gkinder

For the 1300-1500 street price of the Helix floorboard, don't think anyone should expect unlimited free upgrades for the life of their unit....that's just not realistic IMO. If Line 6 upgrades this unit for a year, maybe two, then charges their normally nominal amounts for amp/effects packs, I'll buy them all day long. It costs a LOT of money to maintain a large IT shop, I'll show you my books if you don't believe it, so Line 6 isn't gong to be able to support freebies forever on nothing but the back of new Helix sales. I WANT long term support/upgrades and am willing to pay a reasonable amount to get it. If the price moves beyond what I consider reasonable,then I'll keep what I've got and still be a happy camper....

Have to disagree with you on this...one of the Helix's strengths, IMHO, is it puts out damn nice tones without having to get super intricate...have just about all of Glenn's patches, and really like them, however my favorite patches have nothing more than a Dr Z Rte 66 with a LA compressor, either a Minotaur or Timmy drive, a delay and/or verb into a dual cab....no fancy routing and playing through a good FRFR amp....even a hobbyist like me can get great tones out of Helix in a short time, then spend a lot of time playing....could a pro do better, yep, but guessing the differences would take hours and be a small percentage....I'd rather play as I don't make a living entertaining so don't need that little extra tone, which is subjective at the end of the day any way.

Like mine too, very well made. Have no idea what the ammo belt loops are for either LOL

Tried the IRs tonight...they were nice but prefer Helix dual cabs...like pilottes says above, they sound warmer. archisc, I'm no expert but have had luck with using variations of the same type of cabs, silver and blue bell cabs or the 20 and 25 greenback cabs, then using a dynamic mic close on one then backing up a condenser mic on the other, or the reverse.....think it sounds better than single cab....haven't tried much beyond that simple setup yet...

Okay, now you have me curious so I'll have to give these IR's a try....believe they are from ownhammer....thanks!!

​Think you just stepped over the line into trolldom. Peter is obviously NOT a troll...he's a professional musician and a beta tester for Line6 and the company wouldn't put him in that position if they didn't highly value his opinion, input, and technical expertise. You are beginning to sound like someone who delights in picking gear apart and that it wouldn't matter if you were given a Helix, Fractal, Atomic, or Kemper, you would always find something to rip apart. To universally say the Helix is "muddy" is psycho babble, same goes for the other quality units available. You can make anything muddy, including the best pedals running into the best tube amps and cabs available, if you don't dial them in properly. If you didn't like the Helix and returned it, fine, no one has an issue with that, but to come onto Line6's SUPPORT forum and start taking shots at the Helix is starting to smell of trolldom at this point, especially when your claims are pretty much without merit. Peter is correct, if YOU can't get good tones out of any of these pro level units, it isn't the gear that has the issue....

I don't get it either, my Helix is anything but muddy unless you over saturate the heck out of something, but then my old tube amps and pedals did the same exact thing....looks to me like the Helix is reproducing its modeled units pretty well

Thanks mucho everyone!!! Been VERY happy with the built in cabs so may just stick with those....the third party IR's sound like more trouble than they may be worth. Thanks again for the education!!!

Haven't played with third party IR's but was given a number of high quality IR's by a friend to try out. Haven't tried them yet but it occurred to me that with Helix cabs there is a mic type and placement option, does that apply to external cab IR's as well or is the mic used to generate the IR a set value? Sorry for the noobie question, learning here.

Those were what I was wondering about too....know it's a lot about how much you can throw at processors to crunch, but would think you would also have to consider the I/O in and out of the CPU's and other system components as well....it should be like any other network, I/O speed is often more important than processing speed when it comes to smooth/optimum performance....

Thanks mucho!! I just read your other thread. I'll have to check what the settings are, saved them, but may need to pick everyone's brains again as I'm just starting to explore using the multiple paths....if it's the same as what you found in your thread, I kind of like the results....thanks again!!!!

Sure this has been covered so please excuse the question again....and hope this isn't a bonehead question. I was building a patch on the A pathway the other evening with a Dr Z Rte 66 amp, a room reverb, with dual cabs (silver and blue bell) then throwing five distortion pedals in front of the amp to do some tone sampling of the drives...when I went to add the fifth drive option in the block selector, things were all graying out which I believe is Helix's way of saying you are going to run out of processing power. Haven't used the second path option so figured out how to push path A into path B and the models started lighting up again....so am guessing that each path uses one of the two processors for its processing? Is this correct? I then started playing with the basic three models above playing them on a single path together with one drive, then pushing only the reverb and cab model down to the second path with the pushed A to B routing....the later configuration seemed to really open up the tone of the Helix, i.e. it just sounded better when running the four models into the two pathways routed together....thought I was hearing things so asked my wife to listen and she agreed that it sounded fuller and more detailed with the paths together....is this an accurate observation in the increased horse power producing more articulate tone? Thanks in advance!!

