theElevators

If I were to guess, the OP is a doctor of a lawyer :) Doctors or lawyers can afford to buy 5000-dollar Les Pauls and 4000-dollar Mesa Boogie amps. So why... because they can, they're fun toys. No gigging musician I have come across will use an amp like that using 4-cable-method, and then run in stereo out of a power cab... Well unless they are way out of my league and play with world-famous acts, and have truck-loads of gear. Gigging musicians tend to simplify their setup, rather than complicate it... And that's why I settled for a Helix after 20+ years of having to have my "tube" "warm" "analogue" sound. BTW, analogue/digital/analogue conversion during the 4-cable method also diminishes the actual use for a real tube amp as the quality degrades. I remember a long time ago having noise issues when trying to run a distortion pedal inside a pedal board switcher, so the degradation of sound is definitely there.

Hey. I run my Helix in stereo, so let me try to help. Not sure what exactly you're asking though. In most situations, the stereo is achieved by running effects such as panner, stereo tremolo, chorus, delay, reverb in stereo after your cab block. That's what turns mono signal into stereo. In 3.6 Line 6 also added stereo cab blocks where you can have 2 different microphones L/R for that stereo spread. Most people run their Helix in stereo for the Front of the House mix, and mono for stage volume. Modern amps consist of 2 parts: preamp and poweramp. Preamp colors and distorts your sound -- you have all the knobs to shape your sound. Poweramp just amplifies the sound that is fed into it at one volume -- it's crystal clear and not distorted. If your amp has an effects loop, you can add things between the preamp and poweramp. Usually the goal is to add time-based effects AFTER the preamp, that way they are not distorted by the preamp and are crystal-clear. You don't want your delay to be distorted, otherwise it'll turn into a giant mess. Below is a crude 4-cable method signal path: guitar (cable 1) -> Helix's input -> some blocks like wah/distortion for example -> -> out of Send 1 to Mesa's input (cable 2) -> out of Mesa's send to Helix's Return 1 (cable 3) -> -> a cab block or an IR -> stereo chorus, stereo delay -> output to FOH (L/R) / Mono (L) to powered speaker/ Mesa's return (cable 4) You use the preamp of your physical amplifier inside the Helix signal chain, and use the power amplifier of your physical amp to amplify the resulting sound. There are some variations on the 4-cable method, however. For example, you don't want to have the final signal to come out of your physical combo amplifier -- that would make it "3-cable method" I guess... Since you said you want to run in stereo, then what you need to do is add the cab simulator to your chain. Since you will be sending your finished sound to FOH, you need to have a guitar cab/IR followed by all the stereo blocks that would make your output stereo (stereo tremolo, stereo ping-pong delay, panner). Now that your signal is in stereo, and you can send it to the FOH via mic-level XLR cables (L/R). If you need to hear yourself on stage, use the 1/4" output and send it back to your Mesa. Now your Helix's volume knob will control the output of the 1/4" and therefore the loudness your Mesa for onstage volume. That's what makes it 4-cable method. If you for some reason do not want to use the Mesa to monitor yourself on stage, then you can use an FRFR, a powered speaker in the same fashion at the end of the chain -- you will hear the final product with all the delay and chorusing onstage in mono. There are some people that like to complicate their lives even further -- they absolutely do not want to hear the cab/IR sound coming out of their physical on-stage cab -- this is basically a speaker emulation sound coming out of a speaker. In that case, you would need to have a separate signal path for your on-stage signal that will bypass the cab/IR. It's a complete overkill, yet some people on this forum keep asking how to do it. --- My advice is to ditch this 4-cable method. You may think your amp is very special and cannot be replicated with what the Helix has, but you are wrong IMO. There are so many options, and if you tweak things long enough you'll get there. The whole point and beauty of a Helix is the fact is that it replaces your entire signal chain, rather than being used only for effects. That's my 2c. But I know some people absolutely cannot live without their specific pedals/amps. I watched how to do the 4-cable method video and realized that it's great and neat, but completely unneeded. FWIW, I run my Helix to FOH L/R using everything that's inside the Helix, no external pedals. To hear myself on stage I run my 1/4" into a compact power amp: Mooer Baby Bomb connected into a single 12" speaker on stage. Or I simply run the signal into a power amp of a combo amp like a Peavey Bandit for example. I send the same exact signal to FOH as well as my on-stage amplifier. Works great!

