theElevators

Here's an anecdote: 3-4 years ago I was asked to play a solo during somebody's set, some blues shuffle. That person only had an acoustic guitar, an inexpensive Martin. He also had a Keeley-moded DS-1. We didn't have any time for a sound check, I just went on stage, plugged in, ran the acoustic into the distortion and out into a DI-box. I took the DS-1's tone knob and turned it down so it was not harsh, but bluesy and tube'y sounding. I spent about 10 seconds adjusting my sound, so that it sounded passable. Long story short, that performance blew people's minds, and several people years later still say "wow, that was the best guitar tone I've ever heard" and "I've never heard an acoustic guitar sound that good!". I had no clue it was that amazing... I thought they were pulling my leg. So there you go, an acoustic guitar, a DS-1 and no guitar amp sounded apparently phenomenal. Just a happy accident.

1. I'm sure you can even get clever and approximate an amp block with a compressor, EQ block and an IR... 2. You can buy Joyo American Sound, or any other Joyo amp pedal, and run it in the loop -- it sounds great, only around $45... https://www.amazon.com/JOYO-American-Guitar-Overdrive-Effect/dp/B08NB9L73M/ https://youtu.be/S-JHefdx_is If somebody hacked an HX Effects, it would be possible to add an amp. It's like a GPS device can be hacked and turned into a touch screen computer running Windows mobile... The capability is there, but hidden from the user, so that each device performs its designated function, and nothing more. BTW, did you know that most of the early Motown guitar and bass tracks were recorded without a guitar/bass amp? Everything was recorded straight into the mixer.

check if the input signal is the same on both Helix and HD. Most likely on the HD you have some kind of an input pad, but on the Helix the signal is hotter and the finger noise gets amplified. Check the same for output as well. I'm assuming you did not change the global eq... otherwise that could also be causing this discrepancy.

ummm. the washers do not actually touch or put force on the ring... the button + the metal shaft. rather on the metal parts... it just makes it slightly more difficult to engage the button... Works for me.

I use a preset-per-song approach. Throughout the gig I go through 24 presets, as I play exactly 24 songs. I order my songs in the order of the set list. I use snapshots. Every single preset has a "stomp" view that has all of the snapshots in the same place, except there are no up/down buttons. Most of the presets do not use every single snapshot button -- there are about 2-3 different sounds in each song.... sometimes only 1 sound throughout. If I have 2 sounds: rhythm and lead in my preset, then I will have 7 "rhythm" snapshots and one "lead" snapshot in position #4. I avoid the buttons that are closest to the up/down buttons unless I ABSOLUTELY have to use 7 or 8 sounds in my preset. Normally these buttons activate my basic rhythm sounds, and are simply redundant. I play shows with a lot of stage movement, jumping, etc, and I don't have time to carefully select where I press, so the more redundancy, the better! Every once in a while, I need to use all 8 snapshot buttons (in only 2 presets). For those cases live, I press the "mode" button to disable the up/down buttons. That way I don't need to worry about accidentally switching my presets. Also, I don't need to worry about accidentally pressing the "mode" button and going into a blank pedal board view -- both views are exactly the same. So even if I accidentally press "Mode", I'm still in the same exact view (minus the up/down buttons). BTW, in addition to everything mentioned, placing 2 Grolsch beer bottle washers on specific buttons makes them harder to press (accidentally).

You need to open the ticket if you haven't already done so. The more tickets mentioning this, the higher the chance that this will be fixed... in Helix X....lol

My hack!

Well I did the test -- played this audio ^^^ and as expected the right side was silent. Don't count on Line 6 fixing this... ever!!! They'll tell you: "eeeerrrrr I don't hear it on my Helix duuuuuuurrrrr" and "it's clearly a hardware problem, why don't you waste 300 USD and send it to us duuuhhhhh ..." or "please back up / reset / restore and check" lmfao Re-read what I posted as my lifehacks / workarounds. 1) have a sound check preset 2) verify that nobody rebooted your Helix by selecting a specific snapshot of your first preset, something that is different than the default snapshot. If somebody rebooted your Helix, the selected snapshot will be different and you'll know. It's a stupid bug, it's annoying, but I've played many shows since the initial discovery using my plug/unplug workaround -- it is what it is.

Helix has 2 sets of blocks: stereo and mono. For example, you can have a stereo cab block, and the same identical block can be mono. Make sure that your stereo blocks are followed by other stereo blocks. Otherwise, a mono block will effectively convert your signal to mono. Make sure you don't have some kind of a mono reverb sound at the end of your chain...

