burningyen

In PA I’d ask Greg Platzer at BCR Music. Not sure if he would be interested, but he certainly has the skills.

Thanks, guys, and thanks for the heads up re the links, fixed!

So here's my at-home repair. DO NOT DO THIS IF YOUR HELIX IS UNDER WARRANTY. Due to various snafus I didn’t get my hands on the replacement pot and knob until late June. If you’re ordering from Full Compass, these are the parts, AND DON’T LET ANYONE TELL YOU DIFFERENT: https://www.fullcompass.com/prod/538498-line-6-01-49-0027-helix-dual-10ka-15mm-pot https://www.fullcompass.com/prod/525521-line-6-30-45-0054-phones-knob-for-helix Opened up the Helix again to see how involved this repair would be. The good news was the pot was mounted on a separate small PCB, making it easily accessible. You can see it poking out below. Seemed pretty doable: You have to desolder the 2 tabs at the bottom and the 6 pins in the middle: Got everything set up... ...just 2 pins left... ...and off: New pot soldered on: Putting everything back together. I use a strip of packing tape to keep all the nuts and screws organized: PCB remounted: End caps and expression pedal back on: Back in business: Much better now:

Oh, I know what it means. Dad humor, sorry.

No one was more surprised than me. My Floor is 4.5 years old, but there was never a hit to the knob that I'm aware of. As I mentioned, it was always a hard knob to turn, and when it finally broke I wasn't torquing it any harder than I had before. It broke with so little resistance that I was convinced the knob had somehow just slipped off the pot shaft.

It's part # 01-49-0027, which isn't listed on the Full Compass website but which they do sell. I'm going to open up my Helix again to confirm I can do this repair myself and will keep you guys posted.

Yes, same story here. It was significantly harder to turn than the other knobs when new in 2015 and got grittier in feel over the past year or so. Then this past weekend it finally gave out:

In case anyone else runs into this issue, those tabs are only for the tooth on the XLR cable to lock into. It's not a major issue if the tab is missing, you just won't have normal XLR locking action. I ended up fixing an issue with my tabs, but first a warning: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, ESPECIALLY IF YOUR HELIX IS UNDER WARRANTY. When I got home from rehearsal Sunday night and pulled my Helix out of its case, I heard a tiny loose part rattling around inside the Helix itself. So I pulled the old pick-inside-the-acoustic move, holding the Helix upside down and shaking the loose part towards the opening for the expression pedal. Out popped this: After scratching my head for a second, I realized it was one of the tabs at the top of the XLR outputs. Sure enough, one was missing and one was pushed halfway in: Compare to my gig backup Helix: I submitted a support ticket with L6, but since my Helix is way past warranty and would cost me shipping and bench fees, I decided to fix it myself. Opening up the Helix isn't too hard if you can work a screwdriver and Allen key, but again, DO NOT DO IT IF YOUR UNIT IS UNDER WARRANTY. I don't know for sure about the Helix specifically, but with electronics generally you run the risk of zapping something with static or breaking a connection if you're not careful. Anyway, opening up my unit, this is what the top of the XLR connectors looked like. You can see where one tab is coming out and one is gone: The tabs are just a simple press fit, nothing clicks into place, so it's not too surprising that after 4.5 years and lots of rehearsals and gigs with random house XLR cables they would start to work loose. Pushing them back in was easy: I also ran some CA glue between the tabs and the connectors to try to delay any repeat of this happening. Incidentally, on this unit one connector is an Amphenol and the other is a JT. The Amphenol has a little spring-loaded wheel: that's the switch that tells the Helix the right XLR is being used. You can just see it on the inside of the left wall of the right connector: Back to normal:

Hey guys, just found out about this thread. Sorry if these are repeats, but I ran into these bugs after updating from 2.71 to 2.82: 1) In synth blocks, my attack and decay settings were lost and defaulted to longer than I originally programmed them. 2) In synth blocks, footswitches that I programmed to be momentary became latching. 3) In synth blocks, after I correct the footswitch assignments back to momentary, sometimes when I press one programmed to momentarily turn synth blocks on, the bypass states of the blocks invert, so instead of normally off they become normally on. 4) The update erased my Variax settings. 5) When I try to enter a stomp assignment to toggle between 2 different Variax models, on the Helix screen the little parameter indicator bars move as expected as I turn the knobs, but the model names listed above those bars aren't correct and the two names often appear stuck on the same model name even though the indicator bars show that two different models are selected. I have the Helix connected to my Macbook running both HX Edit and Workbench HD. Everything is updated to the latest version.

Thanks, Dave! I had the battery cavity CAD file ready to go, but in the end realized I was never going to use a battery and would prefer to leave as much wood in the guitar as possible. I don't have a postal scale and haven't weighed the guitar yet, but I'm guessing it's ~7.5 lbs. The recipient guitar is a B-Way Mercury Head (b-wayguitars.com). Since I make and sell these guitars, it would be self-serving for me to brag about how it plays, so I'll just say it plays well enough for me. :) I played it at a jam session this past Sunday, where I used the acoustic sims and alt tuning functions, and all the Variax stuff worked great. I don't think I'll be doing these transplants other than for my own builds. I build for fun, and there's a lot about these conversions that isn't fun. There are techs out there who are more than qualified to do this kind of work. If you Google "Variax transplant" you'll come across a bunch of previous projects, and I bet most of the people who posted about them would tell you who handled their transplants.

2.5 years later, finally done with mine. Shielded: Soldered: Installed: Lit: Done:

Terminals found and crimped. It was a hard-fought battle with the evil Mr. Crimper:

If you find a guide please let me know! I’m just feeling my way through this. But I did make progress on the control and jack plates: Now I’m working on the wiring. Prised the connector off the Standard bridge’s wires: Currently hunting for the right crimp terminals to lock the Ghost wires into the connector:

Made progress on the control plate: Next I have to sand and prep for chrome plating, then it's time to cut and bend the output jack plate.