phil_m

There actually is a preamp model in the Helix. It's not modeled after a Neve, but it's a nice way to warm a signal up a little. It's under the "Preamp" section of the menu, and under the "Mic" heading. But you don't have to use with a mic. I use it for my acoustic guitar and mandolin patches.

I think the reverbs can sound very stunning even with higher mix levels. Do they perform the same as a dedicated processor, maybe not, but I think they're very nice still. In fact, even before I owned the Helix I had bought and sold the Strymon Blue Sky twice. Both times I ended up selling it because I didn't think there was enough of difference between the reverbs on it and the M9/M13. That's not saying there's no differences. Obviously there are. But I just find that in the vast majority of music, those are never heard, not even in a recording. Unless you're playing in a band like Hammock or Explosions in the Sky, you'll probably find that the less reverb you use in a recording, the better. Not saying I wouldn't like HX reverbs. Just saying that I don't find the current HD ones to be all that terrible. Have you all heard these clips? https://soundcloud.com/ben-adrian-100161112/beautydozer https://soundcloud.com/ben-adrian-100161112/relief-helix-demo

Or what DI said ^^ Simulpost!

You can do this with the Helix as well. You can split a single stereo path into two paths and feed two separate amps. The only trick is that when you split a path, it actually splits it into two stereo tracks (not two mono tracks as mentioned above). To get two mono paths, you need to insert pan blocks in front of each amp model and pan one hard left and the other hard right. This will give you a true stereo spread so you have the left side going into one amp and the right side going into the other.

There have been a few of these sort of issues pop up. Looking at your photo, I bet you have a loose ribbon cable. CS will take care of you.

150: 35 lbs 10 ozs 75: 20 lbs 8 ozs

One thing you might want to try that's not necessarily intuitive is placing a gain block as the first thing in your signal chain to attenuate the signal going into the amp block a little more. This was a hint I learned from Sean Halley. I think it's kind of counter-intuitive because I think often times we are used to slamming the front of a tube amp, but I think that sometimes with the digital models, slamming them too hard sends them into clipping early, so things can kind of get mushy. I don't think it's necessarily actual digital clipping that's occurring, but I think if the modeled preamps get a hot signal they start to get saturated quickly.

May sound like a dumb question, but were there any really bright lights that could have been shining on the Helix? The sensor for the on-board pedal is optical, so there is a small chance that it could be getting interfered with. But it seems that if that were the case, the pedal would just not register at all.

Well blaming the Helix for ground loops when using the 4CM and the amp switching is kind of like blaming your car for sliding on an icy road. It is possible that certain things can be done to a car that make it less likely to slide, but sometimes even if everything is done right, you'll still slide. When I used the Helix in the 4CM with my Egnater Renegade, it was quiet, even with the am switching, but ground loops are simply a fact of life when hooking up equipment. Having multiple connections going back and forth from the same two pieces of equipment is actually kind of a recipe for how to get a ground loop. Even with the Fractal FX8, which has "humbuster" jacks, I've seen a few people having issues with ground loops with certain amps and setups. No, the ground lift switch only affects the XLR outputs.

Convolution reverbs take a ton more processing power than a cab IR. The Helix can load cab IRs with 2048 samples... A high quality convolution reverb is up over 65000 samples. The reason is the decay of the signal. If you think about a how a guitar cab resonates, not a lot happens after the first burst of sound. Wood really isn't all that resonant in the sense that it doesn't continue vibrating once the initial signal stops. Reverbs, though need to ring out a lot longer for them to sound natural.

Now that I think of it, you may be right. I don't have the Helix with me right now.

You're not imagining things - it's a parameter on the effects that are most commonly controlled by the expression pedal. The volume pedal, wahs, and panner (I think).

Sigh... Seems this comes up all the time. Fractal essentially makes one product. Yes, they do have the AX8, FX8 and the Axe FX, but they're all using the same base code just put in different boxes. It's essentially a boutique business. I don't expect Line 6 to ever put out updates at that same pace. Frankly, I've been amazed at the rate that Helix has been updated. It's been much faster than other Line 6 products. Kemper, well, they are similar - they have the one product to support. Overall, each of these companies probably have less than 5 or 10% of the user base that Line 6 does when you look at all the Line 6 products out there. I guess the thing is if those products are more in line with what a user wants, they should just buy them and use them. I don't think Line 6 has any interest in getting into a tit for tat sort of thing with those companies. They are going to shape Helix in the way they feel it needs to be. I'm sure there will be areas of feature overlap in the future, just as there are now. I don't expect the Helix to ever have over 200 amp models like the Axe FX, though. I do expect more amp models, though. I do expect that future firmware upgrades for the Helix are going to make a lot of people happy. :)

These forums aren't support forums. They are simply user discussion forums. If you have an issue like this, the thing to do is open up a support ticket: http://line6.com/support/tickets/add.html It seems that Line 6 has been handling these issues on a case by case basis. I think the reason why they aren't doing some sort of blanket hardware fix is that there isn't necessarily a universal method for switching all amps that will work. I do know they have been working with individuals to sort these issues out when asked, but you have to ask through the actual support system.

You can certainly roll the firmware back, but my assumption would be that any presets you made and saved with the 1.10 firmware will not be able to be loaded with the old firmware. If you made a backup of your presets before doing the update, those would work.

One workaround could be to assign the mix parameter of both effects to either an expression pedal or another footswitch so that when the mix of one is up to where you'd want it in the on state, the other is at zero and vice versa. Then you could still assign both of these effects to the same footswitch, but rather than having them toggled opposite each other, just have them both be off or on at the same time. So you still have the ability to switch between them, but you also can turn them both off.

You can have two effects assigned to the same footswitch, and you can have them toggled opposite of each other so that when one is on the other is off and vice versa. But if you do this, one of them will always be on. There's no way to turn them both off at the same time with a footswitch in this configuration.

Think I figured this one out here: http://line6.com/support/topic/19469-anyone-noticed-the-stereo-pan-bug/?p=146449

Summer NAMM, I believe. At Winter NAMM last year, they were showing in a secret room and making people sign NDAs to see it.

Where do you have the level of the IR block set? If the mix control is lowering the volume, it might be that the level of the block is set too high. The other thing you could is simply is create a split in the path and put the IR file on it's own path. That way you could mix the dry signal from the guitar with the IR using the split block.

Yes.

Line 6 Edit is the program you want. Just select "POD 2.0" in the first pull-down menu here, and leave the other fields blank, and you should find it. You'll have to scroll down a bit, but it should be there.

Yep, it's not a crossover cable or anything like that. Just plain old ethernet cable.

It's a regular Cat5e cable (Cat6 would work as well). The cable comes with the controller, so you don't need to worry about buying one, unless you just want a backup - which wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea.