theElevators

I had a toggle switch seize up on a Les Paul -- I fixed it with graphite spray...contrary to all logic, it is now as smooth as butter.

I think the picture of the octopus sums it up perfectly. Unlike your regular hypothetical pedal board where you have a bunch of pedals, if you want to go from clean to psychedelic distortion solo, you'd have to turn on like 4 different stomp boxes. So instead of turning on a bunch of pedals, you have just 2 snapshots: "clean rhythm" and "wild psychedelic solo". Instead of having to turn on/off a bunch of pedals, you have 2 snapshots that do that for you. That is the best example IMO. Each preset is your hypothetical pedal board. A snapshot saves the state of your pedal board: what is turned on/off and where all the parameter knobs are set. That's it! Isn't it convenient? Instead of having to reach down and changing the stomps' parameters, turning off/on pedals, you can save the states of all or your blocks. You can change the parameters of your blocks, but that can get confusing pretty fast--I recommend having an additional block with a different set of parameters, rather than changing the values on a single block.... otherwise you can save over your preset/snapshot and lose your settings. If DSP allows for it, just add an additional block.... Essentially, imagine your pedal board of 20 different stomp boxes: you can decide what things are turned off, what things are turned off and where all the knobs are set -- those are snapshots. Save where all of those knobs are set, and whether blocks are turned off/on. So in my case, I have snapshots that take me from: clean, dirty, solo, feedback,solo + wah. It's very convenient to be able to completely switch out your sounds with a the press of a single button, as opposed to 4+. Plus with snapshots, there is no audible silence when you turn things on/off. I I highly recommends using the "preset-per song" approach. Within each preset, snapshots are all the various sections, e.g.: intro, verse, chorus, solo, feedback, coda.

You are looking at snapshots probably. Or stomps. Blank because there are no names given to them. Or no buttons assigned to stomps. Familiarize yourself with what snapshots and stomp / “pedalboard” mode are. Also ways to set up your display: all snapshots, all stomps, upper/lower row snapshots/stomps. It’s in the manual, or watch some videos.

Yes, it's outrageous. Why not have an entire foot switch assembly that you can replace the whole thing: foot switch, 2 LEDs... with those plugs you can unplug the bad one and plug in a new one.... I know the answer... So you'd buy a new Helix haha.

Some more recent "lessons learned" from me: 1. Most important lesson is to have the same consistent sound through all your presets. E.g. don't use a Marshall in one preset, then a Vox in another preset. In theory it may work, in practice, every amp/cab/mic positioning will lead to a difference in sound and EQ, and will introduce volume jumps. It happens every single time. Every PA behaves differently, so if you sound check using a Marshall amp, then Vox amp may sound like garbage. Having all these options is great for the studio, but live that's a different story. It's always helpful to have do a sound check with your main sound, where all throughout your set, the same main sound will be heard with some variations. Some things can only be fine-tuned with a big PA. For example, I finally tweaked an acoustic sim sound to my liking. Guess what... I only successfully tuned it when I did a sound check and the sound guy helped me. 2. Add a 10-band EQ block to your presets with all settings flat, when you are not sure about some new untested sound. Enable it for a snapshot you are unsure about, and just leave it there as a placeholder to possibly adjust during sound check. Back to my acoustic guitar example... at home it sounded great, but on stage during sound check it was too boomy and unusable. So since I had an EQ block that was enabled in the "acoustic" snapshot, I was able to quickly notch out some bad frequencies. This EQ block was only enabled in that one snapshot, so the changes to the EQ only applied to the acoustic sound. We tested the sound at loud volume, A/B'ed between my acoustic and electric sound and called it done. Absolutely no way I could have done this adjustment at home or even at the rehearsal space. Then I took the same exact settings and applied them to the rest of my 2 presets that used the same sound.

10 days later and the LED is working fine. I ordered several spare LED's from Full Compass.

Yes, that is correct. If your Helix is not rebooted, the summing will occur. I have set up a soundcheck preset to make sure that left/right panning occurs. I play a few a quick chords before I begin playing my 2+ hour show to confirm I hear my familiar slow ping-pong delay. I also have other ways to check if somebody possibly rebooted my Helix..... for example the first preset in the set has snapshot "4" saved. I switch switch to snapshot "1". So if somebody rebooted my Helix, then it'll be back to "4"... that means I need to plug/unplug. Just test your stuff with an obvious slow ping pong: left/right/left/right.... if you start hearing left...left... only then you know there is a problem. As for certain venues or PAs swallowing your wet effects, that's absolutely true. For example, I have this one preset that has a very prominent single repeat delay. I can hear that prominent repeat at home just fine. On stage last night it sounded like reverb... barely even noticeable.