LOL...Yep, TRY to find QUALIFIED employees and then tell everyone how it is....been trying to hire five employees for a year now and have gotten ONE out of TWENTY-THIRTY that was qualified and worth hiring....

Just read some of those threads....Yikes!! Tony is okay, just take it all with a grain of salt, but some of those posts, some with links to other posts along the same lines, were pretty eye opening.....

I'd go buy something else if I were you.....maybe a Fractal or Kemper, both excellent units.....don't really understand what your after but I'm having zero problems getting some pretty forward sitting tones out the Helix, but maybe you're a pro player with higher end needs than me....good luck.

Having had two major back surgeries in the last five years the new editor is going to save me a lot of pain from having to try to bend down to tweak things....others, such as yourself, have other physical issues that make using the excellent on-board editing of the Helix LESS than ideal....the same interface in a scalable software editor is going to make using the Helix perfect for many...

Agree 100%....however if they want the new editor/librarian to be globally successful they need to put some sort of resolution scaling into the application or it won't be usable to anyone with a mid-tier to high-tier monitor/resolution, just like the current librarian....all the newer hardware, last few years, is moving to higher and higher resolutions so what's the point of developing to decades old settings? The current updater is just as bad, I can't even read the text if I don't back down my resolution to one of the lowest settings....that's simply poor design. My guess is the current utilities are just patchwork solutions until Line6 gets the full editor/librarian/updater done and deployed, at least that's what I'm hoping......

A properly designed UI should work well in multiple resolutions across multiple hardware platforms....the librarian as it is today is at least a decade behind that minimal mark....if the new editor is written the same manner it will be useless to many, though my guess is it won't be and the librarian we have today was just a quick patch to get them through until a proper editor/librarian was done....

AWESOME!!!! Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

+++++ 1,000,000 Seems like a natural fit for these modeling units and everyone I know who has owned them has posted or sent this same suggestion off to the manufactures....don't know why someone hasn't implemented it yet....all the basics are already in the units so it would be pretty simple to implement....it's not like SD readers are expensive and they've been around for quite a while and are stable tech....

Try a G70....thing is built like a tank....

Been using my Helix since last October and can honestly say I've not experienced one problem, however I've updated the firmware the day each has been released without fail. Not using USB or some of the other features, but a good chunk of those reported have had to do with Apple's OS and some things they've done in their recent releases. Line6 has been really good about jumping on the bigger items and getting them fixed ASAP from what I've read here. The current librarian is pretty basic and I'm not using it as it doesn't render on a 4K monitor worth a darn. Hoping the new editor due out shortly is much more robust and scalable to the newer high res screens....the current UI looks like it was developed for a 1024x768 screen resolution which is really behind the times....

According to posts on here, Line6 is concentrating most of its efforts right now on the new editor, probably because most are bitching about the lack of an editor. After that's out they have said we can expect any number of additions to the Helix including amps, cabs, effects, features, etc. In all fairness, Fractal has been out for years with their engine and the Helix has been out 6 months, wish everyone would put some perspective to what can and cannot be produced in 6 months. Line6 is going to upgrade the Helix long term, they've got a real winner on their hands and they'd be foolish not to. I agree with most of the items posted above, but for the Helix to be this close to the Fractal product this young in its lifecycle speaks volumes.... I too wish they had left the foot controller off the floorboard and slimmed the unit up a bit, but that's just being nit picky....they may have needed the width though to handle all the I/O ports so the foot controller is kind of bonus for those that want it....

I'm no expert on this stuff by any means, but after reading a number of posts about the XLR issues folks are having I decided to mess around with my Helix/Gemini 2 setup, which is using the XLR outs, and found grounding has a LOT to do with noise or no noise....simply hitting the ground lift button on the Helix created all kinds of noise, off it was dead silent. Have some known grounding issues in our house that I've got around with various methods with other gear over the years. Reversed some of those to see what would happen with the Helix and presto, noise...put them back in place, no noise. Wondering if it's not so much the XLR's but rather grounding issues folks are experiencing? Sure looks like that in my simple setup. Food for thought at least....good luck everyone.

Have all of Glenn's patches as well...going to pickup the Artists Pack as well....have had to make some minor tweaks to the patches but that should be expected based on the gear used in each rig....Glenn's a cool guy and great to deal with...