SaschaFranck

First off: From my experience, soundmen are just happy if you manage to balance levels yourself. And then: If the technique of doing most of your tone (and volume shaping) straight on your guitar appeals to you, go for it. Or at least start there. One thing to consider: Due to the compressing nature of overdrives, the more gain your patch has, the less impact your guitar volume will have on the overall level. At a certain amount of gain, you will likely experience almost no volume changes at all anymore inside the 6-10 range of a typical guitar volume knob, it'll only control the drive of your sound. As a result, this technique won't work too well for pretty much overdriven rhythm tones. Stacking drive pedals (or drive pedals plus amp gain) will usually take you away yet some more. However, it will likely work fine in case you're after medium gain leads and slightly dirty rhythm tones. Fwiw, I always try to make sure my "barebones" lead snapshot in my patches is working that way, so I can walk around stage and don't have to switch through my pedalboard. Whatever, in case this approach floats your boat, go for it.

My opinion is based on evidence (and on experience as well - but that's pretty irrelevant for this case). Which makes up for a huge difference, simply because it's taking us into the realm of objectivism. Depends on what we disagree upon. Regarding "most often bands don't back off when a guitar player is having a solo" we can disagree all we want but it wouldn't change a single thing regarding evidence, so there's nothing to agree or disagree with. As said, it's math. And it's even less "ridiculous assertions". And yes, statements such as this are winding me up (at least as much as any online stuff is winding me up - which isn't all that much in general). We can let this rest. But that's about it.

The difference from it just being an opinion: I can back up my statements. Which makes it somewhat more true than just in my book. In case something happens with a likeliness of around 90%, the remaining 10% are unlikely to happen. There's no opinions possible, it's math.

I will happily eat my words in case someone proves the amount of cases where whatever bands back off during a solo exceeds the amount of bands who don't. I will even eat my words in case I don't manage to find 10 examples where it doesn't happen for each example of the opposite. Until that point, my statement is "unarguably" true. And fwiw, we're talking about such a bog standard thing here, I'm quite amazed you folks even get all wound up about it. Ever since it's possible, guitarists boost their solo tones one way or the other. Heck, back in the 40s when big band guitarists started to use amps and were allowed to have a solo spot as well, some of those amps had footswitches for the standby function, so they would only be switched on during those very solo passages. Amps have channels labeled "lead" and players not using any such things may backup their volume for rhythm parts and turn it up for solos. Yet some others may just pick harder (think Django Reinhardt). In a nutshell: Telling me my "assertions" were "ridiculous" or it was common standard that whatever bands would often (?!?) reduce their levels or intensity of playing during whatever solo parts is downright absurd. And fwiw #2: We all know why this happens. You folks don't like me (which is fine), probably even more so as I harshly criticized DD's choice of words in another thread - so now you're trying to get after me. But pretty please, even if that's fine, you need to try harder. Just that you have a language advance isn't good enough, it takes a bit more cleverness to be sure. All those cheesy reasonings don't even make me raise an eyebrow.

Anyhow, here's a little patch demonstrating the way I often do soloboosts, namely with a pre-amp compressor (Vetta Comp here) and a post-amp EQ. I slapped them and a delay onto the same footswitch (FS6). As far as the rest of the patch goes, there's some gate behind the amp, might have to be adjusted accordingly. There's also a gain block straight at the beginning, I have one on all my patches so I can quickly compensate for larger pickup output differences. Wanted to record a snipplet - but it's just a test (which I recorded anyway) because my g-string broke (which you can hear at the end of the clip, hence the rather unpleasant ending). And as it's too late, I won't put up new strings now, so you gotta live with it for now. Still demonstrates more or less fine how this approach works with different drives (which I switch between within the clip). http://www.saschafranck.de/Helix/Soloboost.mp3 Soloboost.hlx

Learn to read before making "ridiculous assertions" yourself, ok? Nowhere did I ever say that noone has ever backed off to allow a solo. You even quoted the important part of my post yourself: "Just that this usually simply doesn't happen." No idea whether we need to discuss about the meaning of "usually" - but in my book it's equal to "could happen but most often doesn't" - which, quite unarguably, is true.

