ossianott

Maybe some answer already mentioned this, but there is a return level into your helix that adjusts the level coming from your daw. You can find it in the settings of the unit somewhere (don't have mine in front of me right now), it's called RETURN and has dB scale IIRC, and won't affect your guitar volume but only playback volume. A bit cumbersome but hopefully you won't have to change it so often.

Tried this briefly yesterday, definately something interesting happening. I play metal so this might come in quite handy, but I have a stomp so I will have to experiment with the dsp-starved amp simulations I think. Thanks craiganderton!

Bogren has a nice free pack:

https://bogrendigital.com/pages/free-ir-pack

Wilkinson audio gods cab is also nice and free to download from their website.

I've experimented with the impedance curve thingy to relieve some DSP from my hx stomp by using preamp instead of power amp amps, the thing that struck me the most is that the eq knobs start to react in a way I'm more familiar with them working in real amps, I don't have to go to extremes in the same way as if I don't use the eq to cause the impedance curve (and eq curve). It's rendered the preamps much more useable for me when paired with a class D amp for sure. It gave me more of a realistic vibe.

Dual mono global EQ would be nice, lets say you rely on one device (helix, helix LT or stomp) for two guitarrists running thru one 4x12 cabinet each, being able to individually tweak each 4x12 depending on venue/location with global eq would be awesome me thinks! 

If you pick the amp block and IR (or helix cab block) that best reassembles the tone you have in mind, then tweak the bass/mid/treble/other tone shaping blocks you're good to go in both scenarios. You need to dial your tone in a similar surrounding to what you aim to perform in, if studio recording thru studio monitors, if in a live scenario, preferably a floor monitor which you are familiar with the sound of. You could also use an eq block of choice to further tune the sound. For a live situation the global eq is sometimes good if you need to make the same change onto every preset you use, but in a studio situation if you use the helix as a soundcard that eq will not end up being recorded, just monitored thru.

I'd suggest beginning with an amp block>IR block>Cali eq block to begin the tone shaping adventure.

Or did I understand this post wrong? Do you ask for technical consultation on what to look for in a frequency analyser, regardless of what helix chain being in use?

I'm running my hx stomp into a Sure electronics class D amp which I experienced a little harsh when I used it with my hifi speakers, but thru a 4x12 it sounds bloody awesome. It's unbalanced and has no case so I'm not sure if I can rely on it, maybe build it into a case and use it for live situations. What do you guys think? It's been running reliably in the rehearsal space for a while

I have not read the full discussion between you and rd2rk, but I'm using my hx stomp returns at LINE level with a mic/micpre connected to it often for rehearsal, I've even used the stomp for 4 mic drum recording. I think I've tried it with condenser as well but mostly use dynamic while playing bass/singing at the same time. It sounds fine for what I do and the latency at 64 buffer size is acceptable when monitoring thru daw/w effects. When I record "serious" vocal takes I use my ferrofish/rme raydat, but the stomp would probably work well also.

On 6/2/2022 at 2:16 AM, Kaintuck said:

My practice setup is the helix rack runnin into a mesa rectifier stereo 2:100 power amp into 4-4x12 oversized mesa cabs.

 

I have a helix floor that is just used for recording.  Both get great tones, i just wondered if someone had tried getn the vh140c sound

You're welcome, that wall of mesas must be an experience to play thru. Do you gain any advantage by using 4 compared to using 2? Isn't the directivity is so narrow on these cabs that you almost only hear one cab at frequencies above a certain frequency anyway? Must be awesome anyhow. Which amp sim do you like the best with your setup? I'm a bass player but the guitarists in my band play 8 string for death/thrash metal, they could definitely need something similar to your rig :)

Not heard of it before, but listening to this clip:

Def. Gives me similar vibes as the line 6 2204 mod with the extra mid control tweaked. Probably boosted. Did you try that amp model?

On 5/16/2022 at 4:08 PM, silverhead said:

Is it working with your glue fix? If so you might be able to repair it yourself if you're comfortable with this sort of thing, and if you're willing to void any warranty still remaining on the device. I'm not so can't say whether the part you point to will work or whether it's 'simple or hard'.

 

But beware - I know that this happened occasionally on POD HDxxxx devices and the repair often involved replacing a pcb board that was damaged during the incident. So it may not be as simple as replacing the port itself. My advice? Open a support ticket.

Thanks for your response! Yes it's working with the glue fix, doing backups everytime I disconnect it now as I never know if it will break off again. I also didn't realise it was broken of and tried to insert the usb connector and dented one of the four pins so it's not perfectly aligned and might dent again, but so far it has connection. It's also a little rough to connect after the incident.

I'm not fully up to date how the warranty thing works, I think the device is about 3-4 years old so my guess it's already out of warranty. 

I have a hard time believing the PCB board is damaged, or so you mean damaged while trying to solder it out/solder a new one in? It didn't fall or something, just me being hardhanded and clumsy.

