theElevators

Then spend 10 minutes and just fix it yourself! No need to "clean" anything, since the Helix is brand-new. Take the back cover off. Loosen up the expression bolt or even remove it to make sure grease gets into appropriate places: wherever all those plastic spacers etc make contact with metal, it squeaks. Obviously don't grease up the thread of the bolt where the nut is attached, or it will come off. Otherwise grease everything up. Tighten all the screws while you're at it (in particular the "claw" that attaches the pedal to the mechanism). Those 2 screws need to be tightened, otherwise the pedal can go crooked. When it goes crooked, it squeaks and scrapes. At the factory they don't tighten it all the way. Some people say Lithium grease is bad for plastic, I don't believe it. Spread it all over like cream cheese on a bagel. It'll be absolutely fine. It's a 10 minute job. I've done way more complicated surgeries on my equipment. I addressed the squeaky pedal and my Helix has been silent since 2021. Out of all the Helix repairs, this one is the easiest. Just note which screws came from where when you remove the back cover off. Have good quality Phillips small/medium screwdrivers, so you don't strip the screws. With the Line 6 instructions, you should be all set.

Also, try testing out different cables. I've seen all sorts of "partial 1/4" cable failures" in my day.

Try legacy simple pitch. It works good enough for heavy tones.

Going over my latest preset, how to have Hammond organ backing over your playing. Pretty cool stuff!

I have a cat as well, and I have a habit of vacuuming the Helix once a week. Expression pedal, around all the buttons, everything. Then I wipe it down with some Windex. Also when not in use, I cover it with microfiber towel and plastic that the Helix came in. No such issues for me. While you're disassembling the Helix, take liquid DeoxIT and add it to every microswitch aka tactile switch, then press a few times. That way you won't have any footswitch issues for the next 2 years

Clean the tactile switch, search this forum for how to do it.

LT has only 8 assignable switches. But you can disable the up/down buttons with a hack I provided in that video above. However, still you are stuck with exactly 8 buttons that you can assign things to in Command Center, no way to make the up/down buttons do anything else on the LT.

I have around 250 presets. So.... All of them are basically variations on my main core sound. The main settings: distortion, amp/cab, light delay, solo EQ all stay the same. Every song preset that I create has some kind of a quirk, or a unique signature thing. So I start with browsing through the previous presets, pick the one that suits me and tweak. Like for example, I know that preset number 076 has a nice acoustic guitar sound, and preset number 2 in another playlist has that awesome envelope filter. So I go and combine them, copy blocks/paste blocks. It's so convenient! Because for example the envelope filter is so finicky! It works for one song but doesn't work for another, unless I change the setting slightly. I may want to dress up my lead sound with some vintage fuzz in this one 70's song. I may want to add some kind of a synthesizer solo for this other song. Every song has different rhythm, dynamics, and even the same lead sound does not always work -- it needs a different BPM for example, sometimes it needs to be louder/softer based on what the other musicians are doing. I want to handle all the sound changes myself, and not have the sound guy try to guess where my solo is.... My goal is to have the sound guy not make any adjustments to my sound at all, just plug and play. So in short, for the variety of stuff I'm currently playing the preset-per-song is the way to go. Plus it makes the layout so much simpler because you don't add unnecessary junk that doesn't apply to the song. All my lead sounds are almost always in the same position. If I only need 2 sounds, I don't clutter my preset with unnecessary snapshots that I can accidentally step on. If one song has acoustic sound and an electric solo sound--same thing: I make 6 out of 8 snapshots that acoustic sound. And 2 right-most buttons are my solo sound. It makes it so much easier coming out of the solo to just slam on any of those 6 buttons. And it makes it easy to go to the solo by pressing the right-most buttons, one or the other. Sometimes if I'm trying out new sounds, I can add additional options on the top row. When I practice and I notice that I mess up and press wrong buttons, I reposition these snapshots. It all varies per song and how fast the song goes, etc. Sometimes I use the expression pedal to change between rhythm and lead as well, if it keeps going back and forth. Every preset is custom and it's awesome.

When I have my Helix connected to the computer and am running HX Edit, HX Edit frequently crashes and when that happens I cannot change my presets, and sometimes sounds. Restarting HX Edit, then closing it fixes the "stuck" problem. So maybe the fact that you're connected with a USB cable causes this problem. So I'm wondering if you had HX Edit running, which caused this. Or if not, if it's simply the USB cable being plugged in.

add a volume pedal and a wah pedal to an empty preset. Move the expression pedal and see if it responds. Meaning, do you hear the volume change or wah-wah effect. by default, one of them should work, when you drag in these 2 blocks.

There is no need for this this, because we have snapshots and stomps to change our sounds, and there's no need to go to individual presets while you play. But that's besides point... The only thing you can do is create a bunch of "chained" presets. If you use 8 presets, then for each of the 8 presets, you can customize the buttons to take you to the other presets. This can be done in Command Center. Command Center allows you to customize your "Stomp" mode view. In the same view you can mix and match whether you want to turn on/off individual stomps, change snapshots, or go to other presets. What we are trying to do is have one preset have buttons that will go to other presets from within its "Stomp" view. 1. Go to one preset, open up Command Center, and make sure that 8 buttons take you to appropriate 8 presets (including the current one). 2. When doing this, make sure when one button is pressed, the others don't default to "next snapshot" or something like this. There is a global setting you can disable to not have it default to that. But it's basically intentional: you press one button and now your layout can be completely different. In essence for every preset, in "Stomp" view, you have 8 different layouts. If you want all 8 to look the same, then click each button and re-assign what the rest of your buttons will do. Since you are not using snapshots, this shouldn't be a problem, but still worth checking so you don't have a "dead end" screen where you can't go to any presets at all. You need to make sure you can go to every presets from every other preset, so that's 8*8 combinations---have fun testing that :) But if you are using snapshots, then see what your stomp screen will look like after you go to a different snapshot than the default one your preset is saved with. 3. Since you have assigned a bunch of buttons in your "Stomp" view, you can now change their ring colors. 4. Once you've successfully set up the layout for one preset, so that it takes you to the other 7 presets and recalls the current preset -- repeat the same exact steps for the rest of your presets. On Helix Floor you have "10 button stomp" mode in Global Settings, so you can chain 10 presets instead of 8. Beware, that if you reorder your presets, this setup may not work as intended. Now you've created "wormholes" that link 8 presets from each other. Is it possible? yes. Would I recommend doing this? Again, no, because nobody uses presets to change sounds, when we have snapshots and stomps. And by nobody, I mean touring musicians who don't want gaps in their sound. And yes I'm aware of the "gapless preset switching", but you give up 50% of your DSP for that.. Not worth it. I have been using Presets for every song. Or sometimes one big "kitchen sink" preset that does all my sounds. I change the sounds with snapshots, and use the expression pedal to control different things. Never had the need to do anything else, and I use a ton of effects and tricks in my playing.

Knowing that Helix software would eventually not be supported on later versions of Windows, etc, I have a beater laptop for that reason -- running Windows 10 and an old Mac Mini that I refuse to update ... There are also workarounds, like running a VM of Windows 10. But yes, the Helix has been out for 11 years now, so it's fair to say that Line 6 has a pretty good track record on that. On the other hand Fender, for example released the "Mustang" processor, and completely abandoned it within a year, no updates, nothing. But, using some workarounds, even when the day comes when Line 6 abandons everything Helix-related it's not the end of the world, there are ways to continue to run the software to keep using your Line 6 products forever... until the hardware breaks down... and let's face it electronics like this have a lifespan of like 10 years, after that, just throw it away if you want to continue gigging without issues. In terms of new firmware updates: if there are any known serious bugs, they will fix them. If the software stops being compatible with newer versions of Windows / Mac OS, they will release an update for the Helix line of products until at least they release new Stadium versions of HX Stomp/XL/Effects, etc. Variax has been pretty much dead for a while. So overall, I'd say Line 6 did a pretty good job so far. All the products they currently sell have proper software that runs on all computers. There is no need for firmware updates to add some esoteric glitch reverb, the Helix platform already has everything that it needs to have. My Helix LT is now 7 years old and it runs pretty well. I've learned to address all the common issues like the footswitches glitching out, and somehow it runs absolutely 100% without issues right now. I do have a second Helix Floor as well. In the beginning I wasn't sure it would make it more than 2 years after the footswitches stopped being reliable... so there you go.

Here's a suggestion. You can only do split paths, but it's very tricky. 1. Add a duck'ing reverb block, with mix at 100% 2. Move the block to a parallel path. 3. Now on line 2, what's coming in is your guitar signal, what's coming out is ducking reverb only. 3. Add a sensible amount of delay after that on the same line, a few repeats, not 99% Now as soon as you stop playing notes, the duck'ing reverb engages, and the signal goes to the delay. Ducking reverb is sweet. It lets your entire note ring out, and when you stop playing, it creates this wall of sound. You need to play around with the pre-delay and feedback parameters. Duck'ing reverb works great on the Helix, and if you put it in parallel path, you can add a bunch of effects after it, mix it however you want. If you can't get the duck'ing effect working, if it's not automatically disengaging as you need, you can always assign things to the expression pedal and mix your delay out, or even bypass it. Not really related, but I crated a preset that creates a synth pad, all using parallel paths. So you may find it useful how to organize things in all those parallel paths.

You probably have the wah block assigned to snapshots and also control if it's bypassed by using the percentage. Having 2 of these will create a conflict. Remove the snapshot bypass. Leave the percentage-based engagement. Now your wah will always be engaged when after 5 percent, and disengaged when lower than 5 percent. If wah is not needed in one of the snapshots, that's easy: Take the "mix" parameter of the wah and assign it to snapshots. Simply go to the snapshot in question, and set the mix to 0% in that snapshot only. Now the wah can turn on, but you will not hear it, effectively bypassing it. When a block is mixed at 0%, it's the same thing as if it were bypassed. This is how I use the wah, or any other block I need to bypass/unbypass with the wah in certain snapshots only. Works consistently and reliably. I have this one crazy preset where one EXP2 controls multiple different things in each of the snapshots, not just wah, but gain/feedbacker/extra delay/synthesizer/vibrato.... There are also a bunch of toggle settings for bypass behavior, I never trust it (toe down, etc), as I saw some serious problems when it was first introduced. I just use the "toggle" behavior without any issues at all.