themetallikid

Ok so I have a preset that i've been using as a tone pedal board using the snapshots in Stomp mode. I love it, its not as song specific as I prefer but for the now simple house band type shows we do, it functions well. 1 - Clean 2 - Gritty 3 - Boosted Gritty 4 - Crunch 5 - Rock 6 - Boosted Rock 7 - Brootz 8 - Boosted Brootz I have 2 amps (top line) and 2 IR's (bottom line) and have the IR's change via snapshots as well as the amp settings/bypass. It works great.....this setup also gives me a great template to tryout different amps. I've always wanted to dial in the Soldano amps...but always struggle with some characteristics of the amps themselves, maybe? So I tried it last night, dropped in the Clean/OD on line 1 and had to add the Lead version on line 2. dialed them in, but just wasnt happy. I was using the York Audio Orange IR's I just had gotten and to be honest havent explored cab/IR's entirely yet with this amp...however....being greatly unfamiliar with the actual amp line... What settings would you use for clean/breakup/crunch/rock....it seems lower master is what I remember from my Fractal days....also seems like I need to run the bass up pretty high to get any 'chunk' out of it..... any help?

Very Cool....it was like instant Hysteria at the core, could hear where layering would really take effect, especially multi tracking with just changing the echo/chorus off and some panning....man....awesome.

I can only vehemently echo what has been said. If your going to try any of the Helix culture products...that include amp sims....here is the steps I would recommend for the most no frills easiest approach to 'evaluate' your experience. Question 1: What will you be playing this through an FX Loop in a 'real' guitar amp or something else like studio monitors or a FRFR powered speaker. What ever your choice....should dictate which way you approach your testing.... 'Real' guitar amp...bring your amp and hook it up into your amps fx return. This will bypass any of your amps Preamp coloration which you can add later once your more familiar with the cabling structure to do so. If your going to use an FRFR power speaker, they should have one there you can try out, but try a few out, while the specs say they should be somewhat similar to novices there are great differences and can vary the results greatly...so again, knowing a piece of gear outside of your Helix will greatly change your experience. If your using studio monitors, but want a tangible Helix to use, then try Native and see how it sounds...there is no difference between software/hardware versions and will save you some time with connections and such (though you add another piece of gear that can change your experience. Question 2..... Based on your answer to question 1..... create a new patch/preset.....simply drop in the Amp (amp only, amp/cab, amp + cab) into a preset. Depending on what you are connecting to that will change what you put in the preset. Real Amp = Amp Only, FRFR/Monitors = Amp +Cab (seperate) or Amp/Cab (combined). In this situation I would recommend the combined Amp/Cab to keep the chain as simple as you can to hear the Amp simulations the best. I'm not a huge fan of the stock cabs vs. IR's...however I can get usable sounds out of them and would never say they are trash ever. I just like the 'feel' and response of some of my IR's from York Audio better. Step 3.... play with that single block...just like you would an amp at the store, stay out of the 'advanced' parameters....stick to the usual G/B/M/T/P knobs. The joy of digital is that you CAN crank the Master if you want that to find that sweet spot of the amp, just adjust the output volume on the Channel Volume setting. Just reiterate Step 1: choose a method of amplification that matches your most popular use at home/gigging. Step 2: create a new preset, add amp/cab appropriately. Step 3 adjust like a normal amp.

Very cool

I'm probably out of my league gear knowledge wise and especially Rockman/Boston tone in comparison to this... ...But didn Def Leppard use Rockman's as well on the Hysteria album a lot? Could these IR's help get you in the ball park of those tones? I know several have asked about those over the years too....In my head they are different EQ curves for sure as you mentioned...however similar/same amp maybe? Maybe one of these help make amp adjustments for that type of tone.... again, just going off of some things i've read and probably crossing them up

very cool, that was fun to watch as someone who dropped into Helix Life sorta post birth pre-toddler stage.

