MGW-Alberta

Reminds me of my response when I hear someone quote that old saying, "there are no stupid questions." I respond with, "yes but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots."

I forgot to mention one more thing. I bought this short power cord that plugs into the amp and leaves another place to plug in the Helix. You'll notice the power cord to Helix is bundled into the snake. Now I only need one simple extension cord and one A/C outlet at the gig and all my cabling is neat and tidy and doesn't present me with any addition trip hazards or any additional clutter on stage.

I simply add a 10 band EQ at the front of the chain right after the input block before anything else and then I assign it to a foot-switch (in snap/stomp mode) and the scribble strip says "Tele EQ". My primary guitar has humbuckers. When I switch to the Tele I just stomp the button to activate the block and it adds some volume and adjusts for any EQ differences I might want. Then my presets receive a guitar signal at the beginning that is similar in strength and I don't have to twiddle with my snapshots or create new snapshots just for the Tele. I can tailor the EQ to my taste. If I want to keep the brightness of the Tele I can. If I want to tame the high end I can. On some of my presets I leave it sounding like a Tele and on others I cut some of the highs. Easy peasy. No bending over to unplug from one jack to plug into another jack. Just plug in the new guitar, stomp the switch and play.

You can if you make it idiot proof like I did. Fast, no guessing, never a wrong connection. Some custom length cabling. Some coloured heat-shrink. Some coloured nuts. Took me about 2-1/2 hours to fabricate once I got all the stuff needed to make the snake.

Thank you so much for your time and effort and for sharing your work with us. Unfortunately, much of the functionality of the spreadsheet is unavailable in Numbers but the PDF is still very useful. Could you elaborate for me please? What is LMS and Imp?

I believe those could possibly be FrankenTone Mod AlNiCo pickups. Difficult to find in the real world and obviously not available in Workbench. If you were looking for actual pickups that sound close I would suggest the TV Jones T-90 but since that is not the case then I suggest trying the Gretsch Duo-Jet model. With a clean tone like this one you probably won't hear the difference between humbucker and single coil in terms of the doubling thing that fattens up humbucker tones but you will get the warmer tone that comes from a humbucker. You will, of course, want to use a Fender Blackface amp, probably a Deluxe (the non-reverb version if possible). That should get you in the ballpark. On the amp issue, do not be fooled. Just because an amp says Fender on it does not mean you'll get "traditional Fender" cleans out of it. When guitarists say Fender clean they mean Blackface clean. A Hot-Rod Deluxe is not a substitute for a Blackface Deluxe. There are other brands of amp that can get you there but they cost more. To get even closer, try using the Xotic Effects EP-Booster between the guitar and amp. That pedal does an amazing job of adding girth and grunt and breath to any guitar tone. On my (conventional) pedal board I use it to compensate when I switch between single coil guitars and humbucker guitars. The EP-Booster adds thickness, depth and increased output to a single coil guitar so I don't have to bend over and tweak my board every time I change guitars. It should give you the added low end response heard in the video. Hope this helps.

I typically place a 10-Band EQ block last, just before the output block. This allows me to compensate for volume on a per snapshot basis without having to adjust amp blocks that might change the tone but it also allows me to compensate for distortion blocks being activated or deactivated per snapshot. Some distortion blocks seriously alter the EQ of the signal. Sometimes I like the particular kind of "hair" a given distortion block provides but not so much the EQ it imposes. I like having the ability to correct for such things before final output.

The main difference (in tone) between the dual and the triple is that the triple has a tighter sound. I have not tried this myself but I'm thinking it might be possible to tighten up the dual block by making it stiffer; ie: reducing sag, ripple, hum, etc. Perhaps you should give that a try and see if it doesn't get you closer.

The majority of the debunking I read about was related to the table and bench test where the body itself was removed from the equation. The video implies that wood is no longer a factor because there is no body or neck but the two anchor points are actually wood and they are connected by 2x4 wood crossmembers. Other points were made as well but I don't recall all of them. If you're interested in learning more about the arguments you can do a search on TDPRI and TGP. There were other forums discussing it as well but those two had the longest threads with lots of debating back and forth. The cinderblock guitar video is a very extreme example of material selection playing a role but there's no mistaking that it does in fact clearly identify materials as a factor. My comments in this thread were merely intended to point out that many videos have been made arguing on both sides of the issue and there are always people who make fair and reasonable criticisms. This is by no means the first time this subject has come up and the "pickups-only" crowd gets silenced in the end every time. In my own experience I have heard some differences. They probably would not be discernible in a recording or in an audience but they are apparent to me while I am playing. My own belief is that the amp/effect combination plays the largest role in the final sound; ie: those things that come after the guitar in the signal chain.

Years ago, this video was posted on guitar forums all over the internet as proof there is no such thing as tonewood. The video was made in order to sell pickups but tonewood deniers used it to debunk tonewood on guitar forums. It completely backfired on them and actually proved that what the guitar is made of has an affect on how it sounds. Interestingly, it also has an affect on sustain.

