fukuri

Hi Vinny

there has been a long debate on another thread that I don't want to revisit

just a few things

It's easy for people to be dismissive of other peoples problems but the lack of empathy is not very helpful so let me just say I recognise your issue and appreciate it makes life difficult for people who want to use the device in a certain way

The architecture of the device doesn't allow for shadowing without sacrificing significant DSP so I think we are stuck with it for the moment

On the plus side the dual DSP means you can do an awful lot more with a patch than you used to and many of us have managed to compress our rig effectively into a few patches without the need to change them mid song.

If you can't do that (and I can understand why that might not suit you) then you may need to look at an alternative device however there are a lot of devices with a lot of similar issues or sacrifices in other areas

If the Helix works for you in other ways then it may be worth putting a Boss DD7 or Alter Ego Delay pedal in one of the loops to help sillover between presets

Not an ideal solution but I'm afraid at the moment there isn't one

Possibly this will be looked at as a future update but best to deal with the here and now

Hope thats helpful

Its the difference between hearing your guitar and hearing a recording of your guitar

it just reacts differently 

One point of it is so that any amp and cab IR combination wouldn't sound like dung, thru a colored sounding guitar cabinet . So that a Fender would sound "Fenderish", and a Marshall would sound like, well you know, without actually owning a Fender, or a Marshall.

It's the Cab Ir combination rather than the amp themselves

In my setup I bypass the cab IRs for my onstage sound because I'm running actual cabs

True amp

Models still sound different

I guess if you wanted to hear the difference in stage between a modelled2x12 and a modelled 4x12 then that would be a use

But as I've said previously .. If your me you wont get any of that over the drums

But it depends what your looking for out of your own rig

It's a good post though

It points out the difference in requirements as well

I'm a sleazy bar loud rock guitarist

My backline has to punch over a John Bonham esque drummer and a Precision bass with pleccy and provide them with guitar

My attempts to do that via FRFR have been predictably fruitless

But other people say on massive stages or on silent stages don't have the same requirement

I think it's important when looking at FRFR at what you are trying to achieve

Thanks

WOW, with thinking like that, we'll be back to doing things the way we did 10 years ago fast... oh wait, that IS what we are doing.

 

Yes, i certainly have tried and use what you have suggested, and it still only allows for A/B switch changes, and dancing around your foot board there after.

 

Did you every wonder why they call them 'Set List' when no one can actually use them as such? 'Set List' may as well be called 'Folder x' because it is only a container for your patches.

 

Take a look out there, this exact issue has been on message boards since modelling has been around. Here's is the point... it can be solved, and with not a lot of effort.

 

I will ask you, have you ever set up 8 patches in a row, with 1 amp, and just the right effects per patch, all set to go from change to change for each song, and in turn, each set with no annoying interruption in your tone? Not if you have used 90% of modelers past and present.

 

For full disclosure, having the ability for a few scenes per patch suites me the best, but I am so tired of hearing the lame excuses for not addressing this issue by adding CHOICE.

The issue I have is you are assuming that your way is the way to solve it

I'd rather have a compromise that lets me use more than half the DSP but allowed a degree of spill over to cover the transition between patches.

I don't need EVERYTHING shadowed just a couple of things

Also don't get mad, I don't agree with you that's all

ok ... time to look dumb ... NRNR? Interesting point of view though, most people say running into FRFR is always a better idea. Once I get the Helix I think I'll end up doing a lot of comparisons!!

 

Mike

Don't worry I made that up

Narrow range narrow response (i.e. a normal guitar cab)

Most people will tell you FRFR is the new best thing but personally I don't see the point of it (apart from FOH)

So.... You would have an issue with the this option being available, and not using it???? Really???

Yes

Regardless of how many question marks you use

I don't think it's a good use of development resources for such a decremental feature

Tell me this

Have you tried using the Helix with only one path?

2 amp and a dual cab and you're done

You mean don't use FRFR at all for backline?

Not for Guitar

I prefer the sound of NRNR gold old valves into an alnico blue

It just sounds and feels more natural for me

Happy to use FRFR out front though

The issue here is that a lot of people use DSP 2 and don't want it sitting doing nothing to fix a millisecond gap

I'd much rather see a delay persist or be able to choose which blocks persist and which ones change

I would go against the tide here and recommend you don't do it for backline

It's a generational thing too though

Older obstinate burgers like me will always get Dewey eyed at the memory of the days when you had a roadie lug around a Marshall stack for you and you basically dined it and melted the paint off the walls

There are now a couple of generations where their first 'amp' was a POD and the noise it made to them is the norm

Soon they will have no desire to replicate the sound and feel of a 60s AC30 top boost because there will be no context for them to know what that amp is like to play (I'm seeing a fair bit of this already)

Most of the kids will want sparkly clean, crunchy, distorted, metal and a ton of Delays reverbs and filters. They won't much care about accurately modelling gear of the past

Until it comes back in a super cool retro fad ...

It's all cyclical

I've already been through two periods of 'the death of valve amps' and yet you can pick up a decent one for a couple of hundred quid

I should of been clearer in my above post. I had two helix's. But not at the same time. I was one of the first to get one. That one was returned due to one of the knobs working erratic. The second one I put countless hours of my own sweat and others bought sweat and tears and just couldn't fine what I wanted. I just didn't want to buy endless monitors to find that elusive tone in my head if there is such a thing. So I moved on. I'm sure the helix is working great for others who have been lucky to find the right frfr system, but the whole idea of the helix was to plug and gig. What I read here and my own experience playing live with the helix is you ended up schlepping more gear than you did with your normal rig to sound good.

