SaschaFranck

Might be. But as said, he's waiting for around 2 months by now (for a broken joystick, btw., something that - unfortunately - has to be considered a standard). Fwiw, he's in Switzerland, but apparently it might as well take some time in Germany, at least from what I've read. I really hope this will never happen to me. Unfortunately, some parts on the Helix aren't exactly "road ready" (both joysticks, the mic preamp, some LT EXP pedals, broken LEDs and what not). Yes, I knew this before I bought it and still did so, but well, it always leaves me a bit scared that something may happen.

Two more things: - DunedinDragon already mentioned the possible option paralysis you might be running into with IRs. I would really recommend to stick with the default cabs as long as it takes for you to get the hang of the Helix. IR management is far from ideal, too, so that might add to the confusion. - Before buying preset packs, do yourself a favour and try to build some patches yourself. Even if they might not turn out to sound like the greatest things on earth, you will learn how to deal with the Helix' "architecture" - which will be really important once you need to adjust patches to suit your taste. Even the best presets usually don't work straight out of the box for most people, so being familiar with the various ways to achieve this or that inside the Helix will really help you to adjust things.

Over here in Europe it's probably a better idea to consult a decent technician rather than relying on Yamahas quite shady support. It's a shame the way Line 6 treats Helix customers over there hasn't made it across the world, really (I know of one guy waiting for his Helix to return from a repair since 2 months already, which is completely inacceptable by any standards). Hence I applaud people for posting such videos.

Good to know, thanks. And now let's hope they add a cancel function for the initial recording...

Fwiw, unlike Mr. Sadites I don't exactly recommend to start with a compressor as a sort of standard at the end of your signal chain. Yes, it may help to polish your sound, but it may as well cut off some of the delicate dynamics of an amp that you would otherwise like. Guitar amps by themselves already add a lot of compression (defenitely true for anything overdriven), so there's often not too much of a point in adding some more - at least not straight "out of the box". Especially when playing live, I often want to maintain as much dynamics as I possibly could instead of squashing them yet some more. This is not meant to say "never do it that way" - but I'd simply not start with it. It's nothing you'd do with your real amps, either. It's also not how things are dealt with in studio recording situations. When dialing in your sound, there's usually *zero* tweaks coming from the engineer operating the console. He/she simply won't slap a master compressor on your sound (unless you explicitely ask for it). As you're just starting out, there's these things I highly recommend (I would probably do all this with the Powercab set to flat mode): - Insert a looper as the very first thing in your signal chain. This allows you to record something into it and do all tweakings while someone else (the looper) is playing. If anything, this is by far the biggest time saviour in my world when creating guitar sounds (I was using external loopers just for that purpose since decades already, can't be beaten, really). It's an entirely different thing from playing something, have a note/chord ring out, adjust things, play again, adjust things - etc. Especially as we're not dealing with a nice amount of physical knobs (but just 6 you need to switch to or the editor), this will save you time. And I'm not talking about saving you some seconds but literally *hours*. Record a riff, adjust, stop the looper, record another riff, to see whether that would work with the same sound, stop the looper, record some single notes, etc. -- Insert just an Amp+Cab block and go through *all* the models while the looper is playing. Sometimes the default settings programmed by Line 6 aren't ideal, so I strongly suggest to spend a little time on each amp to at least adjust the drive(s), master and sag parameters, these are the most crucial to adjust the drive amount (obviously) and the amps dynamic behaviour. In addition, you may want to turn down hum and ripple (they're basically nonsense IMO, at least when it comes to selecting sounds, plus they add noise even in case you're not playing, which is annoying - I have no idea why they're turned up that much by default, if it was like that on a real amp, you'd possibly think about having it repaired). - Once you found an amp that's in your tonal ballpark, play through it. Then go to your global settings and check out the leftmost entry under "Ins/Outs", it's called "Guitar In Pad". It's off by default. Switching it on will globally attenuate your input level. I think the main reason for this to exist is to compensate for guitars with pretty high output, but many people (myself included) think of it to work pretty well on lower output guitars, too. My main axes really don't throw out much level and I keep the Input Pad on all the time. There's still tons of gain if I need it. In fact, I think most amps are a bit too much on the gainier side of things, so I absolutely welcome the additional headroom for clean and slightly sizzling sounds. YMMV, but this might be an important decision to make. - Back to the "ballpark" amp, have the looper playing a bit more and check out all the cabs without changing the amp - or at least the similar cabs. So, in case the Amp+Cab block comes up with a 4x12, make sure to check at least all the 4x12s. This makes a *huge* difference. Like *really huge*. Depending on the amp model, using a different cab might even sound like using an entirely different amp. Gets even more drastic once you change the base cab model (such as from 4x12 to 1x12). - Once you found the cab you like best, you might want to fool around with the mics and their positioning (IMO close is fine for a start, regardless of the mic). For mic selections, I find it to be particularly useful to actually play around and enter pedal edit mode, then select "Mic" and use the "Value +/-" switches to go through the mic models. Note: Pedal edit mode in itself is extremely useful for plenty of fine tunings, as it allows you to play around while adjusting parameters simultaneously - and as great as using a looper is, patches always feel a bit (or even more than a bit) different once you play them yourself. Personally, I'm always using the looper to get me as close as possible and then do fine tunings via pedal edit while playing around (ideally with some backings). In my case, doing it like that allows me to come up with very useful patches in a very short amount of time. As usual, YMMV. Of course, pretty much everything applies to further edits (such as adding other blocks), too.

