theElevators

This sucks. That’s why I’m on 3.11. This auto bypass bug is a mess. The bug for me was actually from HX edit on a Mac—making a change to one preset messes up other presets with their bypass settings. So try restoring from the backup—it should work ok. Or downgrade to 3.11. Line 6 software has great features, but terrible QA. So I never use the latest firmware, unless I run it through its paces for a month or so.

https://youtu.be/EvcqULKNKgE

I found that some delays still don't spill over. I think because the feedback is 0%, it doesn't spill over.... Like if I need a single repeat on the left, then a repeat on the right, if the feedback is at 0%, it does not spill over.

I own an LT that I bought used -- after 3.5 years of heavy use, no issues whatsoever, except some buttons stopped being as reliable as before, but still completely usable. Also the plastic ring around the LED cracked into 2 pieces, not an issue at all just cosmetic if at all-- fixed it with plastic glue. Also cleaned out all the micro switches myself and now it has 0 issues. The Floor is another story. I bought the special edition Space Gray Helix Floor (maybe the special edition was the problem). I bought it to use at shows and dress rehearsals only. After a year and a half of very very very light use (about 12 shows in total), the Helix developed: Crooked expression pedal --the claw screws inside were not tightened properly, so the pedal started grinding against the side. The fix was very simple, but still. 2 footswitches stopped being reliable. Much worse than what the LT had. 1/2 LED on one of the buttons stopped working. So the Floor was a lemon, the LT was fine. Like I said, I feel that the "special edition Space Gray" had something to do with the lower quality. Maybe you don't switch your sounds as much as I do, I don't know. My set has fairly frequent sound changes throughout the songs. But this is unacceptable. I repeat, I barely barely used the Floor, and it developed so many issue in such a short amount of time. Plus, read my other posts about the horrendous service centers that break your things. Some things are easy to fix, like cleaning the switches, greasing the pedal, the little stuff... other things like re-soldering microswitches or god forbid LEDs is impossible unless you have the necessary equipment. Plus you always read all these posts here about things like: Helix not booting no sound blank screens Imagine you are playing in Madison Square Garden. Would you rely on this thing to be your only piece of equipment with no backup? I sure wouldn't.

links? sounds cool!

I have been using https://www.shure.com/en-US/products/wireless-systems/glx-d_digital_wireless/glxd16-guitar-pedal-set I always run wireless, unless I'm recording something to avoid any degradation of signal. This system is discontinued, but you can still find it on eBay. It's pretty great for most applications, unless you plan on doing the Angus Young thing where he runs into the audience 1/2 mile away from the amps. There are certain frequency ranges, some of them have greater latency, but offer more reliability. Corey Wong used this when he played at MSG, so good enough for him, good enough for my small/medium sized club gigs. Anyway.... I bought a 2nd wireless transmitter for the Shure wireless. By the way, for each transmitter, you can set a separate gain level, including negative gain. So that's very convenient if you have a lower or higher output guitar you want to use as a backup. Both transmitters can be paired to the same receiver. So if you need to swap guitars, turn off one transmitter, turn on another one. Leave the transmitters in each guitar. Neotech makes great holders for your wireless systems. That's it.

If you want to get a Helix again, the LT is really cheap nowadays, IMO the Floor doesn't really offer you anything worth spending an additional $600 dollars over. Check eBay, the LT goes for like $900 open box. All modern processors IMO are equally capable of creating great sounds. To me, I wish I had researched this before, the Helix suffers from low quality hardware in a big way. Just now, I did a quick Google search and did not found a single hit for "foot switch intermittent failure" or "LED failure" on anything made by Fractal, or Headrush, or Boss. Now do the same for the Line 6 stuff. Other pieces of gear have a complete foot switch you can swap out, for example this. The Helix has micro-switches. So if you want reliability and ruggedness on the road, the Helix is not it. This is how normal pieces of gear are assembled: FS failed? Open it up, unscrew the old one, put in the new one, plug it into the plug of the PCB. Imagine that.

I contacted Line 6 over the phone, and wrote down all the info regarding the 2 service centers with receipts in a Service ticket they opened for me. Let's see how Line 6 will address this. I have a European / Canadian tour in Jan/Feb so will have to make do with 1/2 LED working. I'm really glad I have 2 Helixes, if I only had one, then I'd been really screwed with these service centers, etc. I'll take 2 Helixes with me on the road, can't afford to have any more funny stuff happen in the middle of Europe.... At this point I have invested so much time into building my presets on the Helix, that doing all of this work all over again on a new piece of gear is out of the question. That means I'm stuck with the Helix tech for the foreseeable future. When the new version of the processor comes out, the price falls, I'll probably get myself like 3 spare Helixes lol. Pod HD 500X go for like 250 bucks mint on eBay, so hopefully the same will apply to the Helix.

I've played in power-trios for many years. To fill up the sonic space you can use the freeze functionality -- it's great. Many times you can do these "pads" while you solo. Then you have harmonizer -- also a cool effect to use sparingly, octaver as well. Then a nice delay can fill up the sonic space, stuff like U2--it's all one guitar. As for the thickness of sound, you have the ADT simulation, it always makes your sound bigger and more stereophonic. Plus now it's easy to have dual cabs, so you can have a big stereo sound. For me, I often just use stereo ping-pong delay in parallel, not timed to the tempo of the song. That just makes you sound bigger. I also play a lot with contrasting sounds: very wet, vs. completely dry. These sudden changes make your songs really interesting and diverse in sound.

My point is that if you're an authorized shop, you need to know what you are doing. If you take on a repair job, then you complete it. Instead of that, the guy opened it up, said "f this", and then stripped all the screws, didn't put the lid back on properly and said "I think we'll pass". This is unacceptable. This applies to other things, like cars. I have a Ford and ever since the beginning my car was constantly treated like a piece of junk, even when it was a few months old. Just a general lack of care, responsibility.

Picked up the Helix. He stripped every single screw, and half-screwed things in. THIS IS A CERTIFIED LINE 6 REPAIR SHOP!!!! Now I need to get new screws because he made all of them unusable. But hey! it was free expert diagnostic free of charge! lol

That is absolutely fine to say "we don't do this" or "no thanks". You don't instead agree to work on something, then after 4 days realize it's "PITA".

Sorry for a bit of a rant. I'm kind-of losing my sh lately. Had to clean my microswitches, but got 1/2 LED broken as a bonus. Long story short: I checked 10 repair shops in my area. 3 of those have decent ratings. Shop 1: Cleaned out the microswitches, but broke the LED. Then refused to take any responsibility from breaking the other thing "It was probably on its way out". Unlikely but possible, I guess. Brought it to Shop 2. Shop 2: Is extremely non-enthusiastic about fixing the LED. Despite confirming that I'd bring it in, despite explaining the problem.... to a point of probably telling me tomorrow that he is not going to fix it. "meeeeehhh, it's too much of a pain, I don't want to get involved". That's a certified Line 6 repair shop worker telling me this on the phone. "I mean, I'll take a look and let you know, but I am leaning towards not getting involved in this". So my question is: what the heck is this??? These are all "certified" Line 6 repair shops. Is this some kind of a sick joke? First of all the Helix is built with components that you'll find in Chinese Xmas lights.... Then you can't find anybody to fix it. Where can I find a place to fix my 1600-USD piece of gear without getting things broken/unneeded attitudes. Should have bought a Kemper, I'm sure I'd not been getting this much idiocy. ty

When I opened up my Helix after a couple years, also no fur inside. I have a cat, and cover the Helix with a blanket though. It's a good practice to cover your gear, otherwise dust will find its way inside and gunk up the already crappy microswitches.

I'm not touching this upgrade with a 10' pole I have a 4 week tour coming up... nope, no thanks. Line 6 is great at gaslighting users: "nobody is reporting this", when multiple forum users complained about knob #4.

3.50 update ate my homework...

Honestly, this is not a difficult DIY job -- you can take your Helix apart and clean out the switches. Some tips from me: watch a video on how it's done. Helix is built like your typical Chinese gadget: looks solid from the outside, but inside is all microscopic pcb stuff with cheap components. In particular, the little button plungers are not held by anything, if you flip the unit upside-down they will all fall and you will not find them. you need a big table with a towel for this job -- can't do it on your lap. I use Tupperware / bowls / shot glasses to store all the parts, like screws/bolts/nuts. Sort all your screws by height, etc. Take a picture of what's inside before you start taking things apart -- that way will know how it used to be. A tablet is very useful for these.