I've got it to work for me and work very well. To the point I could go to anything else without it feeling primitive

The key for me was to ignore all this FRFR stuff and use it primarily as a pre amp and FX unit

 

I don't really get FRFR ... It seems to be solving a problem that not many people have. I find the idea of changing my entire tone from song to song might be a bit jarring for the audience. Also it seems to be a lot of money to try and replicate a fairly simple thing

 

When I went Helix to Valve power amps to guitar speakers .. It all started to sound more natural to me

I still use the modelling and the cabs but that all goes to FOH. I have found that I hate having that tone in my backline because it doesn't sound feel or react like I'm used to.

 

so I can have the best of both worlds with the Helix it just took me a while to figure out that's what I needed

I used to use an EWS simple volume control to do this

Now I run like you do

1/4 to the stereo backline controlled by the big knob

Xlr to the FOH controlled by the sound engineer knob

A few questions...

 

Which speakers/cabs do you use?

 

Full modelling - or just pre-amps in Helix?

 

Do you only use the Soldano model in the Helix?

 

If so, why bother with a modeller?

 

Yea, OK that's more than a few... B)

I use an orange ppc 1x12 with an Alnico blue in it and a Friedman PT 1x12 with a G12 65 greenback

Virtually the 1x12 celestial 80

 

Full modelling - the preamps just don't sound right

 

Just the soldano ... Why bother with the modeller? Because it's there and it saves me bringing 2 heavy amps

 

The power of the Helix is not in the modelling for me. It's in having 10 buttons for FX and almost unlimited combinations

 

I should take a pic as it would be quicker but my layout is

 

1. Minotaur (always on clean boost so I could afford to lose the button and do in some of my patches ... Replacing it with a harmony button in my trooper patch or my Detroit Rock City patch for example)

2 simple phaser (pre drive)

3 loop 1 KOT toggle on/off (off is clean on is 100% wet)

4 Toggle OCD (more drive) on : KOT off (if button 3 has the KOT off this will toggle straight to clean, if it is on it will give me the KOT crunch)

5 Looper

6 Down (momentary octave down 50/50 mix) (are you gonna go my way and Black night)

7 UP (momentary up 100% wet) just for giggles. Hit a harmonic and step on it on the off beat ..

8 Gray Flanger thick wide and stereo

9 dual delay set up about 400/800 wet mix controlled by external exp pedal

10 Chorus - for Queen and Whitsnake

There is a one to many relationship Each effect can only be controlled by one footswitch but one footswitch can control many effects

So you can have a footswitch that switches one drive on and another two off

What you can't do is have another one that switches on just that drive

I can imagine it could get hellishly confusing if you allowed a many to many relationship between pedals and footswitches

Not just now its packed away but I'll take some next gig

I should do some recordings although it's more how it feels under the hands ...if you know what I mean

The King of tone is a stunning drive pedal at Volume

After all lot of experimentation I think I'm there

Helix

King of tone

B9

Soldano clean model

XLRs straight in to the PA with a dual cab model going left and right with 2 X 1x12 models

Split before the cab models and output 2 via 1/4 going into 2 Fryette Powerstations and 2 1x12 cabs either end of the stage

At full blast it is a might mighty experience but with all the dynamics I need

I had a great time extending some solos and really working with light to heavy picking dynamics

Punters were blown away and the band were loving the sheer size of the sound

I'm deaf but happy

How did you program the B9 leslie brake in Helix? Or are you using the rotary in Helix itself?

I'm using the Leslie cab in the helix and programming a button to take the speed to zero

I run the B9

I have one footswitch that is assigned to switch it on

Switch all amp models off

Switch all cab models off

Switch the Leslie model on

And I have a momentary footswitch set up to act as the brake on the Leslie

All sounds great

I'm at the point now that the scribble strips have ruined me for any other pedal

Anything else just seems .... Primitive

I've got an Atomic

It's my backup rig

Great pedal and sounds fab if you put the time in

The lack of buttons is an issue and I wish it had a ground lift in the XLRs

But as a second unit it has a lot going for it

I'm not sold on the 3rd party irs

It makes stereo a pain and finding the right one at band volume is a torture my band mates aren't really signing up for

If you have ones you know and use already then it's great

If you want to sit and audition 100 3rd party IRs then you have much more patience than me I have to say :)

The Dr is in

I'll need to lose the mic input but that may work for me

Thanks for the heads up I'll have a look at that

I could use the exp pedal to morph between the inputs

I must be in the minority hat doesn't really use the Helix for Amp modelling

I stick a generically clean amp like the Soldano or one of the fenders bypass the cab modelling and go straight into either the fx returns of a pair of two rocks or a Freyette power station

I do use the cab models via the XLRs for front of house but that is re-enforcement. The sound I hear and play with is straight into the power section of the amp

Why do I mention this?

Because I had an FX8 at the same time as the Helix and although the scenes were OK (I didn't use them much) I ran out of FX and /or horsepower pretty quickly on it.

My life with the FX8 was a constant juggling act of what it would allow me to have without switching preset

Where the Helix won hands down was the on the floor tweaking (which is a pain in most of the fractal devices) and also the amount of footswitches per patch and the flexibility to assign any parameter easily to a footswitch

For example I have patches with guitar harmonies on them where I use the footswitches to latch and temporarily change key

I could probably do the same in the FX8 but not easily

I also wasn't convinced about the drives

They were 'OK' and with a fair amount of deep tweaking you could even get them to be 'good' but it is time consuming

I'm a jobbing musician, I don't have a lot of time or patience for editing. I want to plug it in, twiddle about a bit then rock out..

The minute I'm ducking about with a laptop scrolling through pages of parameters ... I've lost

The Helix is quicker and easier to get good sounds for me

Just my 2 pence