theElevators

Yes, I filed a bug with support. Also, making changes to "behavior" on one preset affects other presets. I immediately downgraded to 3.11 as I need my Helix to be reliable and not get stuck with the wah on when I don't need it.

I guess one way to find out! If things appear out of nowhere right after upgrading, then it's 99.9% likely it's a software bug.

What I still don't understand to this day is: how come in the 21st century nobody figured out how to do sound switching without an audible gap prior to Kemper (I believe). What's funny is that old Digitech rack units had spillover delay way back in the early 90's and there were no audible gaps when you switched sounds. I think the driving factor for innovation was always portability. A grand piano or a Hammond B3 are huge and require several people to move, so there was a demand for making it more portable. Analog guitar rigs for your typical bar band musicians have always been and still are more manageable: guitar, a combo amp and a couple pedals is all you really need to play a gig... Keyboard manufacturers were always trying to make things more compact, if you think about it: Church organ -> Hammond B3 -> transistor organ -> small clonewheel organ that weighs 15 lbs -> computer plugins. Plus as a keyboard player you were expected to play a variety of keyboard instruments (piano, organ, synth, mellotron, etc) instruments that have keyboard, while the guitarist only plays... guitars. So that drove innovation: how can you consolidate a truckload of keyboard instruments into a small board. In terms of portability for me, Helix actually takes up more space than my old compact travel rig. Helix also weighs more. I used to fly in with 3 things: DS-1, Boss MS-3 (small digital processor for modulation/delay/eq, etc), Morley wah: all of them fit into my small backpack. At the venue, there'd be a rented amp waiting for me. Now with the Helix, I still play through a physical rented amp (well, through speaker of the amp rather). I bring my Helix and my compact power amp for stage volume because I want consistency. What's improved is the ridiculous amount of bells and whistles that I'm able to have: my sounds are all tailored to each song. I have CD-quality sounds with spillover delay, other fun gimmicks. I also go in stereo. The setup and sound check are a lot faster now than before. Before, I had to spend a long time fishing for the sweet spot on the amp so that it's not too boomy, not too trebly and not too distorted. Now all my sounds on stage just work out of the box, and the sound guy knows that he'll get the same familiar signal going to FOH.

It's all software, with bugs. IMO 3.15 has too many issues for the amount of new features that are introduced (new amp and the legacy synth sounds). When I saw the Helix misbehaving with the new "behavior" parameter for bypass, I immediately downgraded to 3.11. So, I would simply downgrade and keep making music.

Easiest to do it in hx edit. Go to control bypass. Delete everything for the wah left over for exp 1. Back to the block view. Then right click on wah percentage, right click on it and assign to exp 2. Same for bypass. You have all the parameters that can be controlled by whatever you want, in our case exp 2. Lots of videos how to do that. I’m not home now, so these are the general instructions. I like the wah to turn off when it’s less than 5 percent — the default setting you get when you assign the bypass function to the exp 2. Same for the time—I think it’s 300ms. One thing to note—there is a bug. Do not change anything I described above with the external pedal plugged in. Unplug it while you do this. Otherwise your internal pedal can get “stuck” in exp 1 or exp 2 mode between snapshots if you press the toe switch accidentally. You will get into exp 1 and your wah won’t work.

I would downgrade to 3.11 and wait for it to be fixed by Line 6.

Downgrade to 3.11. All these bugs are not worth having a new amp and synth sounds IMO. Unless those new features are crucial to you.

Because the expression pedal is so flimsy on the LT, I decided to set up all my presets to only use exp 2… so they could work with an external pedal as needed. Plus I always found switching the pedal too difficult. And I’ve always used an automatic wah like Bad Horsie in the past. If anything should happen to the pedal, I can simply plug in the 20-dollar external pedal, and everything will work the same way. External pedal always becomes exp 2 on the Helix LT/Floor. I basically don’t ever use the switch. I’m always on expression pedal 2. I have my wah engaged based on percentage of the pedal’s position. I also have the wah on/off in specific snapshots. If the wah is frequently turned on/off, I have it auto-engage in the entire preset. If it’s only needed in the solo, then I have it in one snapshot only. I also have a stereo wah (panning left/right) effect in some presets, that I turn on only in specific snapshots. If for example I want to have both wah and freeze in the same preset controlled by the expression pedal, I simply “dial out” the effect in respective snapshots. In other words I set the “mix” parameter at 0%—this means the effect cannot me heard. I have a big preset where I control 5 things by the same expression pedal 2: wah, delay, freeze, synth filter, vibrato. So it is possible to work out a way to not use the toe switch and get all those sounds.

