theElevators

The main purpose for Global EQ is to adjust/correct your existing pre-dialed in sound for various problematic scenarios. Let me explain: You set up your sound for live use: you have all your effects, amp/cab, and everything sounds great when you play with your band. During that dialing-in phase, you apply whatever EQ you need inside the signal chain, this would be your 10-band EQ block. Or you may adjust the amp block to your liking, the possibilities are endless. Anyway, you've achieved your perfect sound and you call it done -- locked and sealed. Then one day you show up to play a gig and there is a speaker cab that has some unruly parasitic frequency. Maybe the speaker is torn, who knows. No matter what you do, you have certain notes resonate, and the whole stage rattles. This is when you use Global EQ. GE allows you to keep your presets intact and apply EQ on top of it to notch out certain bad frequencies. If you're using an FRFR GE will give you the tone controls that FRFR does not have. In a perfect scenario, GE should be set to not affect the mix that you sent to Front of the House, but only your monitoring situation (wedge monitor, powered speaker, FRFR, amp/cab). So back to our hypothetical situation, you go and notch out the problematic frequencies, but only for your stage volume because GE applies only to 1/4" out but not XLR out. Front of the House will receive your perfect sound that you have spent all this time perfecting -- your XLR outs that do not have GE. Global EQ settings may vary from one venue to another, so there's no such thing as a perfect Global EQ.... In a perfect world, you won't need to use it at all. I'm a guitarist, and I do not touch GE 90% of the time -- it's bypassed. I use a power amp + 12" speaker; and it sounds good to me. My power amp does not have any tone controls. Sometimes the stage is weird, too boomy or something, and then I EQ out the bottom, while leaving everything else as before. Also sometimes the sound guy I work with complains that my stage volume bleeds into the audience and he doesn't like the sound I have on stage -- Global EQ to the rescue! If I'm playing a big stage then that is no longer a problem, that's when I tend to set my monitor mix to my liking. If the stage is deep, nobody really cares what sound it is, as long as I'm happy. So to answer your question, Global EQ should be off at all times unless the stage/amp/cab you are playing through are giving you a problematic sound and you have no way of fixing it with your on-stage equipment. You have a power to apply "master EQ" on top of everything for 1) personal monitor mix 2) FOH mix 3) both. But in reality you should only use it for the personal monitor mix, unless your presets are badly adjusted. That's the main purpose of Global EQ, but feel free not to listen to me :)

Could you please clarify? Fraying? or frying? Like wires melting or getting undone?

Yes, there are tricks to prevent popping, like an A/B path. I learned to overcome it by adjusting my playing :)

With the EQ it is not as sensitive to different guitars! In my case I can play my Brian May guitar and Strat on the neck pickup and get a very similar consistent sound. With the acoustic sim, the Strat just sounded like an ice pick with 60-cycle hum/buzz. So this option in my setup works 100x better!

Just posted a video on my channel. Basically, I came up with a better, more reliable "acoustic" sound on my electric guitar using an EQ and Reverb. I just wanted to share it with you, because I spent several years trying to dial in my sound...unsuccessfully. My sound is obviously not 100% like an acoustic, but a good convincing approximation for live playing. The only thing that is still a problem is the popping sound when you engage your acoustic guitar sound after an electric sound, when the amp block is bypassed. But this is also there with an acoustic simulator, just need to add some delay spillover between snapshots to overcome that, and basically not strum when switching sounds from electric to acoustic. Here you go:

Have you tried factory presets? If you select a "blank" "new preset" preset, is there still noise? How exactly are you connecting your Helix, and what do you use to hear the sound you're making?

You can get your setlist from HX Edit. If you have 20 songs or so, you can capture those titles in one go.