Bedroom producer?? Probably not, really just for my own use, and potentially to put up some acoustic demos for my own solo or duo shows...no dreams of anything 'professional' But I appreciate the helpful info and links. I'll check them out

Yeah I mostly did what you are suggesting, just dont have a great ear for that stuff. I think it sounds decent, but will definately check out those suggestions. Was gonna ask here, but its not really L6 related if there were any decent free FX plugins for Reaper? Some I like and have some preset settings I like, but some (reverb) I just struggle with to get something I like. Also on a side note....How do I record a 'dry' take into Reaper as well. Someone said that its always being sent on 7/8 if I remember correctly....anything I need to do for that other than just arming a track with those inputs? Or... As a new process for me, how do I reamp that dry track or something recorded in Reaper using Helix....I love dialing in stuff and can get good results there...but dont want to 'bake' in the effects I have in my preset for live use. Edit: I'm sure I can google it at work today, but for now scratching my questions out if you have any suggestions. I looked through helix settings and nothing initially stood out to me and the 10,000 options Reaper has are overwhelming at times to someone. lol

I got it figured out. I was able to 'record' the spotify/mp3 version into a track and use that as a scratch reference. Recorded my acoustic guitar playing along with it and my vocals singing along with it, then removed the track and monitored/mixed it back just guitar/vocals. Worked well. Now I'm not as schooled in some of the studio/post magic, but I have it somewhat decent. and will work for what it was. Was recording a version of Dear Daughter by Halestorm for my daughters 5th birthday on Tuesday. Shockingly didnt have to change the key while singing....few parts I may wanna clean up yet, but sounds pretty decent. Any FX Chains anyone wants to share for acoustic/vocals/overall mix? lol

thzts where I was leaning, and appreciate the response.

I connect the USB between Helix/Laptop which is all I needed to do pre-move....however Reaper updated so maybe that changed some things. I dont get my track inputs to choose. I choose Asio Driver, but its for the Xair mixer...or HX Stomp. However it gives me an error 'opening the audio hardware'. There area other 'system audio' options, but none seem right. What am I missing here? Follow up...I am doing a recording for my daughters bday, and I want to take the audio from Spotify/You Tube to use as a skeleton scratch track for reference and it will disappear in the final version....do I set a channel to record from USB? How do I do that...??

I used 2 blocks cause it was easier for me to dial in the sound of each of them. In time I may condense it down to a single dual cab and compare, but for now I'm content. THanks for the comment. I'll see tomorrow at practice how it actually sounds at volume. I made it with my headphones which are a touch on the bass/thicker sounding side, but I know when I create stuff to not overdo the top end or its harsh at volume.

Ok, so with my band basically shutting down any sort of active booking (we will be a house band at a few places and take gigs offered but not actively search for them, acoustic gigs have been great since things opened up again)....I have decided to 'simplify' my sounds approach. Normally I have been a 'build my core tones' guy, then use those to build song specific presets. Tedious, but I love the unraveling of tones and the searching to dial things in well...without losing my bands sound (80+ songs in the songlist makes a lot of work). So I was inspired by the guys that can do a variety of tones with a single amp and thought I'd give it a real shot with some good hard work involved. Being I love Marshally type stuff, I chose the Placatar Clean/Dirty models. Initially I paired these with the Greenback 25/57 combo and the Mesa V30/160 combo on seperate cab blocks split/rejoined before and right after. Loved where I landed but there was just something missing. So I took the Greenback/V30 approach and dove into my York Audio Cab IR's and landed on the IRS 1) Matchless 212 Blnd Mix 07 and 2) Mesa Traditional 412 mix 13. I have the Matchless low cut to 120hz, no hi cut and the Mesa low cut to 80 and high cut down to 5.5khz. This gives me a nice balanced high cutting sound with some nice low chunk. I set up Snapshots of Clean, Gritty, Boosted Gritty, Crunch, Rock, Boosted Rock, Brootalz and Boosted Brootalz. I included the preset if anyone wants to retry, and you can try the stock cabs I mentioned, but they didnt have the clarity I was looking for. I'm not entirely satisfied on the Brootalz/Boosted Brootalz and the Rock presets, but its just fine tuning the low end and such, which I can't really do until practice time with some volume. I landed on the Weeper Wah with a mix of 97% and adjusted the low/high frequencies to 190hz and 2.3khz. I may still play with this and see if I can add some sort of gain boost tied in with the auto engage of the wah on Exp 2 as I like a slightly dirty signal into a wah to give it some extra attitude and bite. I have a talkbox setup in FX Loop 1, and have it set to auto engage on Exp 1 at 98% (same turning on point as my Wah). Easy to manipulate while singing or wanting to jump between talkbox and regular guitar by rocking my foot back and forth to turn on/off. I have Footswitch 11 setup as a "Latch Lead" where it turns on a Kinky Boost/TS808 for my lead OD's (I love these two paired together), the Double Take (set minmally, but between the amp/cab), Delay Block and also preset output volume (-4db is normal output, Lead goes to -2db, this will have to be adjusted in live use). HOWEVER, I do have a question that I'm pretty sure I know the answer.....I love the idea of a momentary lead switch and I have Footswitch 10 available/open yet. I'd love to have it do the same as my "Lead Latch" assignments on Footswitch 11, however that would require me to 'double' all of those blocks in the preset which is not feasible. Correct? Any workarounds I'm not thinking of? Its not a killer to not have a momentary lead switch, but for some songs its great when trying to sing and play lead...the lack of extra steps is less thinking after a few beers. HAHA!! Anyway, here is my preset, i've never shared presets before so I appreciate any comments/feedback, and will answer any questions as well. I'm far from a super user or guru around here, but am pretty proud of this single preset and what it all covers. Thanks, cheers, stay healthy! One Amp for All.hlx

