Line 6 falls in this, but surely we're all aware that all companies have someone who despises their customer service.

Some people just get screwed. I always get food poisoning at Red Robin .... millions don't. It's just life. I would stay away if I were you too. I'm just grateful I have not had the same problems.

Ah the stories that Vetta can share! "In my day MY day modeling was seen as ..."

This whole post has convinced me that this forum needs a weekly segment called, "Unsolved Helix Mysteries." Complete with a creepy theme song.

Of all the areas of the Variax, this is the one I feel there is still the must controversy over. Line 6 has improved it a lot since release, but does it sound just like the original guitars palm muting? No. Does it sound good? In my opinion, yes, but I'm the kind who chases cool sounds and rarely obsesses over EXACT sounds. The group where I see the most problems in acceptance is often metal players used to a very specific sound. My advice? Check out the band Twelve Foot Ninja's work with the Shuriken Variax. If you like the palm mutes there, you're golden.

Nice. I always like these kinds of vids. Thanks for posting.

Well, and another excellent consideration would be the HX Effects.

Okay, will I can confirm that it did work! The only thing that was weird, was that at one point I tried to switch to the tuner. I was curious if it would impact the first guitar, the second . . . both? I found out that it looks like it only impacts the first, but additionally, once I did that both signals wouldn't come through the Firehawk most of the time, and when they did it was crackly, inconsistent, and ugly. Resetting the Firehawk fixed it, and I didn't test it again to see if it was a fluke or happens every time you attempt it. I also have no idea why switching to the tuner would do that, I only know that it appears to have done it in this case. So, at least based on the test I did, good news for you. However, as a reminder, I believe you have to put the FX block to 100% mix in order for it to work. Otherwise my understanding is that some of the dry signal of your acoustic will mix with your electric tone.

Wow . . . it's like a high def performance of someone with the runs, complete with high quality Helix effects delay and reverb processing! Does it still eventually blow the sound to smithereens?

Yeah, as answered by Phil, only the FS1 - FS5 can be assigned to effects, except the pedal can also be assigned to specific parameters of the effects, AND it can turn your volume pedal and wah on and off - so that's a little additional functionality that it's good to know about. A big part of this is that the Firehawk is limited to five effects, and there are five foot switches. Broadening it out wouldn't really accomplish much. The Pod HD500X will get you closer to what you want. The Helix, obviously, even more so.

You just want to delete the controllers for the effects, but leave the effects on the chain? If I'm understanding you right, it's easy to do in HX Edit. Highlight the effects attached to those foot switches, click the controllers tab, and set the controllers to those footswitches to "none." I don't know how to do it on the floor unit off the top of my head, but it's not too hard either.

Just to chime in .... it's stupidly easy to do. However, amp blocks are just about the most power hungry thing you can use so you typically do not have a whole lot more you can throw on there beyond that. I don't necessarily think that should discourage you though. Especially with snapshot control options, there's a lot of sound possibilities even if all you use is the Stomp. When I run two amps, I have external compressors/distortions running before the HX Stomp and an external Reverb running after the Stomp. This frees up DSP enough for me to use a delay, modulation, EQ, etc. In the Stomp.

I'm confused by the question. What are you asking exactly?

Knowing all this, is there a way to get Line 6 to look deeper into the problem? Do they have a bug report like they do new ideas? He reported it and they said they couldn't repeat it which sounds bonkers considering how easily everyone else has repeated it.

Easy enough to test. Recreate the exact settings in a new patch.

Could you guys detail more about: 1. The exact routing of the wires to and from? 2. The internal signal path on the Stomp? I have run into that problem before but it was always that I had one setting off and it borked the whole thing.

Wow . . . in my experience this equates to something outputting from the Helix is overloading the audio system but . . . in this case . . . why? It's like mareiou discovered the haunted patch from hell. Anyone else want to take a shot at this preset of perdition? You say Line 6 tried this preset and had no problems?

Unfortunately if it's a legitimate bug there's nothing that can be done by any of us. Personally, I've had my Stomp freeze up on maybe two occasions. Each time it did though, in my case the sound kept going and so it wouldn't have been a completely unworkable situation (for the most part) in a live setting. You would do the restart in between songs and it would take a few seconds. How often does yours do this? Does the sound completely cut out?

Hmmm . . . you're definitely pushing the limits of the thing. The immediate problem I see is keeping your signals separate. This might be remedied by moving the mix to 100% on the FX block. I've never tried it before though. If I get a chance this weekend maybe I'll give it a go.

Yeah, I didn't get the same results he did immediately either, though part of the challenge is that we simply aren't using the exact same setup he did (I'm not familiar with his software program, but it at least felt more basic - either way I was only guessing at how the HX parameters matched his setup). Initially I tried to dial in all of the dials exactly the same and it wasn't impressive at all. However, when I started adjusting the pedal settings, as well as the other amp/mic settings, different auto filter settings - eventually it started to sound really good. Perhaps tonight I'll try other distortions. That's a good idea.

I mean, similar to everyone else . . . for me the joy of digital modelling is that I DO NOT need to buy the real pedal. That's part of what makes an HX update like Christmas. I have always wanted a King of Tone. It's very expensive, and the wait is even worse. If the HX model is done well, I can simply cross it off my list and never look at it again. It's amazing! The only pedals I'm ever tempted to buy are the ones that aren't modeled very well if at all (like the newer Digitech Drop). There's something fun about buying a pedal, but only if I can't get it any other way.

I messed around with this setup last night as I watched the video. I thought it had some cool sound. Great to get new ideas.

Native is easier for recording. With the floor, you have to either record your tone into your DAW exactly as you want it from the get go, or record a purely clean track into your DAW and then RUN IT BACK THROUGH the floor unit with the final tone to get your new take. You can control Native a bit with the floor through midi control.

I tested this idea tonight and in my opinion it worked extremely well (i.e. I assigned the delay to FS2 and then also assigned the feedback setting to FS2 with a minimum setting at anywhere between 0% and X%). The only caveat has to do with trails. If you want trails to work, then just as Verne-Bunsen suggested rather than set the feedback to 0% you should set it to a far reduced amount (I used 25%) so that you still have some degree of natural decay, but the permanent cascade is put to rest. Cool! Learned a new idea today. Thanks for getting us all thinking.

I was going to reply by simply saying, "Yes, it ought to be able to do that," but I was bored and so to be cautious I tested it. It was easier for me to conceive of if I had the FX loops on path B and the path to the Amp on path A, but either path should work (so I did the reverse of what you described path wise). A few things I did to ensure it worked: 1. You have to move the Y split block far left and hard pan the two channels left and right. 2. The paths have to re-merge since the send block is no longer an option. To ensure they stayed separate I also hard panned the merge block left and right. I tested it extensively. I was able to activate each fx loop by the tap of a footswitch. The third artificial FX loop I was only able to activate by pushing the button of the actual pedal, but other than that it worked perfectly. I'm very curious as to why you would want such a complicated setup, but whatever the reason, it works.