DugT

The tones I've heard from YouTube videos of people playing this guitar sound good so I think I will like it as is. It is easy for me to get good enough tone for me out of my Helix and stereo studio monitors. 

Thanks for answering my question. 

My hearing isn't very good. For example, if I hear a difference between my guitars or my pickups, I can usually adjust my Helix to get them to sound similar enough to  each other. I was wondering if this is common with people that have a Helix but apparently not. 

About two months ago, before I got a Helix, I asked here if I would notice much difference between a Helix and my Boss GT-100. Everyone was confident I would notice a substantial difference and they were right so at least my hearing is that good. Now all of my six guitars sound great to me so I am going to sell most of them.

Tomorrow I'm getting a Schecter Banshee Elite-6 which might be the ultimate guitar for me, mostly because of the neck. It has two humbuckers and a five way switch so that is why I asked about A+D vs B+C. I was hoping there was universal truth and censensus about the tone difference between A+D vs B+C.   Both pickups are about 11k ohms and have ceramic magnets. Between them and the Helix I think I will get good tone. Worst case I will get different pickups. 

I have a question about guitar tone but I'm wondering if it really doesn't matter because final tone is so adjustable with a Helix. For example, with a Helix can you have guitar pickups that are not hot enough? Instead of getting hotter pickups it seems to me you can crank up the gain, add boost or overdrive to get as much distortion as you want. Are there exceptions to this?

Here is another example. For the middle 5 way switch position, I was wondering if here is much difference in tone between the two inner coils  in parallel Vs. the two outer coils in parallel?  I suspect not much and I also suspect that and difference in coil configuration. This graphic shows what I'm talking about. I wonder if I could even hear a difference. If anyone knows the answer to this it would save me some soldering trial and error.

Of course the Helix has a lot more than a Spyder Jam except a power amp and a speaker. They are very different and no one here wants to study up on your Jam and then list the differences for you. The Helix costs four times as much and you are happy with your jam so party on. If you want someone to try and sell you a Helix, go to a guitar shop and talk to a salesman.  Essentially you challenged us to argue why you should buy a Helix even though they are a lot more expensive but why should we bother? There is an excellent chance that you shouldn't buy a Helix. Please feel free to tell us why we should have saved a lot of money by buying a Spyder Jam. 

It seems we don't know why you should or shouldn't buy a Helix. I know at least one of us doesn't care. You might try googling Spider Jam vs Helix. 

Thanks for the good ideas

I tried the looper. The tone that I hear while I'm playing sounds a lot better to me than when I replay the loop. Is the looper telling the truth? I hope not.

I might stick with snapshots and also the return button. 

To A/B compare different settings within a preset is it best to use Snapshots? I tried using a A/B split but that wasn't fast or easy. I also tried saving as different Presets but that wasn't real convenient either. I suspect Snapshots are the best way but before I learn how to use Snapshots, I thought I would ask here. 

Thanks.

13 minutes ago, ruperthawkes said:

I’m running 3.00 but when I do check updates in Hx Edit it says there are none.   What stupid thing am I doing?

3.01 isn't an Edit software update. It is only a hardware/firmware update. 

To update to Helix 3.0, first you have to update to Helix Edit 3.0 Software. To update from Helix 3.0 Firmware to Helix 3.01.0 Firmware, you should go to Free Software Downloads>Helix>Helix>GO and then proceed to get the firmware. Helix 3.01.0 Firmware has nothing to do with Software. 

Maybe "Free Software Downloads" should be changed to Free Update Downloads. Maybe "All Hardware" should be changed to "Hardware/Firmware".

3 hours ago, rd2rk said:

As long as it's a Line Input, a normal dual 1/4" to dual RCA will be fine. Also, the regular 1/4" Outputs (set to LINE) will probably work best. There is no mic output, you probably meant Headphone, which may also work, but if you already have a TS to RCA cable, no need to buy an Insert Cable.

Thank you. Yes, I did mean headphone output. 

I was going to use one TRS cable and output from the headphone because that seemed like the simplist way to play in stereo but now I see that the Headphone output cannot be set to line. I will get two TS to RCA cables as you suggested.

Thanks for the replies!

I did a search and it looks like using the TRS (Stereo) mic output and a cable like the one below would be a good way to do it.

For bedroom playing, will the Helix output work with the input of a good full size Yamaha stereo receiver? I would only play at lower volumes and only a few times a year. I don't want to take my frfr back and forth to my other house.

3 hours ago, DrAShah said:

I updated to 3.0 on my stomp and experienced the new annoying "hum" that others have claimed to take issue with. I have just updated to 3.01. I backed up my presets, updated the firmware, restarted the stomp and did a factory reset to global settings. I then restored my presets from the backup. I've turned the stomp off and on again to allow for everything to configure. I still experience the hum and many of the patches either didn't populate, don't have sound despite blocks being present, or have moved to different numbers (for example: previous preset that was in 31A is now 34C). I've gone back and updated and restored a couple more times to see if anything would change. It has not. How can I get my unit to function properly at this point?

That reminds me of the song, "If I had a hammer..."

On 12/4/2020 at 1:45 AM, viola said:

.... I've began to hate effects (only a little bit of delay ) ....

 

In your OP you said  "I hope that the next Line 6' s efforts will be aimed at improving the dynamics of the amp models, especially those concerning clean sounds which, IMHO, are still missing a bit of "life"..."

It is my experience that effects are how "Life" is added to tone. Only using "a little bit of delay" would make the tone way too dry for me. 

Maybe you should start a thread, "How can I add Dynamics and LIfe to clean tones."  