My thought was to get the replacement piece, and maybe try it out myself if/when it breaks again and if I get some encouraging words from the forum it might be possible to diy.

Hello, I managed to break the middle plastic piece on the usb connector after many connect/disconnects. I have not opened the hx stomp to check whether it's easy to reach the connector top/bottom and possibly change it myself. Has anybody done this and is it diy manageable? I have a bit of soldering experience.

As of now I succeeded to glue it back in place, but I fear it might break sooner or later again.

Would this be the correct replacement piece? https://www.electrokit.com/en/product/usb-b-female-pcb-90deg/

Thanks!

On 4/26/2022 at 5:31 PM, craiganderton said:

 

If you're talking about sounds obtained in the studio, perhaps they're not using real-time pitch shifting. For example, Waves has a pitch-shifting plug-in that sounds really good, but with 150 ms or so of latency, it's intended only for offline processing while mixing. Some DAWs have a real-time pitch option for "proofing" a song, but then you need to do an offline, non-real-time bounce to unlock the best possible fidelity.

We don't do any digital down pitching, thick strings & manual downtune is our melody! I did digital for a while but only due to me not having the right string gauge. Thanks for your suggestion tho!

On 4/26/2022 at 4:52 AM, themetallikid said:

The split cabs for me are a necessity of this project and the tone I'm trying to emulate.   HOWEVER....this has taught me something that I have utilized in another project.  I dont have my Helix connected right now, but I can attach a preset tomorrow night maybe and you can download and see what difference it makes.  You have a stomp, so I dont know if it'll work though.  

 

For me, this project runs 2 amps.  I'm using one amp to get an edge of breakup to mild breakup tone on one amp into a cab I label "Brite" cab and the other with a darker sound into a "Dark" cab.    

 

If I remember correctly, I'm about drinks in at the moment and going from memory, my rig template for presets for this band is this:

 

Amp A - Fender Deluxe - Mesa EQ (highlighting 750/2.2khz/6.6khz to help with bite/clarity - Brite Cab (I think its the Vox 2x12 with a 57 or 421 mic.

Amp B - Orange Rockerverb - Mesa EQ (highlighting 80/240 frequencies, scoop 750 a few db, and add 2.5/6.6 to add enough definition) - Dark Cab (Mesa V30 cab, 160 Mic I think)

 

With this setup, I need a thick chunky type sound, but adding the Fender gives me some nice clarity to the pick attack.  

 

Thanks, I've got very limited DSP power as I'm running two guitars from one HX stomp, my aim is to just have a proper metal tone from each guitar + a delay/filter on one of them. I've already accidentaly tried importing a helix preset to my stomp and it froze and I had to do a factory reset so I don't think they are compatible. If I could make a stereo cab block sound as good as my best IR's I'd be a happy chap to save some DSP, I've tried a lot but it's not easy, tilt EQ is interesting in these cases, sounds very much like moving the microphone around on the speaker to find it's sweetspot, as kindly recommended by someone on this forum aswell. 

Stone temple pilots sound great and seem to use quite a bit of distortion and if you can get these results only going direct, congrats!

On 4/26/2022 at 1:31 AM, rd2rk said:

 

People do it for lots of reasons. One common one is to use different speakers panned L/R for a fuller sound, or to have stereo FX move across the sound field.

 

 

Feedback is about volume and pickup position relative to the speaker. You CAN get feedback from a monitor, but it's more difficult and annoying for others onstage than walking back to an elevated amp in the backline.

 

 

Just change the XLR signal output level from LINE to MIC in Global Settings>Ins/Outs.

EDIT: Just noticed you have a Stomp. In that case change the Output Level (assuming that you're using an FX Send for FOH) to INST.

 

 

IMO - That type of tone ain't ever gonna sound "right" coming out of monitors or in IEMs. It needs a real (preferably tube) power amp into a proper 4x12 cab and yes, loud. OTOH, IRs in a recording can sound great, but getting that sound is what producers pay studio engineers the big bucks for. You can do it, but it takes practice. Patience Grasshopper!

Thanks! I just bought a marshall MF400a cab as it's supposed to be very good for downtuned metal, gonna be experimenting with HX stomp amps run to that (+ the other 4x12 we have for the other guitarist) thru SS amps, and micing up to leave out the IR's. If this could yield a more natural sound similar to the sounds from top notch recordings it would be awesome, that said micing cabs seem to be a delicate subject and easy to fail aswell, the amp sim part of the helix will anyhow not be the bottleneck me thinks. Also looking to get a bit of that natural feedback from a real guitar cab. For IEM rehearsals IR is good enough tho.

We also have a peavey 6505 so we'll experiment with helix amps compared to that one aswell. So many options these days! 

Sorry for a newbie Q, but I have not figured out what the need for two parallell cabs are, could you explain? Maybe I could watch a video to understand the concept.

