ashetler1

In my opinion yes I sounds good at comfortable playing levels.

I will start by saying I don’t have a real amp to compare it to. I have the power cab plus, I bought it a month or so ago when it was on sale for 650. It was between that or going 4cm with a supersonic 22( I had this amp previous to the helix and loved it). At the sale price I told myself if I was ever going to try a powercab now is the time and that if I was happy with it then I wasn’t going to obsess over needing to A/B it with a real amp. With all that being said, to me it sounds and feels like a real amp. Before I was doing the frfr thing through a pair of line 6 l3m speakers which are a 2000 dollar set of speakers, and I spent over a year trying to dial in something I liked so it’s not like I didn’t give it a chance. I am very happy with the sound/feel at this point. Does the vintage 30 speaker model sound and feel identical to a real cab and speaker? I don’t know. I’d love to A/B it someday but for now I don’t really care because I think the speaker models sound and feel great. On top of sounding great, you have the ability to save which speaker you want in your presets or snapshots so you can go for a Jenson on your clean tone and with the press of your foot go to a greenback for overdrive. Just one example.

The powercab plus will give you the flexibility of choosing different speaker types or even using irs in frfr mode. I personally can’t get used to playing through frfr speaker systems, so the speaker models on the powercab are the ticket for me. It just sounds and feels more like a traditional amp+cab set up to me. If you use the l6 link to connect the helix to powercab you can control and save the powercab settings on the helix. I was on the fence about sticking with the helix as an all in one rig until I got the powercab now I don’t think I could do much better. I don’t doubt that the right tube amp with the right cab... (right for me being the key element), would be superior to my ears, although I suspect it would be a minor improvement considering how happy I am with my current set up. My plan now is to use the helix + powercab as a guide to decide what traditional amp+cab set up I want to save up for in the future.

I just purchased a vpjr tuner pedal to be used as an external expression pedal to be used with my helix. After reading that people were happy with the vpjr and the helix I assumed the vpjr tuner would work as well. So far however I have not been able to get the helix to recognize it. Has anyone tried this successfully?

I had the helix lt for a year before I got the powercab+. In one evening with the powercab I am stunned that line 6 doesn’t just ship this thing out with the helix, it’s night and day. I love running the helix through the speaker modes on the powercab. I have a feeling that everyone who says that the speaker models on powercab are “muffeled” are doing something wrong. Using ir’s, cab blocks, hi or low cuts etc. to me the ONLY reason for the powercab is the speaker model feature and that includes the natural mode and the LF Raw mode. As far as a frfr it is no better than my l3m speakers. Powercab made my helix come to life.

I don’t understand why everyone is so sensitive about people being excited for the new update. Just because people are excited for the new update doesn’t mean that they’re bitching, it just means they’re excited.

This seems like such a ripoff, however I have to admit this is exactly the helix I’ve been wishing line 6 would come out with. I think out of respect for line 6 I will wait to give them a chance to make something like this before I buy the ripoff. Size wise perfect, right between the floor and the stomp, a touch screen... I mean seriously line 6, it’s 2020! I want a stomp really bad, but this would still be a lot smaller than my lt But not limited the way the stomp is.

Factory reset button 5+12 while turning on

Just wanted to update, got my acoustic guitar impulses reloaded and they sound 1000 times better than they did before and the distortion pedals are all awesome! Total night and day. I thought before that I just was one of those people who needed the ‘amp in a room’. Now I know that my helix was just flawed before! Great news. I was on the verge of selling both my helix and pair of l3m speakers and moving in from line 6.

I was very frustrated when I first got my helix because of how much tweaking it took to get a amp+cab block to sound decent. The amps would want to distort very quickly and the distortion was not to my ears pleasant at all. The distortion pedals were extremely difficult to make sound decent, and keep in mind I’m saying decent. Not good, not great... decent. Especially on the neck pickup with either a stray or les Paul, very bassy, muffled. I tried some of the resets and it didn’t make a difference so I just figured it was my lack of knowledge and or experience. I figured out ways to get sounds that I liked, Mostly from tips from the experts here. I realized One day that I was only using a couple amps and basically only two distortion pedals in all my presets and they came from the 2.81 update. It got me wondering if the new models were right and maybe the old ones contaminated somehow. (I should say that the bass amps were all very sterile, I could get considerably better tone going direct to pa until the svt pro came with 2.81). So anyways I decided to try factory resets again and just kept going until i got to the 5+12 reset and it made a night and day difference to all the amps and distortion pedals, I’m so excited to try everything else now to see how awesome this thing can sound. Just wanted to post this in case anyone else had problems getting good sounds from their helix. Try the 5+12! Because you might just not be hearing what line 6 intended you to hear

I would also like to put in a vote for a supersonic 22 burn channel model! I had one before I got the helix and have regretted selling it ever since. I cannot get that tone. I’m sure someone more experienced than me could but I can’t. Also kudos to line 6 for coming up with the powercab. The ability to have amp in the room and also a full on stage monitor in one package=awesome

I’m in pretty much the same situation as you. I play mostly at home, I also play bass in a church band. The lt is awesome, the only things I wonder about is how useful the headphone volume knob would be and what kind of sound I could get out of my mic using the helix. But I have an interface and daws have compressors and eqs to shape the mic, I have a tc mic mechanic for live vocals and the interface also has a headphone volume knob so I don’t think I’m really missing out by having the LT.

Congratulations, that piece of gear should be useful too you for a long time as well and if you want to move on you can sell it for what you paid, good job!

The suggestions for a modeling amp are good, but you couldn’t go wrong with the helix considering the helix will always be relevant even if someday Down the road you find yourself playing a high end tube amp or a full sized helix or Kemper, the hx stomp will still be a highly useful tool. The little modeling amp however will likely get sold for a fraction of what you paid for it. I currently have the helix lt and am looking to also get an hx stomp for my church bass gig were I dont need the extra features and need a smaller object. The helix can do anything and have a use in any setup. so do yourself a favor and buy something that will be a tool That you likely won’t ever outgrow. If you need a speaker for it, buy a pa speaker and in the future you’ll have a stage monitor as well. If I could go back in time and spend my money wiser I would.

So I owe everyone here an apology, and this is a little embarrassing. The good news is problem solved and I love my helix now! Apparently I hate the way the amp models sound without adding a high and low cut and I’ve read that suggestion a lot of times both here and on other threads and forums but overlooked them because the cab block had them already but for some reason today I finally realized that people wouldn’t be suggesting it if it was already there so I tried it and now making presets is an absolute breeze! Thanks so much to everyone for being patient with me and making all the suggestions. Your care is greatly appreciated.