lawrence_Arps

followed the instructions....flawless. Quick, easy. Great!

about meters thers a great story from thirty odd years ago of an american producer/engineer (Ill leave the names out to protect the innocent), who was brought over to New Zealand to record an album with one of our top bands> Arriving at the studio he proceeded to put masking tape over every meter in the studio . He said he did not want to be tricked into making bad decisions based on the meters. He proceeded to engineer the album using only his ears for gain staging....and it sounded pretty good!

so I took a new preset .Note - Pad is on. Added a distortion to first block - chose the OCD.stock settings. Added Brit Plexi Jump.to second plack..stock settings, .. .added the seventies chorus to third block ...took the mix down to 30%, added vintage delay to fourth block..took mix down to 25% Added plate reverb to fifth block... - stock settings sounds fine to me.....

weird....the most user friendy, simple to operate piece of pro gear in the history of modelling.......apparantly needs "massive " imporvements. I also have no trouble with the 4 IRs I have loaded - non of which I currently use at all.

also...whats the point of trying to match those tones then completely swamp it with reverb and other FX.....makes no sense.

i see no reason not to use the exact appoach you would with the actual devices being modelled... I listened to the example in the videos and heard nothing particularly "lush"...just a pretty normal clean tone with a few fx shoved on - nothing special or difficult to get with Helix. Same with the distorted tones. very generic (not bad - I quite like them - but nothing hard to achieve with any of the mid gain amps and an overdive pedal...). I reckon I could copy those tones without even switching the monitors on.

no...the Floor is 2" wider than the LT.

no not really....Ive never had a problem with balancing my volumes....dont see how a meter will help. Different sounds appear at different volumes yet look the same on a meter. Its best to use your ears....just like you would on a pedal board. I do all my patch leveling in the amp block.....after I ensure thart each block is not adding volume compared tp the bypass state.(Obviously Ill run a drive harder to push an amp input) I will use the meter to set the best gain structure tho!

are you asking about having diffeent speaker settings on each of the two PC+s...then Yes. If you are asking if you can have two outputs (L&R?) from the helix withdifferent Cabs in those chains and the PC+s running in FRFR mode...Yes. You could even run two completely seprate chains from one input with diffrent FX and aAmps and cabs etc on each, going to the two PC+s in FRFR mode... or you could save the bock and run no cabs in the helix as noted above...

When yu say "Suppressor" what do you mean? Do mean a downwards expander? ie. it turns the signal down when the input is below the threshold as opposed to a gate which turns the signal off ??? To the best of my experience the input gate on the Helix is a gate...but I have the threshold set very low so that its only a tiny bit of background noise that gets tuened off when Im not playing - it is possibile that its only reducing the noise by some fixed amount - 12dB would effectively give silence... and someone described "suppressors" as Tone suckers. In what way? once the input passes the threshold the signal is not affected...???

for clarity: The Helix cabs ARE IRs. Therefore it is not true to say that the helix does not come with any.

obviously the posts about identifying your set-up and signal chain are the most important thing here, but... How do you know you are hearing "Digital" distortion?

Ive settled down to 4 presets, each with 4 Snapshots. the snapshots are always: Clean Rhythm, Drive Rhythm, Clean Solo, Drive Solo. The Presets are based on a clean amp/dirty amp combo (the first two just change parameters on a single amp block, but the Presets 3 and 4 both use 2 amp blocks. The Presets are; Arbitrator (with the drive settings quite subtle) Plexi (with the drives in the crunch zone) Texas (Chan one for clean set on edge of break up, Chan 2 on a fat drive tone) Placator (Clean is Matchstick chan 1, set very pristine, and Drive is the placator - big and gainy) To make it even friendlier: The Placator patch recalls on Snap one (Clean Rhythm) The Plexi Patch recalls on Snap two (Drive Rhythm) The Texas patch recalls on Snap three (Clean Solo) and the Placator patch recalls on Snap four (Drive Solo) hence, I can have 8 tones on a single switch press or 16 on two presses All of this backed up with 11 stomps, wah, filter, compressor, Minotor, Screamer, Tremolo, Phaser, Chorus, Tape Echo, Vintage delay, Reverb,. I have a second compressor and revreb always on but subtle. If I know I need a specific sound, say an 80s lead tone, ill go to Patch 4, drop into stomp made and activate comp, chorus and delay, then click out of stomp mode and use the 4 snapshots for the song...when the solo comes - Voila!

