fiveways

So the guitar rig is Muff - Farfisa Volume - Wah - copycat - Hiwatt. The rest is on the melotron.

Triangle Muff is key. Then run into the volume pedal which is as important considering swells factors so hugely into fripps playing. After that I add a slash of tape echo ambiance (as he had a walkin's copycat for some ambiance in KC but I have been using either cosmos echo or the Binson in the legacy effects). After that I run the vintage delay on 8 seconds, a reverse delay on 4 seconds and a second vintage delay on 8 seconds. I use the Hiwatt instead of the Jazz Chorus because I like that period of Fripps tone better.

I really hope they add a bloom/reverse sound. these are great but I hate having to keep a Midiverb 2 on my board just for that silly preset. Line 6 has even acknowledged the bloom setting in helix literature so i am really hoping that comes along sooner than later. Less pedals is more good. Removing a rack mounted to my board would be even better.

Anyone know if any of the HX reverbs do Reverse/Bloom sounds? Seriously that would change my entire rig to just being a helix.

I only use the helix for effects or the Hiwatt DR103 model to write presets for my band with a model of my amp. It was the same price as 3 strymon pedals and IMO sounds better than 2 of them (and the reverbs are about to get an upgrade). It's not a huge investment of money if you are a person with a board of 20+ pedals who uses multiple delays and reverbs at the same time. The Helix FX isn't powerful enough for my fx only use. I use have all 16 slots filled on every preset. Now I don't have to change my board based on my bands set list (as I use a lot of effects in the studio and they used to require multiple board changes to correctly play them). My live interaction with the audience has also gone up because it is all one tap changes and me not worrying about cables dying and me being screwed which does more for my bands name then tone ever will. The amount of in and out pedal exchanges i used to do make a switching system impossible as well because i would be redoing the loops all the time or i would have 35 pedals on my board. that is insane. There might be better buy they all involved shipping from the USA, be not being able to try them (I never buy anything I can't actually try), and longer editing processes. None of those are all that appealing to me. I also work at a store that deals the helix. I have sold many of them based on people just wanting to replace a pedal board. None have come back.

Unless you are using the Rivera Sedona which has a full on Tube Power Section. Definitely colours the tone in a realy positive way.

I think the stuff around it is gonna turn peoples heads. I figure it is either going to be the FM4 sounds or vocal multieffects patches as the helix is great as a dual guitar/vocal processor but it needs some harmony stuff to make it even better.

Improve the pitch shifter. It's barely usable.

Alesis Midiverb II Bloom stuff Foxrox TZF Solid State Echoplex RE-201 Foxx Tone Machine Tall Font Big Muff EMT 250 Zoom Ultra Fuzz Boss DS-1 with Mods EHX Poly Chorus Mu-Tron Octave

Feels and sounds much better. The active preamp (output volume stage not emulation)in the HD500 was trash and always noticeable. I ended up selling mine for a M13 as the 13 felt way less compressed than the HD500 though i missed the extra 4 effects (I sold it after it rebooted mid-set and dumped all my presets). The helix smokes both in every way possible and the options for routing and multi effect assigning make it a no brainer. This is before you add in snapshots. I'm the rare user here that actually barely touches the amp models. I use the model of my amp (hiwatt dr103) with my cab and the mic I usually use in the studio(57 or a 421). I just use it to sound like my rig when writing patches for the band. I really only use it for effects and as the brain of my rig.

They don't really sell anymore so we've had the same ones for an extended length of time. I know what all of them sound like. I like Z-Vex stuff but sales wise they've sold down a lot in the last 5 years. Saturated market as well.

Hook up 6 fuzz factory's in a row. No 2 will sound alike. Vex pedals are wildly variable unit to unit. Source: I work at a ZVex dealer. When we used to get shipments of Fuzz Factory's in I used to hook them all up. The variation unit to unit was insane.

King Crimson has all 3 of the big guys on stage. Also mention that robert fripp hasnt used an amp in decades.

"Talk to the guitar guy at Sam Ash" - Sorry dude, your bass player is hopeless. He cannot be saved if he thinks this is good advice. Either move on or find another bass player and show him the curb.

Send him an email in return complaining about his rig and poor timing? I don't know. I generally tell my band mates to lollipop off in those situations. My rig. If they bring it up I not so politely tell the other guitarist that he has the worst sounding marshall I've ever heard (2 channel JCM800 that sounds like complete lollipop). Seriously, he sounds a lot like the guitarist in my band till he started to understand how much you can do with the helix and that it can sound better than an amp. He just judged it because it "didn't look rock and roll" like my old pedalboad consisting of 20 plus boxes. Either give him time or tell him to mind his own business.