That's because you are missing the "amp in the room" feeling. That feeling you can only get when you have an amp in the room. Helix, or any other guitar processor creates the CD-quality amp + cab + mic + mic pre + eq + compression sound -- that's the whole point of it. What works for me as well as countless others is to simply use a guitar cabinet onstage with your processor for that familiar feeling. To play guitar properly, you need some kind of stage volume, period. In my opinion, FRFRs or wedge monitors do not give you the same air movement as a simple 12" speaker cab would. That's why I got myself a Mooer Baby Bomb power amp that I connect to a single 12" speaker cab (either a standalone or from a combo amp). It feels like I'm playing a tube amp, I get feedback, I can step away from it if it's too loud, I can come closer to it if I have a tricky part coming up, it helps me really chug the chords properly. Without a speaker onstage, no matter what I do, I cannot get the palm muting right. It needs to be felt somehow, it needs to chug. I don't bother with having a separate EQ for my on-stage volume, I dialed it in in such a way that it's neutral. Feels absolutely the same as if I had my tube amp on stage. Sounds great, inspiring, and everybody says what an amazing sound I have live, so many different colors, textures and stereo effects. All the valve amp purists are a joke at this stage. Helix, Axe FX, Kemper are all capable of great live tones. Countless blind tests were conducted where people could not even figure out whether they were playing a real amp or a digital emulation. Dial in your basic tone and then leave it alone, no need to have a different amp for each song. I haven't touched my core sound in 2.5 years -- I do however keep tweaking delays, reverbs and other things of that nature that vary from song to song.

OK, so let's try a few things. Don't rush to buy anything new before you try what I've outlined below :) 1. OK, so first, try to get my signal chain going with an internal Helix amp. See: https://youtu.be/ueDcqkpzNAsr where I show all my settings. For my sound I use classic distortion and Mail Order Twin--nothing remotely similar to what Brian May used. Use headphones/monitors/computer speakers, or even a powered speaker (like one of those Bluetooth boomboxes). Does it sound good that way? No distortion of the harmonized notes? Now, run the same exact thing, but connect Helix to the "return" jack of your Vox AC30. Does it sound good at all volumes? If your Vox AC30 adds distortion, then that's unfortunately something you cannot control with the gear you currently have. Ideally, a power amp should not color your sound at all. Some amps like Marshalls unfortunately do! 2. It doesn't appear you can disconnect the speakers easily to tap into the speakers on your amp, you need to open up the amp, and disconnect things, possibly un-solder wires, unless yours is different. On most modern amps, that is possible. For example on most Fender amps, there's a jack in the back that says "speakers". There's a 1/4" cable from the speakers that plugs into it. My stage setup is to send XLR left/right to FOH, while the 1/4" jack is only used as a monitor mix. I run Helix 1/4" into Mooer Baby Bomb power amp that is connected to the speaker of a Fender Deluxe amp. Fender Deluxe is not powered!, as I only use it as a standalone speaker cabinet. So I simply connect that little 1/4" cable from the speaker to the output of Mooer Baby Bomb. I also have an Orange 112 speaker cab. When I can bring my own stuff to a gig, I do the same thing: Helix -> Mooer Baby Bomb -> Orange 112 for stage volume. BTW. Soon after I acquired the Helix and I bought Baby Bomb, I actually sold my tube amp, since I no longer needed it. I'm very happy with the setup I described above. A speaker cab is always cheaper/lighter than a whole amp. And Mooer Baby Bomb is absurdly small and compact. I did a quick search, and there are Vox speaker cabinets that are available. So if it's important for you for the visual aspects to have a Vox amp-looking thing on stage, you can just purchase it.... it's also something like 20 lbs lighter than an AC30 https://voxamps.com/product/v212c-extension-cabinet/ Video about Mooer Baby Bomb:

Just for fun, forget about 4 cable method. Can you make it work with Helix's own amp, as I show it? Maybe your power amp is very very distorted, is there a way to clean it up? Try changing the output level of the "send" blocks (instrument/line/mic) in Global Settings, it can be too hot for your power amp and you may be getting unwanted tube distortion! or the speakers are "nicely broken in", so they distort the signal. Just out of curiosity, what amp/cab are you using? IMO, as I've said before, 4-cable method was a nice thing to do in the olden days. In 2023 it makes little sense to use a real amp in conjunction with a processor. Too many factors to consider, too much inconsistency. Take it from a former cork-sniffer. Just use the Helix, it has all the amps you could possibly ever need. Your amp is not special, and can easily be substituted for what's available in the Helix. Besides, when you run a digital processor with an amp using 4-cable method, you are effectively losing fidelity, when you convert digital to analog, then analog to digital, then again digital to analog. There's an additional conversion step where you are no longer benefiting from using a tube amp, as you would have been in the olden days :) Run your Helix -> clean power amp -> speaker cab for stage volume/air movement. the end. I tour regularly, and play a BMG guitar, as you can see. lol

If your amp doesn’t have a send and a return, you cannot do 4 cable method. https://blog.andertons.co.uk/learn/what-is-4-cable-method If you are using the 4 cable method, you are adding effects to the preamp signal of your amp, and sending it to the power amp. Your blocks should be in this order. Guitar, wah, distortion, send1 block -> physical amp’s input, physical amp’s send jack -> return1, harmonizer, reverb/delay -> finally into your physical amp’s return jack. So in your setup, put harmonizer after your send / return blocks, not before.