My update to 3.01went well but I had a bit of a false alarm. After the update, it looked like my Presets were still in place but they sounded awful. I Clicked on File>Restore From Backup.....  After the restore, the presets were fine. Later I turned the Helix off and back on. It said, Rebuilding Presets....  After that the presets sounded the same, which is good. I turned it off and back on again and everything worked as it should. 

I've only had my Helix for a week so I'm a rookie at this but I thought I my experience might help someone. 

On 11/26/2020 at 11:02 AM, TLF2007 said:

I found a way to come close. There is a sweep echo in Helix that works really well. I had a GT-100. I liked it but it didn't compare to the Helix. The biggest thing about the Tera was how your pick attack could drive the effect. I have come really close with a dynamic split ( basically a gate to the effect), the sweep echo and the chamber echo. 

 

Thanks for the update. My new Helix sounds so much better than my GT-100, I no longer care that it doesn't have Tera Echo. In spite of that, I tried the dynamic split method that you described but I am probably too new at this to make it work right. Now I use regular Phaser and chorus in presets with distortion. 

11 hours ago, waymda said:

An alternate approach is, to take the same approach, except setting the Helix Volume know to max, then turning your monitors to  the loudest you'd think you will want (louder than usual).

 

You can then your the Volume knob to how loud you want to be playing.

 

I've found my ideal setup to be having a mixer between the Helix and monitors so the Helix runs flat out, I can check patch settings with the mixer's metering, and control how loud the helix (and everything else is) going into my monitors. This maybe overkill for you.....

 

 

Thank you, waymda! I like your idea to use the Helix volume knob instead of the guitar volume because I think the Helix knob would change the tone less than the Guitar knob. 

False alarm. My studio speakers volume was too high. This is how it is supposed to be done.

Set Helix output to Line.
Turn speakers volume to zero.

Turn the Helix Volume output knob to 11.
Play loudest preset while turning up the speakers volume to taste (so to speak.) I did this with my guitar volume set at 5 to leave some ability to control the volume at my guitar. 
After doing that I could just add a little drive to my clean preset and now it is loud enough and sounds great. 

This is day two with my new Helix floor and I love it but I have one problem. The volume is too low when I play clean. Increasing the volume via drive or level or big output volume knob increases distortion to unacceptable levels. If my output is set to LINE, the clean volume is just a little better but then the higher gain presets are way too broken up. With the Output set to INSTRUMENT,  my other presets are great but my clean preset volume is even lower. This is the case with three different clean amps that I have tried, US Princess, Jazz Rivit (Roland JC120), Archetype Clean, Can you think of anything else for me to try?

I'm playing into powered stereo JBL studio monitors. I could crank up the volume on them but I would have to turn it back down when I play with any gain.

Thanks

2 hours ago, ingen63 said:

1) Matchless TM DC30 Channel 2 (Matchstick Ch2), a Vox on Steroids for anything with chime at the edge of breaking up 

2) Fender® Deluxe Reverb® (US Deluxe Vibe)  for Clean, Jazz  and Blues Tones

3) MESA/Boogie® Mk IV (Cali iV) all 3 Channels depending if Clean, Texas Blues or even High Gain is needed

4) Marshall® Super Lead 100  (Brit Plexi Jump) for Hendrix like Tones

5) BE/HBE channel of the Friedman BE-100 (Placater Dirty) for classic rock tones

 

sorry more then 3, but these are my favorites. One more advice focus one or two amps as a starting point, listen to the original may be on youtube. This helped me a lot to get a decent tone. At the beginning I was trying too many different amps at the same time. It ended in a mess and I was not happy with my tones.  But after I focused on 1 or 2 amps, there was light at the end of tunnel and now I am really happy with my tones. 

I plan to focus on only a few amps at first, like you recommend. I thought I might as well start with the best amps and that is why I started this thread. However, like someone here said, it seems like all the amps are good and therefore there are lots of different favorites. The good news is, it should be easy enough to get started with good tone and then make it even better. 

36 minutes ago, StaccoP2P said:

I've only been Helixing for a couple of months now but these are the amps I'm liking the most, in my limited experience. I'll cheat because I'm usually playing in parallel Stereo, so:

1) Jazz Rivet/Us Double (maybe this is the jazzy combo you want, dear OP?)

2) Cartographer/Voltage Queen

3) Whowatt/Placator Clean (Add a muff and treble booster and whooah).

Overall I've been most surprised/shocked by and enamored by the Cartographer. Purrfect crunch for days.

I'll be playing in stereo too so I will definitely try those amp combinations. 

Thanks,  zappazapper! That was a great read. It was interesting and helpful. 

Thanks everyone! Your info will help me get a better and faster start. 

I probably should have said this earlier, I know very little about amps. I'm currently using a Boss GT-100 multi-effects...and I found it best to not use its amp models. Instead, my tone is totally controlled with effects. I considered doing it this way with my Helix, which will arrive this Friday, but since the Helix amps are good I might as well take advantage. 

I played acoustic guitars (mostly classical) off and on for forty years and switched to electric about five years ago. My hands are good but my repertoire is modest. My GT-100 taught me a lot about pedal effects but not much about what different amps are good for or how they sound.

Thanks, Silverhead.

On my current Multi-Effects board I use three presets and I categorize them like this:
Clean and slow jazz.
Good for acoustic guitar tone classics like Blackbird
Overdrive like Fogerty
Heavier overdrive like Hendrix or Back in Black

I'm wondering if there is much consensus on the best amp models in the Helix? When my Helix arrives on Friday I want to have a bit of a head start on which amps to try to make a few presets. I'm fairly generic so if everyone else really like an amp I will probably like it too. So, please list your favorite amp models.