phil_m

You do it in the Command Center. You don't have to assign an actual command to it. Just select the footswitch you want to label and hit "customize". I know this works as I have several presets where I've done this very thing.

Yeah, yeah... We just want to see you and Cliff in a Celebrity Deathmatch!

1) You can give a customized label to any footswitch, even one that's not assigned to turn blocks on and off. You go into the Command Center, navigate over to the icon for the footswitch you want to change the label of and press Knob 6 (labeled "Customize"). There you can give it whatever name you want, and you can set a custom color for the LED ring if you want. 2) No comment on this one. Seems like a good suggestion. 3) I do vaguely remember reading that adding an A/B split does introduce a level drop on each side. I think the reasoning was that if you simply added another path and kept both paths feeding the same output, the level would remain the same at the output. The reasoning is that instead of just having one stereo signal, you now are summing two. So the split compensates for this by introducing a 3dB cut, I believe. If you want to compensate, you just add a gain block in, or add level in one of the other blocks.

Well, you can use a dual cab block, set the same cab for each side, and then choose a different mic for each cab. So technically, you're not using two mics on the same cab, but with this dual cab setup, it's essentially the same thing.

I think the Helix can sound muddy, yes... It can also sound too crisp or bright. I've literally heard complaints from all sides about all Line 6 gear as far back as I can remember. Anyway, trying to record real amps with real mics, you quickly learn that these sorts of issues come up all the time when doing that as well. I tried recording a few tracks with my Princeton Reverb and a mic recently, and I thought they were a little muddy. I actually preferred what I was getting with the Helix. I was a little surprised, honestly, because I love my Princeton. Anyway, this is a rough mix of a song my band has been recording, and all these guitars are the Helix. I would not call them muddy. They are actually bordering on being almost too crisp for my taste, but I though these types of tones fit this particular song well. These are all the Dr Z model. https://soundcloud.com/phil-miller-20/a-reason-for-it-all-mix-1/s-JMtb7

It is certainly a much smoother workflow using the built-in cabs. I've not found a compelling reason to invest in any third party IRs, myself.

Huh? You don't have to reach over to hit a footswitch on the Helix to turn the wah off. You just push down on the expression toe switch and switch it off, assuming you have the wah block assigned to be turned on and off with this switch. But, yes, if you have it set up so wah and volume are sharing the on-board pedal, the volume will go to 100% when you toggle between the two. The solution for this is to get an external pedal.

It works fine for me for wah purposes. It does a good deal of force to switch the pedal, and it can be very hard if you're trying to do it with the Helix on carpet. But I've not had any problems switching mine on stage.

Third party IRs are like a sonic snapshot of a certain cabinet with a certain mic at certain distance and angle. Those things are baked in. If you want a different mic or distance, you have to find the IR file for that option and load it. The only editable parameters for the IR block are high cut, low cut, mix and level. And with all of those, you're not actually changing anything in the IR itself - just changing parameters in how the Helix processes it. When you get down to it, an IR file is really just a tiny recording. They are wav files, after all. They're static things.

All of the effects other than the reverbs and some of the wahs were redesigned from scratch, and even those were tweaked and improved to some extent. Yes, you're right Line 6 doesn't do polyphonic pitch shifting or quantized looping right now, and I'm not sure if they will. I imagine stuff like this is at least on their radar. I think it depends on how much interest they perceive there to be. I still think these sorts of things are not major points of interests for most users. I owned the AX8 for a short while, and I did think that perhaps that its reverbs went into sonic territory that the Helix doesn't, it wasn't enough a difference to persuade me to use it over the Helix. It's still a nice box, and I think if the Helix didn't exist, I probably would have kept it. It's just that the experience of using the Helix is so much easier than the AX8 from my perspective. I don't want to be in a place where I'm fumbling to make changes in a preset just because I'm not tied to an editor. I have had several instances where I've decided to re-arrange blocks in a Helix preset at rehearsal or right before a gig, and it's a snap. It simply isn't easy on the AX8.

I guess I'm a combination of those two. I do think it's important to understand how whatever equipment you're using works, so reading the manual, at least for reference purposes, is important. I also think, though, that in order for gear to be fun to use, it's operation should be mostly self-evident to the average user. Meaning the labels on the knobs or on the face of the equipment should give them some basic understanding of the function. You shouldn't have to read a manual to learn how to do basic functions. Personally, even when it comes to things not associated with music, I always feel the best way for me to learn how to do something is dive right in and start trying to figure it out on my own. Tutorials and manuals often seem hard to follow for me, but I think that's because I'm just a hands-on learner. Reading about a certain function seems very abstract for me. The podcast 99% Invisible did a show on design and the transparency of intended function a few weeks ago. They use the example of a door that people can't tell to push or pull as an example of bad design. I think one reason many guitarists right off multi-fx and modeling is because they encountered early products that were very poorly designed from the user-interface side of things, so that's the association they jump to right away. They think if something has 70 different amp models or whatever, it has to be hard to use. http://99percentinvisible.org/article/norman-doors-dont-know-whether-push-pull-blame-design/