I don't need any more features... fixing a few important (to me) bugs would be nice. Until then, I'm happy on version 3.11... I downgraded from 3.15. They're probably working on that quad-core Helix X lol :) maybe they'll have normal foot switches, the ones that last more than 2 years...

"the Marshalls seem to be broken". lol Honestly, I don't understand, why you want to get another Helix. It's your presets that sound really harsh and gainy, to the point of being unusable. If something sounds good in Native, that means that your audio interface does something to your guitar input to compensate for the harshness. If you have completely different results between the Native and physical Helix, then you know that there is something different regarding your input. Nothing is broken as far as I can tell, it's your preset that sounds very bad. .... but I guess get a new Helix....

Downloaded your preset. It sounds extremely loud, extremely bright. I would never be able to "gig" with it. It's not the Helix, it's your preset. Your Helix can sound horrible if you overload the signal. A rule of thumb should be that your blank preset "new preset" should be about as loud as your preset you are working on. I recommend using a factory preset and tweaking it to get started.

First, check and see if you are not missing an amp cab block in your chain! An amp by itself without the cab can sound horrible. I use an amp+cab block always personally. then... Start with dialing down your gain in general. Modellers make you feel like you don't have enough gain, because you are playing and the sound is coming out of an FRFR, mixing monitors, or headphones. When you don't move enough air, you feel like your sound is too weak subconsciously. When you play through a physical amp cabinet, you may find that there is plenty of gain, and maybe even too much of it. I tried to dial in a good chug metal tone. It was just not working for me. Until I took the gain and lowered it significantly. All of a sudden, the chug came back, and it started feeling more familiar, not like I was playing a sound, and the sound was processed and played out of a speaker. It was more immediate, more familiar.... Input impedance is pretty important as well, but I personally use the auto impedance setting. In my signal chain, the first pedal is either the volume pedal or wah, and they both have the same virtual impedance. I tried changing that to 1M ohm, and did not like the result -- some notes had weird resonance and were sticking out. Here's my little experiment video, if you're interested. https://youtu.be/xSrgfEhLmSQ

If you are sending both channels: left and right, then when combined, they will be hotter, and may drive amps more than if you only send one side.... At least that's how it works in the real world.

If you are talking about a Strat, g-string on the 12th fret dying, this is most likely due to the neck pickup's "vintage" pole piece heights. That was done to compensate for g-strings in the 1950's not being loud enough compared to the other strings. In short, the g-string used to be wound, and now it's solid. When USA strats are sold, the pickups are for some unknown reason following this vintage pole piece height specs. In reality, there is no need to boost the signal from the g-string, as it is now loud enough because most string sets do not have a wound g-string, it's a solid g-string. As a result, most of these USA strats suffer from "choking" of the g-string on 12th fret -- very little sustain. So you have 3 options: 1) embrace it as a cool "instant SRV" hack. or 2) move the pole piece down .. or 3) use vintage-spec strings.

OK, well you need stereo ping-pong delay with trails enabled. Set up the delay so it matches the tempo of the song, so you play the 7-note motif once, and it plays it back twice, first left, then right. The trick is to have 0 feedback, so that it repeats whatever you played exactly twice: left and right, and that's it. Then if you are a snapshot user, have 2 snapshots: snapshot 1, snapshot 2. In snapshot 1: you enable the ping-pong delay. In snapshot 2: you disable the ping-pong delay. So live, you are on snapshot 2, you play your solo. Then when the time comes for the overdubbed portion, switch to snapshot 1 where you play the "tadadadadadada". Then you switch back to snapshot 2, and play other stuff. While you're in snapshot 2, the delay continues to play the "tadadadadadada" twice left and right. Alternatively, you can assign the delay bypass to expression pedal, so instead of switching between snapshots, you can simply rock the pedal up to turn on the delay, and then down to turn it off. Since you have spillover delay effect, you again will hear exactly 2 repeats of what you just played, while you are free to play other stuff. Makes sense?

