Kilrahi

Yes. Before I replied I went and did two things to double verify. This is what I set up: Scenarios 1: 1. Bank up happens when I roll to the heel of the pedal. 2. Bank down happens when I press down on the toe switch. (Global settings = Preferences Exp Tip set to FS4, Exp Ring set to FS5; Footswitches FS4 set to Bank Up, FS5 set to Bank down). Scenario 2: 1. Delay activates when I roll to the heel of the pedal. 2. Rotary effect engages when I press down on the toe switch. (Global settings = Preferences Exp Tip set to FS4, Exp Ring set to FS5; Footswitches FS4 set to Stomp 4, FS5 set to Stomp 5). The trick is always making sure you set things up correctly in the global settings, but to make it easier for you I listed them above. If you'd prefer to have it bank up when you press in, or down when you lift up, you'd just reverse the footswitch section. Love my Stomp.

You're basically stringing together two amps. That's unlikely to ever sound good. If you're running the Firehawk into a real amp then disable the modeling amp and cab.

But . . . if you turn the mix down to 0% you're effectively just sending dry signal only. That wouldn't keep you from stacking amps though. Well, I'm having a tough time visualizing just what you're doing, but hey, if you're happy, cool.

There are some cool tricks that you can try that may work for you (they did for me). If you'd prefer, you can assign expression pedal 1 or 2 to controls specific parameters on existing blocks. For example, I regularly assign the drive of my amp model to expression pedal 1. That way I can manage volume and distortion without using an official volume pedal. Honestly, it works so well I almost never feel the desire to use a volume block. In fact, you can even assign multiple parameters to the same expression pedal (so, for example, I've assigned the drive and volume control on my amp block so that as I push on the pedal to up the drive, the volume parameter reduces slightly so that I still have a dynamic change between clean and distortion, but not quite as much as it does solely using the drive parameter. Here's a video I first watched back when I was getting the Stomp that kind of opened my eyes to some of the work arounds that exist on the Stomp:

It's possible, but I've ran into people with this complaint before though. I faced it myself with the Firehawk FX which had presets on the bottom but stomp boxes on top. it seemed to make sense to switch them - or have some sort of lock feature because the stomp buttons are used for more often than the preset, and hitting a preset instead of a stomp switch can blow your sound out of the water REAL fast - whereas the reverse is not true. What makes more sense is to have your switches controllable ala modern gaming which has been doing that for years. Perhaps on the HX successor? At any rate, it is a potentially valid criticism, but it also falls quite clearly under first world problems. I don't own a full Helix, so it may be that this just does not make sense for most users of it. I wouldn't go to Roland for nothing right now because even if you grant them this win I still consider the score to be about 98 - 2.

The only way to do a four cable method with the Firehawk FX is to keep the FX loop engaged. You definitely wouldn't want to turn that off. So if I understand you correctly, you are wanting to use modeled amps - but are you still wanting to output the sound through your traditional amp? What kind of amp is it? Most of the time, unless you're using a nontraditional amp that has a flat response style option, the problem you'll run into is that's essentially like stacking amps which gets awful real fast. You could try disabling the cab block on the Firehawk FX and then just use the amp portion but I don't think that's going to help much.

Yes you can. It's really pretty versatile. The hardest part is just figuring out how to navigate the various menus in order to set things up how you like. As an example, I rarely use wah. Usually my dual footswitch is setup so that expression one controls the drive of an amp (and sometimes other settings as well) and then expression two is controlling the mix parameters of a key effect (such as reverb, delay, etc.).

This is my experience as well. I love having options and so the ability to do IRs, which I do use from time to time, is awesome. I'll keep looking for new ones too. BUT I think that getting good with stock cabs is a skill. It's not a crazy hard one either - but you do have to practice with them to figure out what you're doing. For an IR someone else has done the vast majority of the work. For a stock cab you have to learn how to do it. However, once you DO figure it out it doesn't take endless eons to get something you like, and you keep getting better and better at it over time. It's like any other skill. Take delays. I'm a loser here. The VAST majority of the time I'm just using a simple delay with a dotted eighth repeat. There are people who chain delay after delay up and create some amazing things going on. You have to work up to that point though. So it is with stock cabs (though in my opinion they're far easier to figure out than complex ambient guitar stuff).

The Stomp can only do one parallel path, so once you reconnect a split you're committed to a serial path from that point going forward.

I am mostly a stock cab user. I think you can get great sounds from them. I feel like I get the strength of IRs - you find one you like - one and done. As a Stomp user though, any way you can save blocks is a plus and the dual cab blocks, whenever possible, are too tempting since you take 2 blocks and make them one.

I don't think you're going to get the Mosky switch to work this way because it's input is for a stereo cable. Your Y cable is converting it with from a stereo cable to two TS cables. The Mosky isn't going to be able to do anything with that. You could use it with a single TRS cable (no split) and have it function as a dual footswitch for the Stomp, but you can't have it function as a single footswitch. As for using the mission expression pedal, there are a few things to check. This one is probably a waste of time, but you still want to ensure you nabbed the right one because there are several Mission pedals and they all look very similar: https://www.musiciansfriend.com/amplifiers-effects/mission-engineering-helix-rack-expression-pedal-black/j31590000000000 Next, I use the Mission Helix SP1-L6 and love it. It's my fave way to control the Stomp (vs. a dual foot switch which I also use sometimes) and the thing that always screws me up is that when I switch between the two methods I miss some global setting that causes it to bork itself. Make sure you double check that these settings are used when you are trying to use the Mission pedal: Global Settings > Preferences Exp/FS Tip: Set to "EXP 1." Exp/FS Ring: Set to "FS5." Global Settings > Footswitches FS4 Function: Set to "EXP 1." FS5 Function: Set to "ToglEXP[1/2]."

