Tcoz

Was initially having this problem with the PC+. On my Helix Stomp, I switched output to "line" and made sure I had a head in the path (no cab), using the 67 greenback speaker on the PC, and with Stomp and PC outputs set to flat 0.0 this thing is HELLA loud. At 50% on Helix and Cab, I'm pushing past a pretty loud practice volume, cranked the Helix all the way up per the recommendation and was like WHOA, then just for fun cranked the PC to about 80%, and it was eardrum damaging. I wouldn't be able to stand in front of it at this volume without earplugs. For a 1x12 this thing is insanely loud. If I cranked all the outputs to 5.0 I'd likely have people cursing about loud guitar players. For a show I'd probably run a line to house to spread the sound and prevent scaring the hell out of myself with the output every time I stepped on my boost. Something to remember; it's a cab/speaker, that's it. No preamp (it's easy to forget that). Make sure you have a head in your input path, you don't have any EQ etc. cutting the level (unless you want that), and crank up those amp controls. Careful; if you leave your helix and PC dimed you'll blow yourself out. All in all once I put this together I was more than satisfied with the volume. If you need more than this you must play REALLY REALLY REALLY loud (probably way louder than you should be playing). I'm a hard rock/shreddy kind of player so know volume (played out of a Marshall half stack with JVM410h head for years) and the PC+ definitely delivers. Remember though that it's a 1x12 (mine anyway). Beyond a certain point you'd want to spread the sound out of more than one speaker (so run a line to house or pick up a second cab for a stereo spread). The 2x12 might also be a better option if you really want to go deaf by 35. Very satisfied with the cab.

Here's an annoying one. Monitor jack C seems to be "reversed", meaning, if nothing is plugged into it, it's a green circle and a monitor is placed on the stage (e.g. when creating a new scene or starting up the board). If I plug a monitor into it, the monitor is removed and the jack indicator is cleared. The board seems to have it backwards. Naturally, I want the monitor cleared when I unplug it, and I don't want the jack indicated as active and a monitor auto-placed on the stage when I have nothing plugged into it. This also has the result of making monitor out C useless. This isn't a sudden occurrence, I just always assumed a monitor was placed on the stage for some reason, and I would just remove it after I started the board up. Annoying but never got in the way. Now however I need all four monitor outputs, and after working with "C", I found this out. I tried a factory reset (this board resets to version 1.20), nothing. Is there a way to fix this on my own or do I just forego Monitor C and otherwise eventually send it in for service?

That I get, I was referring to the Mission pedal though (like any other wah/volume etc that you have to crunch the toe end to get it to switch). To me that's something you shouldn't have to deal with, ever, in an age where we have optical pedals. The HD500 and from what I've heard the Helix built-in pedal, and the Mission as well (from a few posts), you have to LEAN on the thing to get the engage/disengage/change, and the forums are full of people complaining how you constantly "miss", leaving you coming out of your lead with your wah at 100% (ouch...). With a Wah pedal, that's no good at all, not to mention it means you either have to go to full vol/wah one way and then be left at full volume/wah the other). Yeah an optical expression pedal would be sweet. Don't get me wrong though, Sweetwater ain't getting my Helix back.

The out-of-DSP thing is interesting. As you say, different models have different DSP requirements. So greying out the entire menu would seem an interesting thing to do when I might actually have enough DSP in that path for at least some of the available models. I used to run into this a lot on the PDHD500; you'd flip through the models, and for things like amps/harmonizers and such, you'd get the DSP warning, but for things like delays and whatnot, you could still squeeze them in. But the second signal path thing should make the difference, though I guess I'll have to understand how to build a signal with a path that doesn't have an amp in it (I don't immediately see a way to split the signal out of the cabinet to the second path). The mission pedal thing looks interesting, but I abandoned switch-activated pedals years ago in favor of optical, and even with the M9, Pod and HD500 I always hooked a separate Morley mini pedal up for wah. That said though, what we really need is an expression pedal that can activate the switch with an optical sensor. So instead of having to do the "turn on wah pedal with that switch, wah away, turn off wah pedal with that switch," tap dance, you could just step on the wah (activates the switch) step off it (deactivates it). Anyway, thanks for the tips on the scribble strips and DSP thing, I have some fiddling to do it seems.

I haven't had time to dig into this at all, but I think this should have been straightforward and unfortunately it wasn't. I got the Helix Rack. Love the device, its primary use is for my home recording studio. In fact the device is so useful that I actually process everything through it now, bass/synth/vocals/guitar/samples. For what it's worth, adding a touch of tube-based outboard compressor after the helix sounds fantastic when recorded, the Helix is an outstanding source. Anyway, I decided to go all in and get the controller. I plugged it in via the provided cat 5 cable, turned it on, the scribble strips showed my bank/patch names, etc. Question 1: what is "customizable" about the scribble strips? Don't they just show whatever you called the patch? Then I went to edit what is a fairly straightforward patch. Distortion->EQ->Head->Cab->Delay-Reverb->EQ. No parallel path, etc, just one straight line. (BTW the separation of head/pre from cab, and the ability to move around the mic freely, is fantastic. Six inches away pulls all the shrill right out of the recorded signal and sounds very natural). It looked like I had one block left, and since I could build this model easily enough on my PODHD500, I figured I couldn't possibly have capped DSP. So I went to add a volume pedal. When I pushed the knob to get to the model list, the list displayed, but was sort of in what appeared to be a "disabled" mode. The text was not as bright as usual, etc. I could edit all the other blocks. But I could not add another one. I could move blocks around and all that. But I simply couldn't add another block, the model screen was always sort of "disabled". Question 2: what creates this "disabled" condition? Related somewhat is the expression pedal inputs on the controller. Question 3: What is the difference between the three expression pedal inputs, and the "toe switch" one? Is there some kind of expression pedal that has a toe switch or something? Thanks for any pointers etc. I did try and find these answers elsewhere but had no luck.