Sorry about reviving this post once again. I just confirmed that there is a noticeable difference between left/mono out vs. using a splitter that combines left and right into a mono signal. With the splitter, the signal was noticeably hotter and more distorted, as opposed to more "glassy". So there is a sonic difference due to (I suspect) hotter signal. For my test I connected my Helix to a Yamaha mixing monitor. My preset is of an edge of breakup clean solo sound... So I guess for myself, I will go back to plugging/unplugging a cable method, and using a sound check preset!

Helix has weird behavior with some effects, so maybe... For example the doubler effect when running in mono does weird phase cancellation... so ... sure. Most likely the person didn't build the patch correctly that's why there's this very bizarre instruction.

Deja vu... No, a dummy cable plugged into the right side will not correct any mono summing. You will be getting only the left side. There is a bug in the Helix, all info is in the thread above. Instead of a dummy cable, simply get a splitter cable.

Part information: " Here is the part number for the footswitch LED. 18-26-0011 Full Compass does not have a listing for it, so you would need to call them or email them directly for pricing. We have them in stock, so they would be able to get one to you. " Each LED element costs $2. I just went in and ordered 4 for the future. And ordered a bunch of microswitches on Amazon as well (since they tend to fail).

UPDATE: as I secretly suspected, the LED is now working fine -- it was indeed over-soaked with deOxIT or some other contact cleaner... took about 7 hours. I will wait for a few more days to report back, whether the problematic LED is 100% back to normal. However, it seems like whatever "stuff" was there is drying out and the LED has been gradually working better and better. Initially, the whole side was not working, then blue/green started working. Then finally red. Now it's back to its former red glow.

Hi gang.... yet again lol! So I took my Helix to be repaired (for the glitchy switches that don't always engage). Well, the switches now engage just fine, but one of the FS now is glitching with the LED color ring. It's great, isn't it? Fix one thing, break another? It seems like the right side of the ring doesn't work with red colors. Blue colors are fine. For white, I have the right side as blue, while the left side is white. And the default red just looks dim on one side. I'm pretty sure the person used too much contact cleaner... the LED is not completely dead. So my question is: could somebody point me to the part on fullcompass, so I could order it? Much appreciated. thanks! d

So, I played a gig overseas in Israel, and it went pretty good, except exactly 2 times when my snapshot #4 button did not work... only one song... I doubt anybody noticed... Weirdly, it worked without a hitch for the remainder of the show. It's my "lead" snapshot button, as it is for most people I suspect as well. Anyway, dropped it off at a repair shop the day after I returned home. Let's see if they fix it. Good thing I have a backup Helix. And again, unacceptable to have a Helix that I deliberately bought to only use for gigs, and not subject to home rehearsing... the Helix that stays in its case most of the time to have this happen to.

Once you move the wah back and forth, does the percentage work as expected? Just want to make sure you are not describing how your wah position was saved on a specific preset. If you enter that preset, even regardless of where your expression pedal is right now, it will show "25%" because that's how you saved your preset? If it's that, then there are different ways for your expression 1/2 to behave -- have it be per snapshot, preset or global, meaning that as you change your preset, the wah stays the same as where you physical pedal is now.

Expression pedal can control the parameter(s) of your choice. In your case you can set how loud the reverb is: toe is loud reverb, heel is no reverb. However you cannot change the "maximum" value of the mix parameter between snapshots. That maximum value is specified when you add the block and cannot be changed depending on snapshots. So if you expect to have "toe down" to be 9.6, 5.3, 2.4 in each of the 3 snapshots respectively, that won't work. If you want to have that behavior, then you'd need to add additional reverb blocks, and bypass unneeded reverbs. But if that is not an issue, and you simply want the reverb to be adjustable as you please, but be defaulted to specific settings, then rd2rk explains how to set this up. I personally have my expression pedal position persist between snapshots, because that's what fits my workflow. I want the wah to be where I leave it, while I add delay/reverb when I select different snapshots....

Well, I can say that my "like new" Helix LT cost me 750 dollars in December of 2019. So roughly twice the price. However, yeah it costs about the same as the Helix floor, plus you need to get a gig bag and Expression pedal for it....

Turn on the Helix, do this momentary plugging of something into the right side. It will be fine while the Helix is on. Meaning if you re-boot your Helix, you will need to do it again.