WTF? What has *any* of this to do with my statement that most often, when there's a guitar solo, the band is *not* backing off? And fwiw, I can as well post as much examples of the very same things in a live context. You however simply can't come up with any prove of the opposite - so you're the only one posting ridiculous assertions. So, why do you reply at all?

And as far as my "ridiculous assertion" goes, shall we have a look at some of the most famous solos in rock/pop? What about "Rosanna"? Right, the band is all the way backing off during the solo part. "Beat It"? Yeah, solo part starts at whisper quiet volumes. And as Joe Walsh has been mentioned, what about one of *the* most famous guitar solos ever, happening in "Hotel California"? Yeah, now here's a band that's really backing off when the solo parts start. What's next? "Highway To Hell"? Any Led Zeppelin stuff? Or what about some pop tunes? "Easy"? Or "Dancing On a Ceiling"? "Maniac"? I could go on forever. New stuff, old stuff, anything in between. In fact, as long as we stay in the rock/pop realm, I can hardly think of any wellknown guitar solo with the band actually backing off. Ah right, I guess these guys are all amateurs. Fwiw, I am perfectly aware of things being different in other styles - but even in "jam style" Country, Blues, Jazz and what not, while solo parts may start out softly (especially in case they're not just like some 4-16 bar episodes, as in most pop tunes), there's usually a pretty intense built up happening, so at the end of the solo we're all the way back in fullblown territory, hence in need of a sound that will still stand out on top. But hey, sure, saying that most often bands are *not* backing off during a solo is a "ridiculous assertion".

Fine. So there must be countless examples. And what about posting some examples of your own for demonstration purposes?

Happily so. Why not? Because you won't find any popular example? So much about a "reality check". Right. So far, you and DunedinDragon are claiming things that apparently usually don't happen (at least not in a rock/pop context). And you fail to come up with examples (whereas I could just post examples all day long). So, how about that for "experience"?

Just that this usually simply doesn't happen. At least in rock-ish bands, it's pretty much the opposite, especially when it comes to guitar solos. These are often the loudest part of the song. But I'd happily be proven wrong, maybe Mr. Dragon will post some example videos of it happening...

Fwiw, my standard method to generate a solo tone out of pretty much every amp tone is to add a pre-boost of some sorts and a post-EQ. The pre-boost might be an overdrive, a treble boost or a compressor. I'm mostly using the latter with pretty modest compression and just a slight volume boost (IMO the Vetta Comp from the legacy stomps works well), that way I'm getting a bit more "meat". In addition, with the post-EQ block I usually add some mids (always a nice thing for solo tones IMO) and set the final solo volume. Been doing it like that since almost two decades already, even with my analog setups. Works a treat. I could post a sample patch and some audio snipplet, in case someone's interested.

Yeah, precisely. You could simply use Audacity, which is a freeware audio editor also allowing you to record. USB outs 7/8 (hence appearing as USB inputs 7/8 in whatever recording software) always carry your dry guitar input signal, so you could just record some bits from USB 7 (mono is sufficient). You could do all that while playing through your favourite preset, USB 7/8 will still be a bone dry guitar signal. It's really not complicated at all, once you have the Helix driver installed (which you will have anyway as you're using HX Edit).

With 2.9x I guess I will never ever leave stomp mode again. Before I've mainly been using 4stomp/4snap mode and occasionally went to 10 stomp mode. I wish there was a 12-stomp mode. Fwiw, I'm only ever using one single patch per gig and will only change that when Line 6 may introduce a global block functionality of some sorts.

You can laugh about that all you want. And you can go "oh it was just a joke" all you want, too. What's next? N-word jokes? Would be your level I suppose. Whatever, I'm done with it. Edit: And fwiw, I did not expect you to understand things anyway.