A number of years ago, okay maybe a lot of years ago, I played in a country band for about 15 months or so. Understand, country is not my usual genre but I joined the band for the experience of it and I'm not sorry I did. I already had a fairly new American Standard Telecaster with an alder body and a maple board at the time and so I bought a second American Standard Tele with an alder body and a rosewood board as a backup. The two guitars were one year apart in production; '95 and '96 if memory serves. Being that close in production they both had the same stock pickups. I came to the conclusion that the rosewood board Tele sounded different from the maple board Tele. The differences I noticed were the same as one would expect from reading the now generally accepted attributes of those tonewoods. There was also a difference in feel due to the coated fretboard versus the unfinished fretboard. Now .... I have posted this observation on other forums numerous times over the years and the responses have always ranged from "different woods have different properties" to "it's all in my head" but the one thing that cannot be explained is my perception of the difference. You have to understand that in '95 and '96 I did not yet have internet service. I did not have the preconceived ideas of tonewoods imposed on me by exposure to internet debates. My observations were personal, genuine and unbiased because there were no external factors influencing me. I am not going to stand here and insist that the differences were so significant as to be blatantly obvious. In fact, I feel almost certain that no persons in those pub audiences could have ever possibly noticed the difference when I switched guitars but I did notice because it was my rig and me playing. We could go on for days arguing about what the cause of those differences might be but it still boils down to ... the guitar itself made a difference; the pickups were the same; mass produced, machine made, identical magnet types, identical wind counts. The whole idea behind modern guitar building methods like CNC machining, machine made pickups, etc. is for consistency. Guitars of the same type are more consistent since the late 80s than they ever have been in all of history. I am a pragmatist. My philosophy is, "if it works, it's good." I do not value gear because it is old. I do not value gear because it is the latest and greatest newfangled thing. I value gear if it works well, sounds good, is reliable and is appropriate to my needs. There is a difference between woods. I know it because I experienced it for myself. It might not be a huge difference but the difference does exist.

Do you have any way to route your Variax through IRs before the signal gets to your P/A? 3 Sigma has some very nice sounding IRs that do wonders for the acoustic tones from Variax. I run my Variax through Helix and the IRs make a noticeable difference.

I have actually already been wondering myself if maybe they need to be plugged into Helix before I can assign one left and one right. I can see the 1 & 2 assignments and I can change them but for now any changes I make to one is reflected on both output blocks. I will wait until the cables and the other cab arrives before proceeding any further.

That guy has been debunked a hundred times on other forums. Just saying.

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I do not think we are on the same page. Did you try to view the image I tried to post? If you highlight the URL and open it in a new tab or window you'll see that each path, both 1 and 2 are being used independantly. They both employ parallel paths that rejoin in an attempt to emulate 4CM but they go to separate outputs.

Reviving this thread with a question of my own. I just bought two Powercab 112 Pluses with the intention of running a stereo rig ... although my approach to stereo will be a bit different from the norm. I intend to use the parallel processing capability of Helix and use one path for left and the other for right, setting up each path differently to get two distinct sounds. One PC+ has arrived and the other should get here some time this coming week. I also ordered two AES cables; a longer one that will plug into the Helix and a shorter one that will connect the left and right cabinets. In anticipation of the gear soon arriving I used HX Edit to create a template preset for future custom preset creations. I set the inputs of both paths 1 and 2 to Guitar and the outputs both to Digital and selected Powercab. It was my intention to use different speaker models in each PC+ to further customize each sound separately but I have noticed that if I make a change to one output the other one changes to exactly the same setting. I am assuming there must be some setting I am not seeing that will allow individual cabinet settings. I realize if I used the 1/4" or XLR outputs instead of AES I could easily set the speaker models on the individual cabinets manually but I was hoping to be able to change those model settings within Snapshots. That's the reason I ordered the AES cables. I would appreciate any insight. [img]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52600999386_3b88f652a4_h.jpg[/img] The purpose of using the two paths individually rather than splitting one path to A & B and having separate outputs for A & B is so I can drop the modulation blocks down to somewhat emulate using two amps in 4CM rather than having the mod blocks come before or after the amp blocks. Edit to add: Not sure why the img URLs are no longer working here. I've always posted pix here that way in the past.

Perhaps a Weber Beam Blocker? I have tried them in conventional cabinets and they do create a slight improvement. It's not a huge difference but it is discernible. It was widely rumoured years ago that Stevie Ray Vaughan used to attach small pieces of duct tape to the grille cloth of his amps; placed it over the center of the speaker to cover the dome.

Found it. Thank you.

I just purchased a (used) JTV69. I am a total newbie when it comes to Variax. The guitar came with battery, charger and dongle but no interface cable for Helix Floor. I ordered the digital interface cable but I now notice there are no downloads available for Workbench HD that support MacOS Catalina. I'm running MacOS 10.15.7. Am I going to be unable to set up guitar presets?

The joys of being a beta tester ....

Thank you for the honest and concise answer. I have been reading elsewhere about native and it seems everything points to my intended usage for it being beyond its capability. I will continue to use my Floor and live with the setup. Thanks again.

When it comes to time based effects I tend to err on the side of caution. My feeling is, just because some is good doesn't mean more is better.

Forgive me if my query seems foolish. I know absolutely nothing about Native except that it seems to be "Helix on a computer" to me. I have a Helix Floor and I have some presets I use for wet dry wet using my guitar amp in 4CM and a pair of stage monitors. I like that sound but it's a complicated and time consuming setup and tear down. I am wondering if W/D/W can be replicated in Native. Is anybody here successfully creating a virtual wet dry wet rig using Native? I guess my real question boils down to ... are the hardware ins and outs (jacks) on Helix Floor replicated virtually in Helix Native? I'd rather know if W/D/W is possible before I try Native because if it's not possible then I won't even bother with it. I'm only trying to shortcut the recording setup and tear down I go through every time using Helix Floor into the DAW. I have to move my rig from the rehearsal space over to my Mac and connect it all and ... you get the idea. If W/D/W is possible into the DAW then I will spend the money and the time and effort to learn how to use it and save myself a lot of effort when recording. If not then I won't bother with it. Thanks

Sure hope you backed up your presets ... I was having trouble with my Helix Floor the first year and lost a lot of work doing a reset.