pagelaubheimer

Very much agreed about fuzz placement, which is why this was so mystifying at first -- I put the fuzz in the standard spot, and when turning it off, it loaded down the input impedance and made everything else sound awful. I only had reason to suspect that the input impedence was changing at all because I've had experience building fuzzes before. This is effectively building in non-true bypass tone suck in the digital domain, which is bizarre. Hell, the original modeled pedal (the Fuzz Factory) was famously true bypass before that was expected in every boutique pedal! I'm definitely not convinced that forcing the user to manually manage their input impedance (without them having any reason to know or suspect this) is anything other than a design flaw, but to each their own. Don't mean to be argumentative here, just expressing that this is a very weird design choice.

I mean, how am I supposed to know what the "correct" input impedance of each block is to even go through the workaround? Trial and error? I don't see them listed anywhere, even in HX edit. It just means that for me (and it seems like other people too) that fuzzes like this one are not really an option in Helix.

Look, I love the Helix, but this would definitely count as a usability issue. It's unusable for two reasons: Why would you want the fuzz to change the whole chain's input impedance when bypassed? In the analog domain, pedals with true bypass were considered a big improvement because they eliminated loading like this (typically called "tone suck"). In this case, it means that having that fuzz in the chain (in it's typical first position placement) at all is not really usable if you want to ever bypass it, because it so dramatically changes the sound of the rest of the patch when present (unless going through a pretty crazy workaround). Yes, it makes sense to have the input Z change when the fuzz is on for better fuzz performance, but when off? Makes no sense to me. I can't imagine that a typical user would have any idea what's going on, and why the sound is all messed up in this case. I only was even able to guess at the input impedance issue (which is something that is probably not even in the vocabulary of many guitarists) because I've spent a long time working on circuits, and have experienced issues like this before. I don't think the input Z behavior is even documented anywhere (which, to be honest, wouldn't help with most users, anyway).

Hmm, that seems a baffling design decision (as it makes something like the Industrial fuzz unusable by default). Would putting a volume or gain block before it prevent this behavior?

Anyone else getting a bug with the Industrial Fuzz dramatically changing the sound of a patch when it's bypassed (vs the block being removed completely)? It seems to radically kill the high end response. I almost wonder if it's modifying the input impedance settings, even when off?