SaschaFranck

Upvoted.

Ooops, didn't know they went that low with the OD-1 (I was aware of the CE-1, but usually it's not too relevant in case you run other active things in front). Triggered by this discussion and because I already wondered about it before, I looked around a bit and found that quite some buffered bypass pedals actually seem to come with lower impedances than 1MOhm. Doesn't seem to be unusual to find something like around 500kOhm. A) Makes me wonder why we don't see anything like 500k in the Helix (the step between 1M and 230k is quite a noticeable one), b) it sort of explains why I'm usually getting along better with 220k than with 1M, as I had a 535 Cry Baby (actively buffered, too) on my pedalboards for decades. This is also why I'd like to see an option to assign an input impedance manually to whatever pedals.

I often do so at home. In case I remember, I switch the capacitive switch functionality off (even if I use it to assign switches, regardless of HX Edit in front of me - it's just a lot faster).

No. They went for something that is only possible/happening in the virtual world, namely a pedal buffering at an input impedance that doesn't exist in the real world. Sure, you could create a buffer coming with 130kOhm input impedance - but AFAIK, those don't exist (for good reasons).

In all honesty, post counts are as irrelevant as it gets. In case someone is right with his first posting, nobody with 7379932992 posts would be "more right" because of the post count. It's one of the biggest downsides of online forums, people respect regulars a lot more, even if they come up with utter nonsense (and no, I'm not refering to Phil but generally).

Btw, as a side tip: IMO, the best fuzzy tone available in the Helix comes from the Top Secret OD. The true fuzz models aren't particularly great for my ears (the one in my Amplifirebox is a lot better, they should steal it - and it doesn't even need any impedance wizardry).

That's true - but yes, it's also true that it's a bit like apples and oranges. Simply because Boss pedals introduce a typical 1MOhm impedance, hence pretty much the same as, say, an amp or most other pedals. In other words: In case you slap a Boss pedal in front of an amp, there's not much of a difference when it comes to the amps behaviour (ok, a bit, because of the active buffer, but let's not get into that). Ok, now slap a fuzz in front of your amp. A Big Muff comes with an input impedance of just 130kOhm. Now, this is all fine because that way the pedal works the best. But once you switch it off, you're back to normal (your amp input impedance). So, not only was the way the Helix did it before FW 3.x just wrong (wrong = not representing the scenario it's supposed to represent, which I think is what a modeler should do), it even had a good potential to mess with your precious amp tone because you thought it'd be nice to slap that pedal in, even if it's on bypass most of the time - and that's precisely what's not happening with Boss pedals. Whatever, before FW 3.x it was pretty much pointless to make use of the auto impedance feature, now it's at least as in the real world (fwiw, personally, I wish I could assign an individual impedance to each drive pedal).

Fwiw, anything assigned via command center brings up just that when touching the capacitive switches. Personally, I'd like to see an option that it'd bring up the target that is controlled, cycling through multiple targets in case more than one assign has been made, just as with footswitches assigned to multiple targets.

It's either you playing barefoot or the capacitive switches acting up for another reason.

Preset loading fine over here, so I'd check everything again. I've only ever seen this message once, when I had forgotten to update HX Edit.

Well, I'd rather think of it as a useful addon to finetune certain things. Just as I was swapping the stock 6L6s in my MkIV in favour of EL34s (to end up with a mix of both, which was possible as well). And maybe to just slap FX between pre- and poweramp for that little gritty extra. For my personal use case it'd likely be perfectly fine if they offered like 3-4 of the most common power amp designs, mainly to use different sorts of PA tubes. I'd rather not like to fool around with swapping individual tubes and such - that'd be quite a rabbit hole indeed.

It's still a big difference between that and being able to insert whatever unit between pre- and power amp.

Sure. For most of whatever "normal" or "utility" FX it might not make too much of a difference, but once you have an option to somewhat "dirty" up, say, a modulation effect, it might be quite worth the effort. I actually often like modulation FX to sit in front of a driven amp, but quite sometimes it's too much warble. In front of a driven/cranked power amp, it might however become just what the doctor ordered.

Well, not really. There's a pretty noticeable difference between cranking a master volume and boosting the input stage of a power amp. However, while I possibly wouldn't need dedicated power amps to feed them with super hot levels, I'd defenitely love to see them for basically two reasons: - To fool around with different pre- and poweramp combinations (which makes quite a difference). - To insert some FX between the two. The poweramp in this case might kind of "gel" things together or add some "bloom" - which I think could be pretty desirable effects.

And fwiw, just having independent power amps would be quite welcomed already. I have a Soldano SP77 preamp that sounds quite gorgeous through the power amp sim of my Amplifirebox. Can't use it as nicely with the Helix.