twohandband

Cool... that sounds like what I like, and it's nice to run across somebody who actually knows how to dial a strat! Only thing I would question is the 4k cut; it seems to me that would rob you of some of that Hendrixy glassiness which for me is what a Strat pickup set is really all about. Looking forward to trying that model.

Mmmm... I'm not using stacks. All my guitars have Strat pickups I wound myself to a late-50s spec. I'm a weird breed; a metalhead who absolutely hates humbucking pickups! So I'm kinda hoping somebody can chime in who is using a straight vintage-wound single. Thanks for sharing your experience; the Lone Star is one of the first damn things I'm going to try.

Yeah... I still make most of my money playing but a two hour drive between shows is a good day, you know? 4-6 is not uncommon, and sometimes it's 8-10. I don't tour anymore but I play with a few regional acts that do nice rooms... corporate events, banquets, casinos, etc. The driving is brutal but that's what you do if you wanna make money these days. My thing with the $$$... we don't want people getting the idea that what we do is not worth anything. Can anyone talk about how the Lonestar model works with strat pickups? I'm getting kind of excited about all the good things I'm hearing. I should have my Helix Wednesday.

I absolutely won't step onto a stage unless I'm getting paid... but then I'm not religious, so it's a bit different I suppose.

Ah, a church gig. I have a buddy that plays drums for one of those big contemporary churches. Does a Wednesday rehearsal and a Sunday morning show and gets like $400 a month. Great, cushy gigs if you can get them.

What the heck is P&W?

I just ordered a Helix rack, but I play for a living. Unless you're earning money playing guitar or are pretty well off I'd venture to say that a Helix is gross overkill. A used POD would be fine; in fact I'm using one live now as a stopgap till i get my Helix and it's very good. I can't imagine spending that kind of $$$ for bedroom usage. As for your use case... trying to run any modeling unit through an amp is really kind of missing the point and wasting it's abilities. Get a good set of speakers and run it direct.

So your bottom dollar might be a little lower than mine. But never step onto a stage unless you're getting paid to be there.

Please tell me you're not playing for free.

Never mind; got it dialed.

Thanks for the replies, folks. I'm most of the way sold at this point. Probably next month I'll be ordering the rack version with controller and a pair of expression pedals. Also: can someone comment on whether Native is worth the $100?

Well... I did try to have a conversation with the bass player, who appeared to be running the show, about why they wouldn't be asked back. He seemed receptive until I advised him to fire his GF...

Guess I've always kinda thought it looked like a butt...

It makes sense, really. It sounds like the bottleneck is the number of amps you are running and having more than a couple for a show does not make sense... if your tone is undergoing constant radical changes your soundman is going to hate you. I'm a heavy rock guy that uses single-coil guitars (I know, weird) so the Plexi 100 model in the POD has been a really good one for me; I even use it for most of my cleans. I'm very interested to find out what a similar model in the Helix sounds like.

Right... we had an opener a few weeks back with three guitars and not a tuner amongst them. This isn't 1970 guys; it's absolutely unacceptable for the audience to hear you tune. They'll never come anywhere near one of our shows again.

I haven't purchased a Helix... yet... so I don't have direct experience, but assuming it really is subpar I'm going to have to go with the posters who say that's a serious issue. I have a a $15 headstock tuner that works pretty well, so yes it is absolutely my expectation that I should be able to buy a $1500 processor and NOT have to use an external tuner. And since I'll probably buy the rack model and don't want to run audio cabling to front of stage that means going back to my rack in order to tune... that's a SERIOUS debit point. Not necessarily a showstopper, but I would think it'd be of the highest priority to have an accurate tuner built into the thing.

That's kind of what I'm thinking... a floor model would also force me to put my wireless receiver down front or run a long cable, neither of which appeals to me. This is why I went with a butt POD and not an XTLive. I can stick the rack model in a six space rack with a drawer for my wireless receiver and the butt POD as a backup, and a proper power conditioner on top and then the only things down front of stage would be the controller and two expression pedals. Probably what I will end up going with if I decide to jump; I play for a living so there's no sense in halfway measures. It's still substantially less $$$ than the Fractal or Kemper. I think it would be fine... honestly the only amp models in the POD I'm regularly using live are the Plexi Lead 100 which is about 90% of my tones and then the Tweed B-Man for a handful of clean things. Having been a soundman myself I know well the evils of radical tone changes going into the house, so I avoid that. So long as I get the flexibility I need with FX I should be fine. It sounds like that would work for me, and there are a lot of gigs I do where I would probably only need one preset.

So if I'm understanding this: I can create as many as eight different full signals paths within a preset, save them as snapshots, and switch seamlessly between them? Now we are cooking with gas. That puts me at about 85% sold; Axe-Fx is too pricey and too fiddly, and I'm not crazy about certain aspects of the Kemper. So another question if I may: How robust is the Helix floor? My gut says to go with the rack so the brains of my rig are not down front where it gets kicked/jostled/spilled-on-by-drunks. However the price of the rack unit, controller, and a couple of expression pedals is substantially higher than the straight floor unit and an extra expression pedal. Those running Helix floors: do you worry about damage front-of-stage? Also: My only end-use scenario for this is direct to house. I have friends with real studios so I don't envision using this as a home recording interface or anything like that, nor do I plan on using it with an amp or external processors. Given this scenario, can anyone point to major advantages of the full Helix over the LT?

How do the snapshots work?

I've been running a midi controlled rack rig for my entire working life; since around 1995. I'm going speakerless now for a variety of reasons (A bad back for starters) and as a stopgap bought a used butt POD XT and an FBV mk ii floorboard. It actually sounds pretty good, but I'm going to be upgrading to something a little more high-end in the near future. I'm considering a Helix. Reading reviews I'm seeing a potential showstopper: reports of as much as a full second of lag time when changing presets. The solution generally floated is to use one preset per song and use it like a board full of stompers. Say what? One of the main reasons I went with a midi controlled rack rig when I started playing for a living was to get away from that. In my opinion the boutique pedal thing is pure marketing hype and the only place you should see single-function analog stompers is in a museum. But I digress. The point is, if I'm switching from clean with verb, ducking delay, and tremolo to dirty with slapback and a phaser that needs to be one button... and there can't be crazy lag. I get that from the POD; one would expect the helix to be more capable. Can the helix do what I need, or do I have to look elsewhere?