Greetings. Helix owner 2wks now. Have made several presets from scratch for both guitar and bass. Spent most of setup playing with SD 59er pickups, which I would have called "vintage, medium-output" humbuckers. I've finally plugged in my P90s and another "medium-output HB" guitar, and they're dramatically lower. I'd like to configure the input levels for guitar changes, preferably by bumping the lower guitars up a tad for the sake of my drives. BUT, I may need to pad input and incorporate some sort of gain block or boost. These are my symptoms.
I found during initial setup that my 59ers made practically every amp model dirty out-of-box and most of the drives really gnarly. I presumed this was intentional because guitar players like breakup, but I've been kind of fighting with it. I had to run my bass (only active pickups I own) through AUX, and even then every bass amp came out dirty except A360. I read on helixhelp.com (unofficial, but good) just today to turn on Global Pad and leave it. I wouldn't have thought to pad passive pickups out-of-box in a million years. So now I have presets configured around my 59ers that my other guitars won't breakup at all and feel like I need to go fix everything.
I clearly "did it wrong" in some way, 'cause the lighter pickups sound awesome even in their cleanness. I need to do SOMETHING LIKE "global pad, then either a gain block or a Kinky Boost for the quieter guitars". I configure 4 snaps/ 4 stomps and change guitars maybe twice a set, so I'd rather not consume a footswitch for this. What are the common ways to normalize input, both for my too-driven issue and for different pickup types? Thanks, y'all.