So on my other Helix LT, one foot switch started misbehaving, although nowhere near as bad as on the Helix Floor. I opened up the Helix and cleaned all tactile switches myself using liquid DeoxIT. Saved some money and time... The entire process was very easy, except the plastic tips from the plunger mechanism of several foot switches came off. I had to use tweezers to put them back in place on top of the spring when re-assembling. They are tiny and if you are not careful, you can accidentally not assemble the foot switch correctly, or god forbid lose something. Overall, the whole procedure took me about 25 minutes, and now the foot switches are butter-smooth. I think people who are not afraid of opening things up can easily perform this maintenance procedure. Just a word of advice: put all the screws in small containers so you know what goes where... also when in doubt, take a picture of the inside of the Helix before you dissemble/reassemble things.

I have been wondering, what is everybody's opinion on having reverb in your chain, when playing live? I, like many people on here, am constantly reviewing my sounds, and tweaking things. I am mostly happy with my sounds, however, there are some times when I am playing small venues, or really small spaces (e.g. somebody's house), where my mix sounds pretty dry on the recording. I know that some pro bands go to the extent of having the sound guy mix the wet signal to the main signal to taste. I am not there yet :P I have (pretty dry) presets, compared to all the soundscape U2-type of stuff some people are into. I mostly use reverb for the spring reverb BOING! sound, and almost never for ambiance. The reverb that I do have for ambiance is minimal, so that it has some "air" in my sound. I mostly rely on a simple ping-pong delay to give myself some 3-D stereo mix. As a result, I have a lot of definition to my notes, which is good. I reviewed a 1000-person warehouse-type venue footage and the small private house gig--every note was audible, and distinguishable on people's cellphone recordings. I could hear every delay repeat also rather clearly, it was all very defined. So, should I try to experiment with reverb? I don't want to be in a situation where my very defined sound gets swallowed up by a wave of reverb. I've seen some bands that unfortunately sound just like that -- you hear they are doing something, but can barely make out what the hell they are playing. In my band, I replaced a guitarist who was heavily into surf music. Their early live recordings sounded excellent, but rather washy. The live recordings were direct in, plus some crowd noise. So, it's fair to say that there was a lot more reverb than I'd typically use. He used a lot of "predelay" reverb tricks, where the reverb kicks in 1/2 second after the note is played.... Anyway... thoughts, what works/doesn't work? Any pro tips? thanks!

On the Helix LT, the left-most buttons only do the up/down for presets, snapshots, etc. On the screen, there is not enough real estate to have any labels for them. So as a result, you can't ever repurpose the up/down buttons to do anything other than switch presets/snapshots. On Helix Floor, there is a 10-stomp mode. You can use command center and can hypothetically assign 2 dummy blocks to the up/down, have buttons to switch to a different preset "on button release". It's really convoluted, but possible. Nobody knows what the future release will have. Most likely this will not be added. None of the previous Line 6 products had this.

Here's a little video of mine. Try my settings.

Not quite sure about the volume knob question. But I can share some general info. Volume pots are all different, e.g. 250k, 500k. They all taper differently. There is also a "treble bleed" mod that also makes a difference. The way guitar + amp interact is not something that I can say exactly how it works, without looking at your preset. If you have an obnoxious amount of gain, then turning your volume knob from 10 to 3 will not change the loudness of the signal. Volume knob to control the loudness, gain: My approach is to use this old-school method. All my presets are basically set with the distortion on. I clean up the sound by turning my volume knob to around 5. If I have changes from clean/dirty that happen very fast, then I simply add a "volume cut" in my signal chain by using a volume pedal that is set to 7% for example. This works for me, and that's what I've been doing for the last 8 or so years. Advantages of my approach are: you are not glued to your pedal board. You can change the sound from clean to dirty with the turn of your volume knob. Also you can do volume swells to go from clean to distorted. You need to set up your preset with your guitar in mind. I have a Gibson Les Paul for example, and on that guitar the signal is very very hot. So the sound doesn't really clean up: it just goes from loud to dead. Here's a little video I made:

Connect them both to the computer using the usb cable. And use the pod go edit and hx edit. Recreate all the blocks like that.

No such thing, sorry. You can get a music stand light. Or get phosphorous material to make you see things better in the dark as well.

You can use a send block. Place it wherever you need in your chain. Bypass / un-bypass it during your solo snapshot. Or assign a foot switch to the send block. That way you can connect the send out to the PA using a 1/4 inch.

Check your input cable... Just now my input cable (from wireless to the Helix) died. But it died in such a way that it mostly worked, except certain clean/acoustic sounds all of a sudden sounded horribly distorted, not loud enough, etc. So check your cable, guitar, etc -- things can get weird like that. Some cables die gradually, to a point where it's gradually getting worse and worse...