In Helix terminology "virtual guitar pedals", amps, cabs are all referred to as "blocks". Whatever looks like a little square in your preset view, is a block. You can assign some pedals to stomp buttons. You don't need to assign every single block to stomp buttons. Case and point: amp/cab does not need to be bypassed/un-bypassed; they are in your preset, but they don't need to be turned on/off. You can assign multiple blocks to the same button. For example, you can assign distortion and reverb to the same button. When you do bypass assign, the button press flips the bypass status of the block. If the block is currently bypassed, you press it and it will be un-bypassed. You can also configure it to operate in momentary switching mode: press and hold the button rather than press once. With multiple blocks assigned to the same button, you can "turn things on/off". For example: you can have one button that bypasses 2 blocks and un-bypasses 3 other blocks. So if you want to go from reverb'y chorus clean sound to distorted sound with delay you simply have: Chorus un-bypassed, reverb un-bypassed, distortion bypassed, delay bypassed. Press the button and you have: bypassed, reverb bypassed, distortion un-bypassed, delay un-bypassed. My suggestion is to use snapshots, however -- way more flexible. It's the best thing about the Helix honestly.

Tap/Tuner button cannot be assigned to do other things, same as the Mode button.

oh! that guitarist was also wearing socks! darn. maybe that was it!!!

I have personally seen this! I gave my complete backup to another guitarist. He then overwrote my global settings with his old ones. Not exactly sure what it was, but for him, that menu kept popping up -- I saw that in person. It was resolved by me taking his Helix and overwriting global settings with my own again. Problem was solved. You most likely have your global settings from a previous firmware version....? Try to reset the global setting and recreating it. Or if you have your current global settings, just overwrite it.

well, I guess he meant he got it in 2015... maybe he's French.. :)

attach your preset, or provide the screenshot of the signal chain please.

You can use the "Send 1" as your 1/4" output, while leaving your output as "multi". That way you will have your cab sim on all outputs: 1/4", XLR, USB. If you want to bypass the cab, then plug into Send 1 jack. Simple! However, I don't bother with this separate signal chain for my on-stage monitoring. It works just fine exactly the same way it's going to FOH. Plus it's better to put delays and certain reverbs AFTER the amp cab IMO, not before. Otherwise you will not get that studio quality delay going to FOH because they'll be going through the cab sim. So in your scenario, you will never be able to hear the same exact sound on stage as is going to the PA potentially. Hence this is another argument against your proposed setup. I like to hear exactly what is going to the PA: all the delays/reverb. Regarding effects before the amp/cab: certain effects are meant to be in the chain before the amp, like the Fender '63 reverb unit, for example. Yet, there are certain delays/reverbs that should be run after the cab, like the "hall" reverb, or the stereo ping-pong delay. My setup is my Helix to FOH via XLR (L/R). For stage volume I use Mooer Baby Bomb that I run out of the 1/4" Mono/Left into a 12" speaker cab. I control my 1/4" output with the volume knob, while the XLR volume is fixed at microphone level. Sounds great, no need to remove the cab sim. I've spent quite a lot of time trying to experiment with all that stuff, and came to a conclusion that a clean power amp can run my chain as is and it will sound good enough to play gigs without a PA or simply for stage volume. To each his own, but IMO, simple is always better! (My source: I play 2.5 hour shows all over the world, so I've pretty much ironed out all the kinks. )

Opinions are like a brain.... some have it. LOL

Most likely you have a different output level than you had on HD500. You can choose from: mic/instrument/line. See what your HD500 had and do the same. Otherwise, as far as I know, the two units should work the same way, with the Helix sounding "better" because of oversampling. But I don't own anything older than the Helix, so I can't confirm.

If you are editing your snapshots, simply bypass / un-bypass things you need; then click save. That's all you need to do. Bypass-assign is IMO completely unnecessary feature that is buggy as well. I went through all my presets and removed that assignment. It used to cause the state of auto-engaged effects to flip for me. 2 examples from my presets. 1. you want to have snapshot 1 be dirty, and snapshot 2 be clean: simply un-bypass the distortion block in snapshot 1, save. Then bypass distortion block in snapshot 2, save. 2. You have your wah-wah auto-engaged past 5%. But in snapshot 3 you want the wah-wah to be disabled, even if the expression pedal is engaged: Remove any snapshot-bypass controls. Bypass is assigned to the Expression pedal 2: its state flips after 5% engagement, and turns off if less than 5% after 350 ms. Assign the "mix" parameter to snapshots. Go to snapshot 3, set mix parameter of wah to 0, save. You have effectively bypassed the wah in that snapshot--it's on but mixed out. I use this trick if I want to control something else in snapshot 3, like some filter.

