kraley

Well, it is a bit different I suppose. Remember that you have controls on the input signal in Helix as well, and you can use other gain boosters in your Daw before you hit helix if you want to have a hotter input. You should be able to drive the Helix as hot as you want to . My observation is that high output pickups are quite likely to produce digital distortion at the input level - so padding it down to an acceptable level at the interface is the way to deal with this.

You are correct, it is important to have your input level set correctly. Most audio interfaces have an adjustable pad to control this. If your audio interface has a meter, keep it out of the red range. Some (most) interfaces might only have a 'clip' red led. Don't let that go on at all - digital isn't like analog - there won't be good distortion happening, just nastiness. You can record with quite a weak signal - modern daws don't have a noise floor like old tape gear does, so don't push the input volume. Hope this helps!

I am in the same boat as you - except I have the added issue of having a variax so am wondering what I will do. Don't gig - do most of my guitar processing AFTER tracking. Will be interested to see what my options are.