theElevators

Are you in stomp mode? Press the mode button, what happens?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Everybody on this forum says "step 1 is to upgrade". I disagree. To me, anything after 3.11 is unusable due to serious bugs that will break my presets. I downgraded and am happily gigging and recording on 3.11.

I honestly think that all of the speaker options can sound very similar by EQ’ing the amp or adding a separate EQ. I can conjure my sound out of nearly any amp / cab, if needed. In the Helix my choice amp is Mail Order Twin with a pretty clean sound. Stock cab settings. I run all of my sounds through it: surf/clean/distorted/feedback/metal. Back in the 1960s/70s MOST well known hits were recorded with small amps in the studio. So something with a 12” open back speaker was used most often, I believe. To replicate that sound live, I would also favor that configuration, virtually. Also from the various rig rundown videos, I’ve noticed that guitarists favor small cabs that are mic’es in the isolation box. They just sound more focused, more immediacy, and no nasty boominess that is hard to get rid of. So another argument towards a single 12”, open back. Also watch this, you’ll see what actually makes a difference in terms of cabs. https://youtu.be/-eeC1XyZxYs

Stomp is roughly 1/2 as powerful as the Helix. So you can take that preset, import it into your Helix, and then have an entire 2nd line of your signal path free to add stuff to it.

I have 2 power strips: one turns on the Helix, wireless, bass amp. Another one turns on mixing monitors and my studio sign. So if I want to mute my sound, I can simply turn off the 2nd power strip.

Single 12” for me over anything else! I play 1500+ seat venues. I’ve also played outdoor festivals. For me a single 12” is plenty loud. I love the focused crisp sound. For some reason in my experience, a 4x12” just rattles the stage, is not focused, and is very muddy. Nowadays, the cab onstage is to just hear yourself. If you are too loud, the sound guy will be upset. Keeping a single 12” allows me to hear myself. I can adjust how loud I hear myself by simply stepping away from the cab. There are some parts in the songs I play where hearing myself too loudly will actually throw me off. Unless you are Angus Young, and you need to hear yourself all around your ginormous stage that is .3 miles long…outdoors, a single 12” speaker powered by a 30W amp is perfectly legit loud. I usually put my amp on like 2/10. Plus sound guys don’t like when the stage volume is too loud.

More like how DAW replaced mountains of gear…and in 2023 allow people to create music that was not otherwise possible 25 years ago, unless you had access to a recording studio. Now somebody can create music that can be played on the radio on their laptop…e. g. Billie Eilish. So similarly, you can build a virtual rig that only millionaire guitarists could afford back in the day.

When I use the tap tempo to tap in my quarter notes, when the tempo is not ridiculously slow. Then depending on the desired effect, the delay will be 8th notes, or dotted 8ths, etc. It's easier to tap your foot to the song's tempo, which mostly happens to be quarter notes. 4/4, or 3/4, etc... But I also have a bunch of presets where the tempo is already pre-saved for individual snapshots. Since we have a backing track, the tempo obviously doesn't change. So for certain delays that are dotted 8ths "like Edge from U2" stuff, those are already pre-saved. Then for other stuff, like my leads, I found a tempo that works for all my leads--simply a subtle stereo ping-pong...

If you only need your Helix to record stuff, then as @datacommando mentioned, a sound interface is very affordable. You can get Helix Native, or you may already have some kind of a promotion to get it at a discount. You can load all your presets into it, and have an interim virtual Helix! Helix Native is pretty great. My band has recorded a bunch of stuff with Helix Native guitar/vocals/other instruments treatment!

Open up a ticket with Line 6, and send it to them, is what I would do. Back up your Helix, if it can do that; or if you already have been regularly backing it up, then even better. From my limited experience with the various repair shops that were listed in the Line 6 directory--the 3 places I found in New York area were horrible. I would never come back to them. When I was converting to using a Helix full time, I sold all my gear. I used that money towards buying a 2nd backup Helix (I have an LT and a Floor). I also own a power amp, speaker, and an FRFR. Everything else I got rid of. Line 6 Helix is a computer made in China with cheap components. I personally cannot fathom having to recreate my 70 presets on another modeller, it would take me 3 months at least ... so it's out of the question. So for the time being I am stuck with Line 6 technology... So, I don't know what your situation is, but to me just like I have backup guitars at home, I must have a second backup Helix. I simply do not have any other gear that will allow me to play my music, and I do have a lot of very specified presets. And btw, I've already had to send my Helix in for repair. Had I not had a backup Helix, I'd have been really screwed. Anyways, good luck!

I cannot do it, because my HX version is behind--I'm on 3.11. But somebody who is on the later version can easily do this for you in 10 minutes. To be clear: there is a setting "10 stomp mode", it needs to be enabled for OP. That setting is only configurable on Helix Floor. That setting, even though is not accessible on the Helix LT, still affects how the Command Center works.

No, You can ask somebody (here) to do that for you for example. Attach your backup and somebody can open it up on their Helix Floor....

You can disable FS's 1 and 7: You would need to create a global settings profile on Helix Floor with the 10-stomp mode. Within that profile, you simply do not assign anything to those footswitches. Then you can upload that global settings profile onto your LT. End-result: you can disable your up/down buttons from doing anything. Comes in handy, because of the proximity of the A-buttons to the up/down buttons. You cannot change the assignment of the Mode or Tap tempo buttons, however.

You can instead use snapshots with customizable names/ring colors.

On the Helix LT, the up/down preset buttons are NOT assignable. They can only repurposed on Helix Floor if you have the 10-stomp mode enabled.

Try ground lift

https://youtu.be/eF58yUQ16cQ I made a video recently, just last week. In it I show how to mimic the sound of a Hammond B3 drawbar organ with a Leslie spinning up. To answer your question, just an idea: you can come up with "compromise" chords. As you know I'm sure, 2 chords can share 1 or 2 notes between them. For example: C major: c, e, g E minor: e, g, b So you can come up with a "compromise" partial chord where you can have just g and e notes that will satisfy both C and Em. Or maybe just a single note in octaves: E, e, e that will cover C, Em, E, etc... That way you can have full-blown chords and partial chords, or sometimes single notes. It could actually be a nice arrangement to go from full chords to just single notes! Additionally you can use the expression pedal to control pitches... IMO, the tone generator thing is a neat trick for one/two different chords... But live it's so much of a pain in the lollipoppers to perform. Plus the footswitches have these flimsy micro switches.... so if you want to play your Helix like it's Taurus bass pedals, expect the footswitches to start malfunctioning soon....

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.