Well, I would personally rather see more different/new effect types, useful functionality than more and more amps and more flavors of gain/delay/tremolo. So if they come up with a rare 1985 boss delay recreation, I will not bother checking it out — I have found all my sounds a long time ago. And with the acoustic sim in 3.0 I’m completely happy. However, I could see the use for the following: smart harmonizer where you can program the harmony notes, global input pad, portamento, synth sounds that I could use live. And my argument is that I can dial in my sound reasonably well with any gear. I’m sure that others can as well. Plus I find that the virtual representation often does not work like the real thing at all. For example, to me the Fender Twin amp did not behave the way I was used to, whereas it is normally my go-to amp. Or deez-1 did not work like DS-1 at all—it had a weird sag effect. So I tried another block and made it work. There are a ton of bugs as well. How about going through the backlog of these? To me 3.11 works great for what I do. I downgraded from 3.15 because it made it potentially unusable with the new bypass behavior weirdness that line 6 refused to even acknowledge at first.

Oh! hey butthead! You're back! yayyyyy!

I bought myself Pod Go as a backup for the Helix. The drawbacks about Pod Go is that you are stuck with a predetermined number of blocks and always have to have an amp/speaker block even if you don't plan on using it... The plus is that you have an entire rig-in-a-box setup to play any song you want. You have snapshots, you have a pretty big display where you can see what is engaged, etc. HX Effects is just effects, so it's not a complete package. If you use multiple presets, you should be fine in terms of being able to use many different effects on the Pod Go... for a wedding band type of a set--for sure. I am a Helix user, but if if Pod Go were available when I was shopping for a processor today, I'd just get the Pod Go. But with the Helix, I'm spoiled and I sometimes use every single snapshot in a preset, just because I can with various variations. So.... why not get a Helix instead? They are so inexpensive now. I bought my Helix LT for 750 USD lightly used.

I have 2 copies of all my presets in 2 folders, just in case I manage to screw something up accidentally I have a copy of everything.... Before the the show I rearrange all my presets in a desired order. In global settings I have my presets show up as numbers as opposed to 1A 1B 1C, etc... So if you know the order of the set, then you can simply rearrange all your presets in HX Edit. I use the "0" preset as my sound check preset where I test out various potentially problematic sounds like stereo delay etc, and off I go. It's also very easy to rearrange the presets on the Helix itself--you just go to a specific preset and using a knob move it up/down in the list.

Oh Jesus. How many amps do we need? Between preamps, amps, gain blocks, speaker cabs with adjustable microphones, IRs... Honestly there are way too many options already. I actually hate when there are so many options because you spend all your time A/B'ing things rather than playing. I was always a Fender amp guy, and went on the Helix with something that I assumed was an emulation of the Fender Twin Reverb -- Mail Order Twin. I started using it and 2 years later am still using it for every single electric guitar preset. Always liked how clean it sounded and that certain special twang it had. About a year ago I found out it's actually a recreation of Silvertone® 1484 amp. The amp that is famously NOT clean and certain garage-bands use for that crappy buzzy noisy sound. well oops... Back in the day, on early modellers you had 2-3 amp models and that's it. When I do play through physical amps, I can always find my signature sound with anything that does not have too many knobs and can be cleaned up enough.

Makes what unusable? When not using the Helix the USB cable left in your computer makes too much noise? -- I have that! If I have sound coming out of the headphone jack of my laptop, I have to un-plug the USB cable. Otherwise it starts introducing noise... But not right away after about 5--10 minutes.

If you do a factory reset, you wipe out your presets and replace them with factory ones. You can re-import all your presets after that. You need to uncheck what you want to remain on your Helix. If necessary, move things around, rearrange.

Are you using some foreign keyboard, like a French keyboard? Try copy - paste text from somewhere. Like here: FX:Stereo Swirl

Well, you have one pedal and you want to control 2 things with it. If you are concerned with a jump in volume when the wah is engaged, then how about you have another volume pedal that is left in a fixed position and not controlled by the expression pedal. Take that block and bypass it/un-bypass it it when you engage/disengage the wah. That way you have a volume match. Make sense?

