twohandband

That's why I didn't replace it. Working units are a minimum of $1200 and there are several obsolete chips that there is no remaining NOS for. TC did their best to offer parts and service for as long as they could after their suppliers stopped making the ICs, but that bird has flown. I absolutely do not recommend buying one for that reason... you have a very good chance of ending up with a $1500 paperweight. My all-time favorite delays are the TC2290 and the Korg DLR8000.

My tc2290 bricked out about five years ago. Irreplaceable part blew. I'm still mourning. Truth is there is no 1:1 modern replacement for that thing.

My question is what are you hoping to gain? Are you unhappy with the wahs models in the Helix?

I would have probably been the guy who stepped on your stuff! I'm a really active performer, so the less stuff I can get away with onstage the better. What I really hate is gigs where I have to sing; a mic stand between me and the audience is just in a terrible, terrible spot.

Hehe that looks terrifying to me. Even is something didn't get spilled on it I'd be basically guaranteed to kick or step on the pots to those expensive-looking stompers you got there...

Assuming you're right there! I'm one of those guys who has to panic-run back to my pedalboard when I realize I have a patch change coming! But seriously, I'm allergic to having the brains of my gear on the floor. Plus there's the issue of where do you put your wireless receiver.

You don't worry about damage down front of stage? I knew a guy that bought the Fractal floor thingy and the first night he used it a drunk chick spilled beer on it. I bought the rack specifically for live use, partially for that reason and partly so I could use a good rackmount power conditioner and also not have a long audio cable from my wireless receiver.

Pity. Out of all things celestion the CL80 is, to my ears, the one that differs the most from it's vintage counterpart. My go-to live cab for over a decade has been a Marshall 4x12 with vintage G12-80s. Not common; most G12-80s back in the day were 8 ohm models made with combo amps in mind. I found it when I was working with a touring act and we were using backline provided by the local production company. I didn't want to use whatever worn-out jcm-900 the local yokels had in their back room so I had a small rig that fit in a 6u rack and was just putting a Marshall 1960 cabinet in the rider. Generally those will have one of a few different speakers any of which is easy to work with. In this instance they had this beat-to-hell slant cab somebody had spray painted white and I'm thinking seriously?! The owner of the production company saw the way I was looking at it and said trust me, that's my best sounding cab! So I plug in and it really was magical. After the show I asked the guy what speakers were in there; he hadn't had the back off and didnt know. I aaked him how much he'd have to have for that cabinet, bought it off of him, and paid way too much to have it shipped to my address. I'd love to see a cab model with these speakers but am not holding my breath.

Dumb question: why the floor for live use and not the rack?

Arguably the best reply so far. Plus one on the distortion observation... and I'm speaking as a player whose first love is heavy metal. Most modern guitarists use twice as much gain as they need for whatever they're doing, and most modern metal guitarists have gone full retard with it. Speaking from my background as a live sound engineer, this just makes it harder to seat you in the mix, and when you have two guitarists with basically identical mids-heavy over-the-top humbucker crunch tones forget it... any such mix is always a compromise in which one guitar is constantly being sacrificed for the other. A good rule of thumb is to use the bare minimum gain you can get away with. To put this in perspective, I'm on the road with the POD this weekend; didn't have time to get the Helix dialed for these shows. I'm using the SLO100 model for almost everything, and the shows cover a great deal of territory some of which is pretty heavy. The highest my gain is set on any patch is just under 2. Also plus 1 on the Sadites recommendation. I found his stuff just yesterday, and he not only has great insights into the deep programming of the unit but also goes in depth on stuff like proper use of compression and EQ that every guitarist ought to know anyway. I'm sitting on my lollipop in a hotel room today and am going to watch thed whole series.

Now you've got me mildly curious... I don't suppose anybody has an IR for a 4x12 with vintage G12-80s?

So you use the IRs because it makes dialing your tones easier for you... that's as good a reason as any. But what you are NOT suggesting is that a player's tone is going to be forever deficient if they keep using the stock cabs. My opinion so far is that the stock cabs are a pretty good representation of the equipment they are actually modeling, and I'm EXTREMELY impressed with the mic models. Those are way better than I was anticipating. That said, I am going to check out some of the free IRs... just to see what if anything I am missing. I think it's cool that the capability exists, because it allows users to plug in esoteric stuff that might never be one of the stock models.

OK... being new to the Helix and the community here I'm finding the divisiveness over this topic to be a little bit comical. Who knew that preferring IRs to stock cabs or vice versa would be something people had a significant emotional investment in? All I did was relate my experience thus far, with a slight emphasis on an area in which my experience ran counter to what I had been led to expect. I didn't expect people to get pissy about it. I haven't tried any IRs, but I don't feel that I'm unqualified to comment on the stock cabs. I played my first gig in 1989, at age 15. I have made my living playing guitar and sometimes teaching guitar since my early 20s. I have performed uncounted thousands of live shows on stages large and small, and been on hundreds of recording sessions. I've been plugged into more amps and cabinets than I can even remember, and been miced in every conceivable combination with all manner of equipment. For most of this gear I know what the real thing sounds like. So when I tell you that I can dial in sounds without requiring any add-ons that I would happily take in lieu of physical hardware, I think it can be taken at face value. Maybe the IRs sound way better for some use cases. If they help you get what you're looking for then great. But don't tell me that if I like the stock cabs it's because I'm clueless.

It's already been said, but almost certainly high-cuts. Stop thinking like a guitar player with a head... think like a recording engineer.

Wow... an agenda? What precisely do you think that might be? I keep coming back to it because that's all I kept hearing during the pre-purchase research... that the stock cabinets were crap and I would have to buy IRs. But then I pull up a cab, spend five minutes or so fiddling with mics and maybe tweak the post EQ a hair and presto... I'm getting exactly what I want. When I say I don't feel any compromise I mean that I'm getting a sound I'm happy with... at least as happy as I have been with most physical gear and isn't that the whole point of modeling? If I'm getting sounds that I like as much as I would like a real amp and cab then mission accomplished; do I need to go hunting for more? I have no direct experience with IRs but I'm starting to wonder if people are gravitating towards them because they require less skill and knowledge to use. This would be much harder if I wasn't familiar with most of the modeled mics in real life, and have plenty of experience with how moving them around and blending them affects tone. I've been in and out of recording studios since I was sixteen, and that's probably making a huge difference here. I might do that. I'm happy enough with the stock stuff that I'd need some free samples to see if I'm actually missing anything before I drop $$$.

Quick update: took it to the blues gig last night. I used the Cali Texas model with the greenback25 cab for the whole show. A little bit of hair on the amp, a couple of different OD pedals in front. I never use squeaky clean for a blues show, so this was all I needed. A reverb that was always on, delay that was on most of the time, and a few fx on tap. I wound up doing some fast twiddling with my post-cab EQ during soundcheck after hearing what was coming out of the house, but it was pretty minor adjustments. I wasn't crazy about my tone in the monitor, but we were in a feedbacky room with these crappy yamaha wedges that need a lot of frequencies pulled out under the best of circumstances so that was seriously compromising the experience. Every time I walked out front where I could hear the house sound I got happy. I seriously need to invest in a set of IEMs, but never mind... Compared to how long it took to dial stuff I liked in the POD, I can't believe how fast I was able to actually take this to a show, albeit a simple one, and be 100% happy. I stand by what I said before about the stock cabs... granted it took some work with mics and placement but I didn't feel the internal cab model was compromising my tone even a little bit. I got what I wanted. The soundman, whom I've worked with many times before, complemented me on the tone. Not bad for a digital rig I got in the mail only 30 hours or so before showtime!

I remember looking at the plate reverb settings and thinking holy hell. BTW I see you are in Minneapolis... I'm just a couple of hours northwest of you.

I know some guys who have Fractal stuff, and all of the ones who are getting good tone seem to have paid for help. I'm not afraid of programmable gear; I'm accustomed to Lexicon MPX series stuff which is not the most intuitive thing in the world. But I spent ten minutes futzing around with a friend's AX-FX II and said screw this... aside from a ridiculous menu system, they've gone full-retard on parameters. Fractal does a great job of taking things that really are very simple and making them very complex.

In my very strong opinion, the entire rock star move back towards traditional heads/combos and stompers was entirely driven by endorsements. Equipment manufacturers like to use artists to drive sales, and by 1990 or so you were rapidly reaching a point at which what the artists were using was unapproachable by anyone who wasn't a touring pro. Who else can afford massive racks full of expensive processors and switching apparatus custom-built by guys like Bradshaw? So the pros were steered back towards traditional gear by endorsement money (and I can tell you firsthand that what you see from the ground is often very different from what's actually being used), and like a bunch of sheep guitar players followed.