When I use any harmonizer, I put it after the amp/cab: at the end of the chain. If you run the harmonizer into the amp, it will result in sounding like you are plying double stops—it’ll be distorted. Take a look at my video about the placement of the harmonizer:

I have had certain heavy presets crash HX Edit on my Mac, and it made Helix unresponsive a few times in the past. I had to reboot the Helix to get it to work again. But this was when I had my Helix connected to the computer, which is not how I play live... Maybe you're having issues with one specific preset? What happens if you don't connect the Helix to your computer?

Back up Helix. Do Factory Reset. Try if it works. Restore from backup

LT is compatible with Helix Floor. Not necessarily the other way around. Floor has some features that LT does not have, such as: 1) mic jack, 2)10-stomp mode 3) extra effects loops. So you may create a preset that uses Floor features that do not exist on the LT, as a result they will not work on the LT. However, any preset created on the LT can work on the Floor.

No, they are not reusable. You will need to recreate the patch from scratch one block at a time. Pod GO / Helix have the same blocks though. The only other thing, for some reason I needed to set my gain higher on the Pod GO as opposed to on the Helix.... same exact distortion block, but on the Pod GO, I was having less gain... weird....

Do not use the toe-down feature. It is not thought-through. I tried it briefly when 3.15 came out, then quickly downgraded to 3.11 and have been on it ever since. There is a bug that is still not fixed according to what people have posted--when you modify one preset's bypass behavior, it applies to unrelated presets. No-good! Simply use the bypass by percentage. If you want the wah to be off in a snapshot, simply take the "mix" parameter, assign it to snapshots, and set it to 0% in the snapshot you want the wah to be off.

Dim/Bright setting is as follows: 1. you set up your snapshot buttons to an explicit color, e.g. red, blue, white as opposed to "Auto Color". 2. In global settings / Display, you select "Dim/Bright" 3. when you are not in that specific snapshot, you will see the outline of the ring color, dimmed. Like it'll be dark-red as opposed to bright red. Or dark-blue, or dark-yellow. To disable that behavior: 4. In global settings / Display, you select "Off/Bright" 5. Your rings will turn off when you are not in that specific snapshot. This feature is there so you can better see where your buttons are. To me it's more confusing as I can confuse a dimmed color with the "engaged" color when I'm playing onstage. This does not affect the display brightness, that is fixed. see my video:

I bought the new system, and here's my review. If anybody's interested.

Simply click the pedal in, to select 1/2 and save it for the snapshot. Cafes with live music? There are too many options to name. For jazz or rock? For jazz, there's the Blue Note. For rock, lots of stuff in Williamsburg for example.

Do you see new cabs on the Helix itself, like if you try to add a block on the physical Helix and go to the cabs location ? If you do but do not see them in HX edit on the computer, your Hx edit version is old. There’s a pinned post about it in the forum.

Yay! Now I can replace David Gilmour in Pink Floyd! Sounds cool, fascinating to look at when the speakers are spinning in the actual physical unit, but to me sounds like a regular Leslie, ok maybe 2 Leslies at slightly different speeds, ok maybe 3.

Objectively speaking, Helix has all the features already. Lots of amps/cabs. No need to have every single esoteric thing, that's too much. This introduces option paralysis, too many things to choose from. And to me, it's extremely frustrating that such a simple bug as the left/mono one is yet to be addressed. So I'll continue using 3.11 that works for me. I built all my presets as of 3.0 and they are still using 3.0 features. The rest is absolutely useless to me. There's nothing that Helix lacks as far as I'm concerned, all the sounds imaginable are there. So what's next? I have no clue. Fix the bugs, Line 6! :P

oh wow... more amps/cabs/effects... why not just fix all the outstanding bugs? 1. left/mono not being mono 2. bypass behavior chaos that still exists in 3.5

No! No such thing. It'll keep oscillating at a constant speed, unless you use some trickery with the expression pedal to change the rate.