I believe he's referring to one of the DIR presets Jason created for the HX Stomp. You can find the video demoing that preset below at the starting at the 2:09 minute mark.

Just to confirm, I've done all of these pretty regularly with the HX Stomp because blocks are at such a premium. In my opinion it works really well. I tend to use the amp channel volume instead of the final output volume block . . . but I'm not sure why I prefer that. They both work.

After all this round and round I honestly think your best bet for happiness is what is depicted in this video at 3:12. My only complaint is they should have showed a signal chain to match it. The "Seismic Matters" is just a preset that has nothing to do with what they're describing. I'd try this approach (it would be easy for anyone to walk you through it block by block) and if it doesn't make you happy, then yeah, the Stomp isn't your thing.

*Sigh*. Damn I'm sorry man. Honestly this kind of stuff confused the hell out of me too at first but the more you dig in the easier it becomes. Unfortunately in your case two things happened. First, you were wanting (or at least from my understanding you were wanting) to do something a little more complex. Two, me and the other poster started circling around each other over disagreements as I tried to come up with a way to do it. It's too bad I can't just come over there and show you what I'm trying to say because I don't think it would be as complex as it sounds. Might still suck, but it wouldn't be a mess. Damn, yeah you're right on that. That's the problem with trying to visualize this in my head. I'm not bright enough to keep track of all of that. Once again the dilemma here is the Stomp's six block limitation. With the Helix it would be easy. What you really need is to do a separate path completely (path B). If you use a amp block of any type it would be the pre amp block. Which you CAN do - how much that would nail your DSP though is hard to figure out, and no matter what the inability to share all but the effects before your amp blocks seriously curtails the available blocks.

Great opportunity to post a classic . . .

Weird. No I do not have the buzz. Before you open a support ticket I would try rolling back the update and then reinstalling it.

Okay I think we're just having a communication problem here. When I say "pre amp effects block" I should be more specific. I am referring to things like overdrive pedals and compressors, BUT more specifically I was trying to say "whatever effects you want BEFORE (using "pre" instead of before, but I get your confusion because there is a block called "preamp") your amp."

I think the HX Effects sounds more up your alley too. As to other issues people brought up about the front of the amp stuff . . . to me the bigger question is do you use delay/reverb pedals, etc. now? HX Effects will work just as well as those do on an amp with no effects loop, so if you've always been happy using effects with your amp there's no reason you won't also be happy with the HX Effects with your amp.

Do you have some reason to think this is a thing?

Weird. I thought the thing was amazing. To each his own though. At any rate, my advice would be to try it in those two places first. Good luck.

To me the best approach is to insert it at different points in the chain to figure out where it has the best impact. Before the HX Effects came along where did you usually put it? The HX Effects has its own noise gate (which I assume you've already tried) and in my opinion it generally doesn't make sense to put it at the start of your chain because then you might as well use the inbuilt one. Because you run the risk of a noise gate clamping down on your reverb and delay tails the first place I'd try to put it is just after the FX send of your amp but before the FX return on your HX Effects. If that didn't work for you then I'd try placing it after the main output of the HX Effects and just before the FX return of your amp. A strength of the Boss NS-2 is that it has TWO inputs and outputs so you can actually double it up if you need to.

No, in my suggested setup nothing is missing, and the Stomp CAN do parallel paths - the trick is the block limit. So the idea is to share as many blocks as possible before you split. It would look like this: Main path: 1. Pre amp effect block >>>> Amp effects block (no cab) >>>> Post amp effects block >>>>Signal Split Path A to FOH: IR or Cab block of choice Path B from FX Send to real Amp FX Return: Dummy block (Since the Stomp . . . maddeningly . . .. can't have a path B without a block of some type - hopefully it gets changed sometime as this would save you a whole block to use for something else). The above is six blocks. It might work for what the original poster intends. I would at least give it a test run. No matter how you toss it though, if you must have the real amp have the same sound as the front of house PA you are definitely taxing the Stomp to the max. The limitation isn't the routing, it's the Stomp's 6 block limit.

The Stomp takes the Strymon fine, but the hard part remains knowing just how your amp will color things. There are a few things you can try now though to find out: 1. Test a delay pedal now in front of the amp with the amp set clean. If you're not fond of it - you won't be fond of it with the Stomp. 2. Does your amp require that you plug in straight to the guitar input? Because if so this might also solve your problems, as you could: -Bypass the real amps pre-amp (letting the Stomp do this stuff). -Create a signal path that includes any pre amp effects, amp, and then post amp effects. -Split into two signal paths at the very end - one going FOH that includes a cab or IR cab block as its final block. -Second path goes into amp effects return and lets the real cab fill in that final gap.

Well . . . most times yes, but there are exceptions to everything. It will sound just like if you did that with a regular amp. I can say this, many players find (and this includes me) that if you make your amp as clean as possible then it can actually work pretty well (it almost simulates a flat response speaker). The trick, of course, is that you have to like the HX Stomp distortion settings (which I do).