I'm not getting that... I'm finding the stock cabs to be pretty good sounding with a little tweaking. Maybe the IRs are way better and I'm missing out, but I'd have to find some good free samples before dropping $$$. Completely agree with you there. On the POD I found one amp model I'm using for absolutely everything. I think I'll use more of the Helix. Mistyped... I meant the Cali Texas. The Lonestar model. I'm sure that's true... these are just first impressions. I'm frankly surprised so many people are having negative first experiences. I will put one qualifier on my comments regarding the preset merchants: most guitarists are not qualified to set up this gear. Part of the reason for this is that idiotic retro craze that hit in the early 90s and sent us right back to the stone age (read: the 1970s) and has never entirely gone away. Honestly, by 1992 the single-function stompbox was completely obsolete and the only place you should see one now is in a museum. Companies like ADA, which should have gone on to dominate the market, were thrust out of business. If the tech had kept progressing in a logical fashion, guitarists would be much more savvy to this stuff. But part of the problem is guitarists themselves, and really musicians in general. If you can't tell the monitor tech what frequencies you want pulled out, if you don't understand the uses and effects of compression and gating, if half a dozen other similar things, your skill set as a live musician is deficient. I encourage everyone who is serious about performing to go work for a local/regional sound production company for six months to a year. Once again: dialing this thing is not like dialing a real amp. It requires some extra skills, but IMO they are skills every live musician ought to have anyway.

It came early yesterday afternoon, along with the controller and a pair of expression pedals. It came with an outdated version of the firmware, so as soon as I had it racked I figured out how to get that updated. Despite the horror stories I had zero issues with this. I plugged in my favorite strat (like all of my guitars a homebuild job with homewound vintage-style single coils) and spent most of the remainder of yesterday working with it. System was rotel home stereo amplifiers pushing a very high-end klipch speaker set; same rig I've been using to dial my POD. My initial thoughts: 1) This thing is almost embarrassingly simple to program. I can't say enough good things about the interface. Coming from the world of old lexicon processors, this is a delight. 2) Snapshots are the best idea ever. I will probably be able to do most shows on a single snapshot. 3) Love the scribble strips. 4) Just once I would like to see a modeler that dials like an amp. In that regard this is very much like the POD; you have to think like an engineer. Compression on both ends of the chain, high and low cut, rapt attention to mic and placement choices. If it wasn't for my background in live sound this would probably be a kind of frustrating experience. 5) Once you get past the above, the sound immediately and obviously superior to the POD... and I was getting good stuff from the POD. 6) Why does everyone hate the stock cabs? I think they're fine and doubt like hell I will bother buying any IRs. 7) The people selling patches are ripping you off. This is far too easy to program to warrant paying someone else to do it. 8) This is so easy to program I am probably taking it to my show tonight. It's a blues gig so I only need a couple of sounds. I'm doing a much more complex show both Friday and Saturday, so unless I get more setup time I will probably take the POD for those. But I look forward to be using the Helix 100% before next weekend. 9) Thus far my favorite amp model is the Cali Texas, but others show promise. For the blues show tonight it'll be that amp for everything. 10) The range of options in here is essentially limitless. I can't imagine running it out of DSP. 11) The tuner stinks. Please fix. Based on a single day of usage, well done Line 6. Here is a digital rig that I think I can 100% replace my refrigerator rack with no sense of loss.

Yeah, don't mind me. I've been working in this business too long. I don't remember the last time I played guitar just for the hell of it. That said my Helix just arrived and I anticipate not putting my guitar down for the rest of the day... :-)

Just wear an upside-down watch. you can look at it while playing without being obvious.

Interesting... I've been playing professionally for over twenty years but I've never given a crap about tone at home for practicing. I still have the Crate practice amp I started with, and it's still what I use to learn songs. I am too lazy to set up my live rig in the LR...

Thanks for the tips! I'm gigging with the POD which is sounding good but I had to work pretty hard to get the models to play nice with my guitars. I ended up with an odd choice; I'm using the SLO100 model for absolutely everything except squeaky clean and of course the gain is barely even on; my hottest patch has it at around 2.5. I'm looking forward to having more good amp options to play with starting tomorrow...