Yeah the place to reach out to is Beth at Phatheadz, they pay a % of the til and she is always looking for different acts, shoot her a message, you can name drop me with her, Jason -Tomorrows Eve.

The venue we were at for this has a back room that they do larger events. It's Maloney's in Kaukauna (used to be called JJ Maloneys). Norm's a great guy up here. What kinda music you do? He might be willing to do a dual ticket with someone. Im sure I could scrounge up the guys for something. And I know another venue in GB that provides FOH and pays % of the cut, she'd be interested more than likely if I dropped a word. I'll PM you my email.

I totally get what your saying, I dont understand all the technical aspects of the pedals schematics and such....I just play around til I find something I like. There are a few of the OD/Distortions I like pre-amp to tighten it up. I like a tighter rhythm sound, but a lot of times when I want to kick into a lead, I like a 'looser' or bluesier/fatter type sound, and the TS808 seems to always get me there. Some OD combinations sound better with it before or after the 'boosting' OD, but generally putting it before the boosting OD seems to be more common. Usually maybe 1.5 on the drive, tone about 7.5ish and the level set 5.0-?? to get me a little gain boost into amp more.

Yeah he mentions in several of his videos its to 'glue everything together' in a way before being sent out.

Has there been any talk about updating this block to include IR slots? Couple things come to mind, I'm bored at work, my mind is rambling...maybe this doesnt make any sense... 1) Some of my presets could stand to free up the extra block space. I try to keep my presets on a series type chain and not go into parallel routing much as it messes with my block setting consistency when trying to achieve even volume levels for FOH/Monitor sends. Having an extra space, if you choose this block, freed up on your path would be awesome. I totally get wanting to keep them seperate as well, and throw an EQ In the middle like real world applications....however I tend to add my 'post' effects after the cab. My only concern would be the cpu usage this block would consume may too much to do much else on that same signal path, especially if you get into stereo cab/ir situations. 2) Does the current Amp + Cab block allow stereo versions? If so, adding the IR slots to that would be a nice upgrade. Or combining stock cab with IR would be cool too. 3) Depending on how the favorites thing is implemented in 3.0, this could mean saving your favorite amp with different cab configurations all in one block vs seperate.

Will do, I'm on 2.92, i've had no issues since the update (I updated quickly upon release). All of my presets are built off the same 8 core tones, and then just copied over. The ones I'm working off of when it happened are the same ones essentially i've been using for the last 3 months with no issues....but I'll see if its pertaining to one particular preset. Yeah I may have to pick up a small tuner to keep as a backup, probably would have already if my acoustic didnt have one built in to the preamp. Time to research on a slow work day before the weekend. I'm located near Green Bay, Wisconsin. They do have limits on gatherings here, however, the venue we were in is quite large. Even 200 place still leaves quite a bit of room between people in relation to their capacity. 300 was probably an overestimate honestly, it was probably closer to 150 this past night.....man, there was no more lonely feeling than being the lead singer/Lead guitar player and having to stop the whole show to trouble shoot...sure felt like 300 though. They were mostly cool about it and I was able to tune by ear, over the PA, at least they were patient and understanding and we finished the last 3 songs we had. But, i'll never forget that feeling again....