out of interest, how many amplifiers have you seen with this feature...same question for most stomp boxes. A few rackmount devices have a input level but the vast majority of Guitar amps and FX do not. That being the case why would we want this on Helix? I have not heard any credible reports of anyove actually clipping the input with a guitar.

well Im obviousy a bit different! I start by listening to it. I noodle a bit to get a sense of what sort of sound this is. Is it good for snappy parts?...thick chords? fast runs, big sustain?... Once I feel I have the gist of the amp Ill start teaking the knobs a bit to maximies the potential within the parameters that the amps has suggested. I never pick a model on the basis of having a predetermined sound in my head. I do, obviously go to the general gain range...so if Im looking for a bick overdriven tome I know not to start with the Jazz Rivet!

I have happilly integrateda ll three modes: Preset, Snap and Stomp. I have my board set to 4 patch, 4 snap. Each patch is an amp combination for clean and dirt - sometimes on the same amp. They are: 1) Arbitator (with clean/dirty via parameter changes in the snapshots) 2) Plexi (with clean/dirty via parameter changes in the snapshots) 3) Cali Texas 1 and Cali TExas 2 4) Jazz Rivet and Placator Then 4 Snaphots in each of the patches: 1) Clean Rhythm 2) Drive Rhythm 3) Clean Solo 4) Drive Solo the "cleanliness" or amount of drive is informed by the amp model, eg the Arbitrator clean solo has a bit of grit to it as does the Cali, while the Jazz Rivet is pristine. Finally, at the press of the mode switch I have 11 switchable stomps..Wah, Filter, Compressor, Minator, Tube Screamer, Tremolo, Phaser, Chorus, Tape Echo, Delay, Reverb, plus the studio comp and a room reverb at the end. I have these set to recall so I can quickly change whatever is active witihn a patch and say have snap 4 (drive solo) with delay or whatever. I find this set up covers everything need to do.

... and if the volume knob is not fully up then you are not at unity..... not sure what the problem is here?

AC/DC did not even have Marshalls in the beginning. Malcom's Rhythm sound was well established in some of the sessions he played on before AC/DC using Aussie made amps, and us Kiwis sometimes celebrate that Angus used a New Zealand built amp (Holden VBL) for a while in the early days. Point? Its not about the amp (or the guitar) that you use. Its the way you choose to use it and how you play.

the correct Output volume setting is full up... The Channel volume does not affect tone and if there are no FX after the amp cannot cause clipping...so for a dead clean tone can be on full..... more importantly - you have not described the full set up. How did you record the samples?

Hi - Im a bit confused with this. dBFS (Full Scale) and dBu are not the same thing. dBFS does have two meanings - one more related to electronics testing...but in the Audio world, dBFS usually referes to the digital environment. Phils comment re =16dBu is an analog measure. All Digital use of dBFS must be negative , ie, its not possible to exceed 0dBFS....

Just want to point out that for the vast majority of musical situations the patch changes are more than fast enough to change patches mid song. Yes there are some musical styles where there is noise (OK sound;-)) on every 124th note.....but the majority of musical styles have spaces. In the last live band I worked with I used helix without snapshots and changed patches between verse /chorus/solo etc hitting the switch fractionally before I started the new part......no one ever heard a gap - that includes on recording while sitting listening for the gaps. There was , out of 80 odd songs, a couple of times I would use stomp mode so that delays or reverb might hang over a change. I do use snapshots now, but only 4 per patch and using 4 patches for 16 main sounds....

yes. and yes to the next one too.....;-)

just asking, but why have the helix on half volume?

This!. Your patch should be about the same volume as it is with all blocks bypassed. There are only a few blocks that change the volume in normal use: The amp block is the most crucial. -get this one right and everthing else gets easier. Watch out for drives, especially if you are using the drive to push the front of an amp (this might require turning down the Channel Volume ), watch for compressors as its easy to turn these up. For all the other effects its entirely possible to never touch the level controls.

mmmm careful there. If you are using the PC as an FRFR then you can take a line from the Helix, BUT, if you are using either the speaker emulation or an IR on the PC then you should take the XLR out of the PC.