I cleaned my Helix LT: used liquid deoxIT on microswitches. It became as smooth as butter after that. I don't recommend WD 40 -- it's too messy. Anything in a can can spray all over the place, and you may wind up having trapped droplets/other stuff in your scribble strip screens. Plus I'm pretty sure that's how the repair shop killed one of the 1/2 LED lights -- by spraying stuff. That's why liquid deoxIT is easy -- one drop in, press the microswitch a bunch of times -- done. Don't need to use a towel to block the stuff from getting anywhere, and your LEDs won't get damaged.

And, I'm guessing you tried experimenting with the various parameters, like the X-fast is what I use. What exactly is the issue with the Helix's poly capo in your opinion? Just for fun, try other transposition blocks. Before 3.00, I used Pitch Wham and it was decent enough to transpose my guitar into D standard. Try out every single transposition thing that the Helix has and play around with parameters -- they can make a huge difference. Also, where in the chain do you keep it? Try in the beginning, and maybe even at the end of your chain (after the amp block). In my experience, Helix transposition is very accurate, so much so that I use a 3-voice harmonizer that I place after distortion/amp/cab. Try adding a compressor beforehand, etc... let us know!

Check that after you install 3.50, all your hardware still works! Check all knobs, buttons expression pedals. There have been some posts alleging that knob 4 stopped working after 3.50...

I had never used the pedals in the past for pitch adjustment. On the Helix, the Poly Capo is great. It tracks very well, there are settings to prioritize sound quality vs. low latency. I chose lowest latency -- for a live situation it is more than adequate. Even with low latency, you can still feel that it's there. Your body adjusts to it, but just worth pointing out that digital gadgets will always have latency... even digital keyboards, digital drums! My advice, if I may... if you are playing in Eb standard -- just tune to Eb standard. It will never feel as natural with any pedal or Helix. Helix poly poly pitch shifting is great if you all of a sudden need to play a Drop-B song or something like that. But not to play the entire set with that thing on. You will be sacrificing the feel. Helix already has (slight) latency due to digital signal processing, etc. The more pitch processing you add, the more latency you get on top of that. https://youtu.be/w73gKQzN0to take a look at my video using poly pitch on guitar...

Use 3.11. Problem solved. Line 6 has a lot of weird bugs some people experience, and yet others can never replicate. Like sole people say knob 4 stopped working after 3.5. How? Makes no sense. Why I’m staying with 3.11: *a ll my presets (60) work great with it; don’t have any need to update all 60 of them with dual cabs and then have to tweak everything all over again. * it's the most stable firmware version * ain’t broke, don’t fix

acoustic simulator is extremely sensitive... It's just how it is. I wish it weren't as sensitive. I spent a LOONG time dialing in my tone, and if I switch to an almost-identical guitar, it will sound horrible.

I have a Shure Wireless, but I have a list of things that can go wrong. 1) check the wireless transmitter cable. I have had that go bad where it works fine for most sounds, but on acoustic it sounds like garbage. The cable failed but was still working-ish, exactly like you described. So try changing every single cable in your chain: guitar->wireless; receiver->Helix. 2) check the gain of the the wireless -- if it's too gainy/not gainy enough, it can change your sound. Line 6 wireless have cable simulations "Cable Tone", where it muffles the sound as if you are running a 100-ft lead cable. Play with different cable simulation settings to see if the sound changes.

Use the volume knob on your guitar to clean up the sound. Add main effects to the remaining buttons that you can run in pedal board mode. To me, I can "limp" through my very complicated set with the following, just as an example 1) EQ for the solo sound 2) wah-wah 3) vibrato (the least crucial) The sound guy who lollipopped up your gear can add all the delays! If I absolutely have no way to control the sound on my processor, I will get some sounds if I ride the volume knob.... I used to play with distortion always on for a long time. I think with the functioning buttons that do work, you can compromise... what is the most important sound/sounds that you cannot live without.... and do that.