Looks like a reboot resolves it, but what a pain during a show, especially if it decides to rebuild presets.

At the risk of getting yelled at for not using the search function....my tuner just stopped working. I dont want to search 'tuner issues' as i'll get 500 threads and I honestly dont have the time to sift through them. Saturday, mid show, guitar change my tuner just stopped working. It was either severly 5-6 seconds after I struck a note, or not responding at all. I thought it was my wireless, swapped batteries, changed back to my E guitar (was trying to change to Eb)....still nothing...finally I left the stage, grabbed a 1/4" from the next acts bass player (thank god!!) and plugged it in....still nothing... All my presets worked fine, it seems linked to the tuner only. Fast Forward to last night...I spent about an hour restringing my 4 guitars for the 4 shows I have over 2 days this weekend and all tuned great...I'd never have known there was an issue. I just tried swapping guitars again to hit the Eb stuff (coincidence there I think) and again, unresponsive. Tried different presets in case something weird was going on there....no luck. Tried different tuner settings as I had music coming in on USB (never been an issue before), changed the tuner input to Guitar only...and still nothing. Even just a cable attached and touching the cable end doesnt give me some sort of buzzing frequency note. Disappointing, especially in front of 300 people at the show it first happened. I'm about to go buy one of those headstock tuners quick as a backup...but any ideas what could be wrong? I'm not sure I have the time to back up/restore from a reboot of the software......but if I have to i can do that.

Try the Placater, for me its a more advanced 800ish type feel/sound. Also cab/IR choice makes a huge difference.

yeah cause for concern, but glad you found it. Funny story, i had a 4th of july gig on a lake shore in front of about 300 boats...the sun setting in front of us. I was gigging a Boss GT100 and had issues similarly. I use the Expression pedal to make easy A/B type changes (GT doesnt offer snapshots) to make while I sing/play. Toe switch would activate Wah pedal and deactivate the auto engage swaps....anyway, had a horrible 3rd set...presets jumping between A/B, wahs inconsistently moving from heel to toe.... pissed me off, went out and bout my Helix. Attributed it to faulty Boss gear....never dealt with a optical expression pedal before, and once I had the issues with my LT pedal, it dawned on me I was probably having sunlight/optical issues on my GT. Oh well, I'm better off here in Helix land anyway, but lesson learned.

I believe there is an effect called the Double Take, with some neat parameters. I dont use it as it sounds phasey or weird when in mono, Stereo it sounds good, but the Mimiq is notably better at what it does from the reviews i've read.

Yeah some amps for sure when the master is cranked will compress more and create a less dynamic sound. Thus keeping it lower might keep the amount of crunch in your preset similar, but allow for more punchy transients to come through as they arent being squashed by the compression a cranked Master Volume brings in some amps. My downfall is that in my head I have the 'sweet spot' for some amps locked into a number...and when adjusting things I dont like, I have a hard time getting to adjust those settings first, instead of massaging 8 other things first. I'm learning, but not having 'real world' experience with some of these models can for sure create parameter paralysis. I can't wait for the 3.0 release and 'favorites' however it is included as this will help me be able to explore amps in detail and save those settings to recall later. Some guys have their own methods with blank presets filled with blocks saved to certain settings, that doesnt work for me as much, but I appreciate the approach there. The best thing is experiment and dont be afraid of moving things. I've found that on some of the 'compressed' amps that I like increasing the bias up to 1.0 higher, but also decreasing the Bias X up to 1.0 lower. Sometimes increasing Sag a little as well. This creates, for me, a saggy but tighter attack. Sounds contradicting I know...and it doesnt work for all amps. But sometimes the interaction between drive/master isnt enough to get the feel where I like it for some things. Cheerz!