Well, if you plug in a dummy cable to the right, you'll be getting only the left side out. If that's what you want, then sure. But I think the quote you provided means that the summation of left+right into left does not work a 100% and has weird artifacts. The author recommends connecting both left and right to your amp.... meaning you should use a splitter cable to combine two signals: PS: there is a bug where left/mono always sends the left side only, until you temporarily plug something into the right side. I bet you the person whose quote this is is suffering from it without knowing it. https://line6.com/support/topic/64139-why-is-lmono-outputting-left-not-mono/

I think the Helix sounds just as great as FM9, or Kemper. The reason people still have doubts is IMHO: 1. Past reputation of Line 6, the various Spider models, the people who tended to use those amps and the type of crappy music those people used to make with those amps. It's like Subaru Imprezza -- it's a great reliable car and actually pretty safe, however it's driven by people who are predominantly d-bags, so it gets that reputation of a d-bag car. (it also gets crashed a lot more than other cars because of the street racing, inspired by Fast and the Furious). 2. Great difficulty to get your familiar tone and feel out of the box. My setup was basically a DS-1 and a Fender amp in the analog world. I could not find a decent distortion block that would interact with my volume knob the same way as the real thing for about a week. Once I dialed in my basic sound, the rest was very easy. I now have 60 presets that I have dialed in. In reality Line 6 gear has been used on countless recording sessions and live performances. Even going back to Pod HD-500 being used by Steve Howe as far back as 2013. Good enough for him, good enough for me. From several review videos, it is evident that FM9's stuff sounds great out of the box, compared to the Helix. Their blocks just work right away the way they should. I bet you if I take a DS-1 emulation and drag it into my chain on FM9, it'll sound exactly like the real thing. On the Helix, the "Deez-1" sounded and felt absolutely nothing like the real thing: it had weird sag, it did not clean up with the volume knob, it had hiss. I've watched Steve Sterlacci's videos about Fractal vs. Helix, and Fractal's "scenes" are way more complicated to set up than what the Helix offers with snapshots, for example. But in terms of tone, multiple people said that everything just works, factory presets are great and all that. I think Line 6 can learn a thing or two from them. I love the sound options of the Helix, what worries me a little is the build quality as I've had an issue with the volume pedal, etc. But then again, I've seen people complained about the USB jack dying on their FM9. Everything is cheap Chinese printed circuit board stuff nowadays. I have my Nord Electro 2 from 2006 for example -- still works absolutely great, nothing is misfiring, all switches work just fine.

I'm curious, what exactly you are missing in the firmware? At this point, except very few esoteric specific delays, amps, the Helix has everything. I would rather they spend time fixing bugs, and audio glitches, like the popping noises when you switch your amp on/off for example.

I opened a ticket for this, as I need to have two sounds, 2 snapshots: 1. -> distortion -> amp -> delay 2. -> volume boost (gain block) + 8 db -> reverb -> amp So I alternate between having a distortion on, gain block off to... distortion off, gain block on. + some reverb/delay. The 2nd sound needs to be a lot louder than 1, hence the need for the gain block. If I bypass my distortion pedal, the way I have my signal chain, the sound level gets cut in half, so I need to boost the signal back up. The awful popping noise happens when I switch between "2" and "1". Also curiously the trails of the reverb are not heard when I switch between 2 and 1, despite them being "on". I've isolated this issue down to the gain block. With the block in the chain, the popping is extremely loud, but ONLY if I play something on the guitar in the middle of switching.

This transmitter/receiver has 0 latency. You can connect it to the outdoor speaker if you want. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B097PCY5X4/

thanks! Yeah, I've seen this video. Just want to understand if the switches tend to all slowly fail one-by-one, or if they can somehow "break in" and become more dependable? My older LT (that I bought used) has all the buttons working just fine. I use it a lot more than the Floor, which I got specifically for the gigs, in order to not have it abused unnecessarily. Other than the cracked plastic ring that I glued, absolutely no issues with the LT. It also feels more smooth when I press the buttons, whereas on the Floor there's more scratchy/squeaky sounds when you press the buttons. As of right now, If I wear my Vans sneakers, and press buttons normally, everything is fine on the Floor. If I wear flip-flops that I wear at home, sometimes the switch does not occur. Like it clicks, but the engagement does not happen. I'm aware that the clicking does not mean the actuator was actually triggered. So, now what?... I can't send it to Line 6, because it all works 99% of the time NOW... Unless I use my hand and slowly press it, then there are times when the button fails to engage completely. They will look at it and say there is no issue, or better yet say they fixed it without doing anything to it. This is such a weird thing, as I spent a significant sum of money on 2 Helixes, hoping to have them be.. dependable, and not have a fear of equipment failure in the middle of the show. Why can't we have things just work for god's sake.... arrrrr

Just a word of caution: do not loosen it all the way, you may need to take the back plate off to fix the bolt if you do. Just loosen it by a hair.