mmk2828

@drummer1174 I have not had the issue come back (yet). I have been cranking up quite a bit lately testing out some drum tracks and playing along with them. I have a Headrush powered speaker right next to the unit and a set of 8" monitors (playing the drums) to the right of the Helix. I play the Helix with my guitar almost every day. I would give my fix a shot. It will literally take you 10 minutes to try it out and most of that is removing the screws from the case. The most you are doing is further insulating the board electrically. If you don't feel comfortable putting tape on the circuit board, tape off the mounting bracket. Taping the bracket is just a tad more challenging in my opinion to get it right. Just follow good ESD habits like touching a ground before you go digging around in the Helix unit. Good luck my friend.

Okay, so the cutting in and out problem did indeed come back some weeks after my earlier post. I am going to revise what I said in my original post: I do believe that this is a design flaw in the Helix. Further, I believe that the guitar conditioning circuit is shorting out against the metal case. If you look at the attached Picture #1, you can see the input conditioning board attached normally. The board fits into a punched sheet metal slot and is secured via the 1/4" guitar jack. The board fits fairly deep into the slot. Picture #2 is the same board pulled out of the mounting slot. What you see is an electrolytic capacitor towards the top of the board and some exposed circuit pads. I believe this circuitry is the culprit for cutting in and out. Picture #3 shows my current 'fix' for this: some cheapo electrical tape that is wrapping all of the offending circuitry. I have had this in place now for several weeks with no issues. The reason I believe this is a design flaw is because it relies on several tolerances of the Helix enclosure to be correct. As an example, the main chassis needs to align correctly with the front bezel of the Helix. Another example would be how well the punched sheet metal slot tab is bent inwards. Because the input board is only secured via the guitar jack connector, there is room for the board to move depending on various factors. This would explain why some folks have this issue and others do not: it all comes down to how your unit was assembled. It also explains why folks notice this issue when they are playing 'hard'. Vibration of the Helix unit can translate into the input board vibrating and having quick 'shorts' against the metal chassis slot. My Helix is located right next to a powered speaker, so it is not surprising this happened if my theory is correct. As per my previous post, I will keep y'all posted.

I don't think Line6 will approve of my response, but here goes my experience. Bought my Helix a few months back off of Reverb used. Loved it right from the start. But I noticed that my guitar jack was loose on the front of the unit. So I hand-tightened the nut and carried onwards. A month or so later I moved the unit out of the Gator case it came in and set it sideways so I could fit it in between two desks. That was when it started randomly cutting out. Being an electronics person, I immediately suspected my potentially crappy rewire job on my guitar. I thought this because it typically happened when I really struck the strings fairly hard. However, after some testing with another amp, I just couldn't make it happen. Switch back to the Helix and it would start happening again. After some research and debugging, I noticed that guitar jack was loose again on the Helix unit. So I opened up the top cover of the Helix and noticed that the guitar jack feeds into a small A/D conditioning board. That board appears to be supported by the guitar jack and a metal structure on the side of the case. Short story long: that board was flapping around because of the loose guitar jack and was now in an awkward position. I straightened it out and tightened down the jack by hand. If I had to guess, I would say that board is not necessarily shorting out or something by being in that position. Rather it is more likely the board being in an awkward position makes something mechanical in the jack not make contact. Again, just a guess. It has been weeks now and I have not had an issue (although I may have just jinxed myself). I will post an update if it comes back.