Do you use your own monitor? Can you get some kind of realistic feedback when not using a real cab on stage from the monitors?

Do you also provide from a helix stereo send, a instrument signal>di box for mic signal as a backup for FOH if they don't like the idea of line signal?

I'm not overwhelmed by the sound from my hx stomp when comparing to some really top level productions (studio Fredman stuff) for downtuned metal guitar sounds, probably not a fair comparison as I'm nowhere close to that level of expertise. I've however spent countless of hours tweaking mostly using IRs, it sounds ok for iem/rehearsal but when I compare it to major downtuned metal releases which I really like it never sound alive in the same sense. Do you tweak at high spl on a stage monitor or studio monitors? Sorry for all the questions, I love my hx stomp and want to get every ounce of performance from it.

I don't understand everything you write like adding a 5th, or what the royal blood dual channel setup means. Dialling out the original octave i think can be done in pitch shifting plugin.

I'm using split channel all the time with my hx stomp, for two guitars mainly with amps/ir's/tubescreamer for both channels. If you need polyphonic pitch shifting it eats about half of the DSP, it's very hungry. You might get away with what you want with zero/very low DSP on the bass split and a DSP starved amp/distortion for the guitar.

CCA c10 or other multi driver in ears from Ali express are very good, I have kz zsn pro and CCA c10, both serve me well and are robust enough, by brother has destroyed two CCA c10 tho, not from playing but rough handling. There are more expensive options too. We've bought about 8 of them so far and a few have worse sound, pbbly due to typically bad QC when buying directly from China without an European/American middlehand. Get a good pair and you've striked a real bargain, I always buy a bunch as backup etc anyway. Read up on Chinese IEMs. Good luck! I've looked with interest onto the xvive as well, just don't have any use of it as of now 

I'm using a pair of Sennheiser hd600, open back 300 ohm headphones. I often run the hp amp wide open but have never thought I need more juice from the hp amp to run those headphones, works great imo.

If you can make the bass sound good through a "normal" rig the bass is not the fault. I'm using my stomp in the rehearsal space through IEMs so the strategies I do might not work for you. I'm spending more time than I'd like to admit trying to get amazing bass tones, it's not easy, but my bandmates start to dig it and me too. Try bring a laptop, record a clean DI bassline with the helix and reamp it through the helix so you can focus on dialling the tone instead of playing the bass to begin with, then you can experiment easier and faster.

If you run through a conventional bass cabinet I think you definitely should turn off IRs or cab in the Lt. Try different impedance settings. Remember that If you record clean DI the impedance setting is recorded/fixed, so if you want to experiment with different impedances you need one recording for each impedance, then you can reamp and for example try a bunch of amp Sims and tweak for different impedance settings and save presets and go back and forth to see what you like the most.

Good luck, the rabbit hole is deep!

Not strictly on topic but Gods Cab from wilkinson audio is free so nothing to loose trying it out. 421 mic comes to mind when listening to slipknot vol.3. I only have one ML soundlabs IR named "ML Sound Lab's BEST IR IN THE WORLD" which was free from one of their youtube vids a time ago, it's nice but a little dark.

Ir can be found here: 

Hello, awesome. Definately gave me very similar vibes to my 6505. I found a IR in gods cab from wilkinson audio and tweaked the parameters only on the amp a little to fit the IR and my EMG81 equipped guitars. I figured as the IR library is free from their site (best Mesa OS I have found so far) I can upload it here, tell me if I need to remove it and I will. Lowcut at 96hz and high cut at 8.2khz. Can probably be tweaked a little bit more, the emg81 in this particular guitar is very hot on the output, hence the gain rather low. The Benzin lead is great as it has got a lot of useful gainrange.

I only loaded the 4 active instances in your pictures. Are there any other blocks that add to the flavour of the 6505 or are they merely for other vibes/amp sounds? Is the additional block of horizon gate due to the built in one on the horizon drive not enough in your opinion?

C414_2_inch_edge_pres_2.wav

Is this for helix or hx stomp? I once tried to load a helix preset to my stomp and I had to reinstall the whole damned thing as the preset corrupted it and it stated "rebuilding preset X" for eternity at startup. However it would be cool to see how you managed this, I've got my 6505 which i love and would love to replicate with my stomp, if this is a helix preset, can you take screenshots of the settings and blocks and explain a little?

It's gonna stretch it with CPU hungry amps, all comes down to what amps you're using. You can also look at helix DSP allocation on Google to look which amp models requires most CPU. The jazz chorus 120 (don't remember the name in the stomp) is a very lightweight amp with nice cleans imo, elektrik is lightweight cpu and heavy distortion. I don't like badonk personally. 

Svt brt or Cali 400, cannot decide on ch1 or ch2. Nice sound and playing and song. Did you tweak the amps to taste or is it the standard settings when loading the amps? I'm mostly using busy one myself for my Lakland and two Sandbergs. Might change in the future tho. Thanks for the vid.