You need to select a parameter, right-click on it and assign it to snapshots. Then the parameter value will be in [brackets]. Then you can select a snapshot and inside of it make parameter changes. These changes will be applied to the snapshot only. If you don't do this, then each time you make a change, you overwrite the entire preset.

In your preset/snapshots enable the wah, disable the volume. Or disable the wah and enable the volume. Don't have both enabled.

You need to have your expression pedal position "per preset" not "per snapshot". Check global settings. Otherwise, when you switch snapshots, your expression pedal will "jump" to the pre-saved state. I have my expression pedal work "per preset" for reasons you describe. Some people may want it to jump to a pre-saved state in each snapshot.

hmmm, not for me. i'm still logged in since yesterday on Firefox on my Macbook....

Forum 3.15 update is here!

As many have mentioned, you need to always do a reset/restore as part of the upgrade. Failure to do so may lead to weird behavior. 1. Create a backup using HX Edit. 2. Turn off Helix 3. Unplug USB cable and MIDI cables. 4. Hold down foot-switches 9 + 10 and power on Helix. 5. Once the factory reset has completed, reconnect the USB cable. 6. Restore from the backup using HX Edit. I've had my Helix freeze and crash one time. When the preset was very very heavy in terms of DSP usage and it was connected to HX Edit. Some presets can become corrupted. Is the preset really really heavy? Try doing a restore that will rebuild all presets: back up / restore from a backup. 3.15 is really really iffy. I would not gig with 3.15. It may have all sorts of surprises. Try downgrading to 3.11: Run Helix Updater and from there select 3.11. It could be a hardware failure, but could also be a weird bug. Why not try a few things before declaring your Helix bricked? Good luck!

Just remember that DB meter does not equal perceived loudness. You can have two sounds have the same DB loudness, but depending on the equalisation one can be more piercing and as a result stand out more.

There have been several threads about this. The answer is that your studio monitors are great to dial in your sound at home. Yes, dual amp setup certainly makes things worse. Each amp has its own frequencies that can become exaggerated when you least expect it. If you're not careful you can have really significant volume/tone discrepancies. Guitar is such an interactive instrument! You as a musician must have your setup so that the feel / sound is consistent and the same. Any sort of a speaker colors/distorts your sound in some way -- even FRFR or mixing monitors. Some physical speaker cabs will completely swallow up your delay tone, some will make it more pronounced. If you don't hear your familiar delay sound for example, you can start to panic and start picking lighter/heavier. Not good! To have consistent feel, I recommend picking a piece of stage amplification and sticking with it every time. I have Mooer Baby Bomb amp that I connect to a speaker of a Fender-type amp -- and it always feels and sounds the same. Same feel and sound on stage -- same playing. A lot of times guitarists try to adjust/compensate for what they hear on stage as opposed to what comes through the PA. So if you are in your happy isolated world on stage, you have one less thing to worry about. Live there are always additional factors such as: 1. amount of input gain that flattens your sound in terms of volume variation. 2. you can start hearing sub-harmonic frequencies that you never experienced at home or headphones. 3. certain amount of "gating". 4. other things running through the PA that can distort your sound. 5. PA can have a certain frequency response due to blown speakers, worn-in speakers, positioning of the speakers, room resonance. Your sound will always be different at home vs. a big PA -- there is no way to have your sound be identical. All you can do is to avoid some pitfalls that are well-known: 1. don't have your sound too washy with too much reverb/delay. When a room has natural ambience, delay can make your sound become just noise. 2. don't have too much gain. at high volumes, your guitar can start squealing and having uncontrollable feedback inherent to big sound systems. 3. Dial in your basic tone and use variations of that basic tone for everything. Don't use multiple amps, or different amps for different songs. This only works for bands with million dollar budgets. So in summary: try to have consistency with your gear. Practice on a loud system to work out all the kinks -- they are always inevitable. All pro bands rent out a theater and rehearse until they fix everything. Trial and error is pretty much the only way of doing this.... And if you have a sound guy friend they can also help you with a sound spectrum analyzer.