Yep, they're out there. I think the first batch was bought up rather quickly, though. I have one, and I really like it. When I first got the Helix, I was thinking I was going to put on pedalboard - a Pedaltrain 2, to be exact - with a hard case. After using the backpack, though, I'm not really tempted to go that route. It's nice being able to carry it on my back. One thing I will say, and it's not necessarily a negative thing, but just a fact. With both the Helix and two Mission Engineering pedals in the bag, it isn't necessarily light. It's still a substantial piece of luggage to carry around.

It's almost as if people like the things they buy and/or buy the things they like... What is this madness!?

Well. older PODs, with the exception of the Pro versions, never had the option of setting the XLR outs to line level. They were always mic level. The Helix's XLR outs can be set to line level, and I am almost positive that it's pro line level - +4dBu. Of course, though, the actual level at the outputs depends on where the levels are for the various blocks used in the patch, and where the master volume knob is set (assuming you're not bypassing it). I have no doubt that you'll be able to drive a power amp. Many people have been doing it. I've done it with my L2t speakers (bypassing the preamp section, going straight into the power amp in), and they work fine. Have never even come close to having to max out their volume.

Personally, I would recommend against using the Global EQ with studio monitors. The whole idea behind studio monitors is that they're designed to be flat, full-range, flat response reference speakers that give you a good blank slate to develop patches and/or record. They shouldn't favor one part of the frequency over the rest, so this should make it so your patches translate relatively well to different systems. If you need to make any corrections when connected to other systems, than you break out the Global EQ. If you want to use EQ as more of an effect for the tone, I'd recommend using the various EQ blocks that available as effects in the patch itself.

I was a beta tester also, and I've got to say that it's been quite awhile since I've run into a bug that actually has any real effect on my everyday and gigging use of the Helix. Fortunately, it seems that the nastiest ones that causes audio drop outs or unexpected shutdowns have been dealt with. It seems like most of the things I see people bringing up are relatively minor now. Sometimes, bug reports remind me of that old joke about a guy saying to his doctor, "it hurts when I do this...", and the doctor replying, "well, don't do that!". Not that I'm saying that is what Line 6 is saying. I'm just saying that many of them seem pretty isolated and shouldn't be showstoppers.

This isn't a bug. This is per design. These delay models have shorter maximum delay times than other models, so if you tap a time that would give you a longer delay time than the maximum, it goes to a note division that would still have the delay in time. Ben Adrian describes it here at TGP.

There's no way to do that as it currently stands. One possible workaround, I suppose, would be to take a MIDI cable from the Helix's MIDI in into its MIDI out, and then assign the applicable CCs for the looper controls to footswitches in the Command Center. You could also give though footswitches custom labels with the relative commands.

I believe that the Axe FX can do spillover by using blocks that are fixed from one preset to another. It's not automatic, though. It has to programmed in. So in that sense, I think the Helix could maybe do something similar. As mentioned above, the looper block kind of works like that now, so it seems to me that might at be a possibility. I'll say it again, though, spillover isn't going necessarily make the preset load time faster. If you are changing presets and expecting to hear the new tone immediately, spillover won't change that. It will just make the transition a little smoother.

I've been using the Helix for effects only with my amp, personally, I'd say it works very well as a pedalboard replacement. That's not the only way I use it, of course. I do go direct a lot of the time as well. I guess the thing is, for me, the Helix has been the only modeler where I've felt I can truly use it as a pedalboard replacement and not have to use any other effects. I haven't used my pedalboard for over a month now, and that's never really happened before. I also believe that Helix as a pedalboard replacement will only get better as development moves forward.

I think he's talking about Workbench. The Helix doesn't support Workbench yet, but I'm sure that functionality is coming.

You can only toggle blocks that are tied to footswitches currently. You can control the parameters of of any block with MIDI, regardless of whether it's tied to a footswitch, though.

Should be OK unless you really dealing with a really big boost. But there's quite a lot of headroom in the Helix. Heck, I've used real boost and distortion pedals in front of Line 6 devices going back to the POD 2.0.

You can do everything you're talking about here with the Helix. Compared to the X3L, though, it's a completely different type of product. With the X3L, you have two independent signal chains where blocks are more or less fixed in the chain (I know you can change the pre or post positions of certain blocks). With the Helix, you can use any type of block anywhere in any of the signal chains as long you have enough DSP to do what you want to do. As far as plugging the GR55 into the aux in, yes, it should work fine.