No, no such thing. You would need to select each parameter and do "snapshot assign" for it. The limit is 64 parameters. If you max out your preset you will exceed that limit after around 10 blocks. So, nope. In my experience I've only needed to assign the following parameters to snapshots: 1) gain 2) mix 3) BMP. I mainly bypass/un-bypass things in snapshots, don't completely change all the parameters. And I have 65 presets. Some people assign amp controls to snapshots. But I've never seen the need to control every single thing within each snapshot: sounds impractical and unnecessary.

If you are running your HX device with a distortion into an amp that can easily get overdriven (like the Bassman), then if your signal is too hot, it will sound harsh. Try lowering the output level (in global settings, set it to instrument, or mic), or simply turn down the volume knob of HX Effects so it stops being harsh. I think you are overdriving the amp with the very hot signal, that's what's happening. Some amps are very clean, no matter how hot the signal, others have that warm sound, especially if you really crank it. Even an effects loop can add a certain harshness to your sound on some amps (for me, all Marshalls do that).

Sir/ma'am: You're better off calling Line 6 and getting your answer, honestly. This is forum is a bunch of people taking their time to try to help you. Also, if you think everybody else is dumb and you're so bright, then go read the manual and figure it out by yourself. "DUH".

make a video, show what issue you're having.

Last night saw a guitarist using Kemper Stage at a gig. I came up to him and asked how it's held up, any issues with the buttons? Yep, he said, button number 1 is unreliable and didn't always work. So... it's not an exclusively Helix thing... Kemper.. Kemper!! which is supposed to be the holy grail of touring gear has the same exact problems because they are using the same cheap components. Just thought I should mention it. Kemper Stage came out about 4 years ago btw.

Snapshots allow you to save what blocks are enabled/disabled within your preset. HX Edit Saves the snapshot you are in... so if you disable something while being in Snapshot 1 and save it; you only disable that block in snapshot 1; other snapshot will have that block enabled. If you decided to disable something in all snapshots, you would need to iterate through all of the snapshots and save the changes in there. Additionally you can assign various parameters to snapshots -- you will get brackets around that parameters, e.g.: "[gain]". When you first assign that parameter to the snapshots, al snapshots will have the same value, e.g. "30%". Then you can go to specific snapshots and adjust the gain parameter, and save each snapshot. For example, in Snapshot 5 you can save it to "55%". Best just practice creating/editing snapshots to get a feel for how it works, it's pretty intuitive.

Press the Mode button... you are probably in pedal board mode... If you are then the snapshot buttons will disappear/reappear if they are not assigned to buttons using Command Center (look it up). A somewhat related example... I have all my presets running in snapshot mode -- 8 snaps. To avoid my snapshot buttons disappearing, I recreated all of my snapshot buttons in stomp mode. So if I press the "mode" button, I will still see the same snapshots, but without the up/down buttons.

You'd have to replicate your signal path twice.. on the Helix you can do that. You have 2 DSP chips, in other words 2 lines on the Helix. So create your signal twice: top one will be the XLR mix, the bottm will be 1/4". Frankly sounds like an overkill. But doable.

There's actual volume, then there's "perceived" volume. If it cuts through the mix, it appears louder, even if it's not necessarily "loud". So the only practical thing to do is use your ears and test things in context IMO.

Check out snapshots though! They are a vast improvement over having to use presets/effects. Otherwise, you are not taking advantage of the latest Line 6 software improvement...

Yeah, I don't know what to tell you, why some people have no issues, yet some have switches malfunctioning early on. Like I know a guitarist who used Pod HD500 for 10 years, and then used it as a MIDI controller for his Kemper also for years... constantly playing gigs and going on tour -- 0 issues. Regarding being a heavy stomper, it's a spring mechanism, so it shouldn't matter how hard or light you press the button. Maybe it's a bad batch, same as with my Helix. My EXP pedal was also not tightened properly and I had to open it up and tighten the screws. Who knows? But again, from personal experience: after cleaning my micro switches a year ago, all switches are still working 100% correctly. So I still think that there is an issue when you first start using your HX product there is some kind of debris that get stuck in the micro switch... That black foam disintegrates when you first start using your gear, and then the foam gets more sticky or something so it doesn't flake as much. Try cleaning the switches first with liquid DeoxIT. Re-soldering the micro switches can be a big job--don't want to brick your HX gear if you're not careful.

3.61 is the desktop editor update only.

To me it sounds like the Boston tone, but completely dry (no reverb/delay). This guy pretty much nailed that sound, you can try to use that as the basis for your sound: