Very useful posts in this thread, thank you!
For me it's worth revisiting as I have had my Helix floor for almost a year now. I used to play two main guitars: my '76 Strat with vintage low outpout pickups 90% of the time and a Player series Tele with its built-in pickups but rewired with traditional wiring ("grease bucket" circuit removed to use a single 0.47 cap). It's a bit higher output than my Strat but not hot by any means.
I've had the global input pad off the entire time as I didn't see the need.
I recently added a PRS SE Custom 24-08 to my arsenal which will be used a lot more than my Tele ever was (although my Strat remains my #1... I'm a Strat guy ;)
I then revisited the input pad thing because the PRS didn't sound that great in my Strat based presets. I turned it on and it improved the PRS tone imeediately without changing settings. I will still need to lower gain on some amps but it sounds way better.
But the thing is, so does my Strat without any changes to the patches. higher gain amps sound less compressed and fizzy (I mostly use the Revv Gen Red which I love) and for cleans, I use either the Cali Texas Ch 1 or the Jazz Rivet 120. Everything seems to sound less harsh without loosing definition. Personally, I love the tone with the Pad on now.