Well, if anyone needs all these amps, there's better modelers around. Pretty easy.

I think 13 out of 67 amps (some of the none highgain ones often just representing differently jumpered channels) is quite a decent percentage.

There's certain reproduceable bugs. Just because you're not running into them doesn't mean they're not there. And fwiw, I think there's a pretty high percentage of high gain amps.

I really hope L6 will concentrate on usability and bug fixes (just found another pretty nasty one...).

Fwiw, I like stacking gain pedals myself, too, but do it too much and you lose most of your dynamics, even if the overall drive might not be that much. This is even more true in case the first pedals in the chain have a sort of compressing character, simply because when you turn down your guitar volume, only the first pedal will be affected.

I don't know much about the others, but with Atomics stuff you can at least bake the IR into the patch file - which would be a massive improvement and possibly sufficient already. And fwiw, I don't think it's got anything to do with the Helix' price. Each software sampler shows how things can be done, too, so it's not rocket science or anything, either. I love the Helix a lot, I also applaud Line 6 for doing a marvelleous job in improving the unit, hats off and all that - yet, let's face it, the IR management is almost as bad as it gets. In case you'd release a software sampler with sample management like that (and yes, it's absolutely comparable), your sales would be zero.

Fwiw, I have set myself a rather arbitrary limit of 30 IRs to stay on the Helix no matter what. For obvious reasons, they will be those in the first 20 slots. These will be the ones I'm using live and as a base for most patches (in case they need IRs). First 20 will be cab IRs, the remaining 10 kinda "special purpose" ones, such as what I may need to enhance acoustic guitars or generate pseudo acoustic guitars from electrics. I think I'll be fine with that limit - so far, I have only loaded 3 cab IRs that will stay and 1 acoustic IR for my nylon string (to be changed as it'll get a new piezo the next days). I also only ever drag additional IRs into the Helix up from IR slot 41, should I ever feel I needed to expand my sticky IRs. This allows me to not care about the IRs for my most relevant patches and it's still giving me plenty of slots to mass drop whatever IRs for testing purposes into the unit. For all other patches using whatever special IRs, I use the manual route (obviously, as there's no other choice) and save the IR(s) and a small text file along with the patch. For recording duties, IRs aren't exactly relevant for me as I only monitor with cabs/IRs and select the final cab in my sequencer. Whatever, none of all of that should be required. It's almost 2020 and computers are insanely great at storing and sorting files. There's no reason why the Helix should be an exception. It's a miraculously great piece of software and shouldn't be limited in terms of useability by something as trivial as this.

Not that I'd believe this would be it, but did you check the I/O section in your global settings? Could it be that the headphone is using a source that is muted or simply not used within a patch? As said, unlikely, but you might want to check that.

I see, valid points.

Just out of interest: Does any of the top tier modelers have a looper that you can sync to MIDI clock? I don't think so. Out of interest I looked into the Headrush manual, as the HR possibly has the most advanced looper of the bunch, couldn't find anything about MIDI clock sync. So, if this is keeping you away from buying a Helix, what would you get instead?

Fwiw, they're called "fly points" in speaker folks lingo.

I'm doing it a bit similar on one of my current main patches (which is using just one amp - something certainly making this approach easier to deal with). And I am in fact thinking about setting my Snapshot Edit preferences back to "Recall". Right now I have them at "Discard", which IMO makes sense if you do your main switchings via snapshots, simply because you don't confuse yourself too much (as you may not remember what kinda stuff you had switched on/off the last time you used the snapshot), but in case you only use snapshots for certain special sounds and use a stomp controlled "master" snapshot, "Recall" might be the better option (and it should be easy to keep track of - or remember - what you've used in that single snapshot). Thing is, with stomps you have more choices, plain maths give that away easily. A single stomp = 2 sounds. 2 stomps = 4 sounds. 3 stomps = 8 sounds. So, at least theoretically, with just 3 stomps you can already get 8 different sounds, each further stomp doubling the amount. Yes, I do know that this is just a mathematical example - not all combinations are making sense, then there's the good old pedal dance that most of us would likely love to leave behind, etc. But still, I often prefer it that way. And even utilizing "Snapshot Bypass" isn't offering the same amount of flexibility, let alone that you can't incorporate the snapshot-bypassed blocks in your snapshots anymore (obviously, that's the purpose of Snaphot Bypass - but sometimes it's getting in the way). Anyway, using stomp mode gives me a kind of flexibility that I sometimes need and that snapshots can't offer. Snapshots however allow for very drastical changes, so it's probably wise to use them for just that. As usual, there's plenty of roads leading to Rome, but right now, this method has a lot of appeal to me.

Personally, I only ever import IRs after checking them in my sequencer of choice. Yes, that way I'm kinda losing the option of playing through them straight inside the Helix (could still play through them but there might be some additional latency), but pre-sorting works *way* faster that way, at least the way I do it - fwiw, I'm using Logic, all my IRs are Space Designer presets that I can scroll through with the arrow buttons, which IMO is by far the most comfortable way I have come across until today. When done with the pre-sorting business, I save the project and it'll automatically save all used IRs (hence those of interest) within the project folder, so I can then drag them onto the Helix. No idea whether anything like that is possible as easily in other sequencers, but I still think it's easier as within the Helix. In all honesty, that doesn't help at all when you try out some IRs or - even way worse - patches requiring them. It also doesn't help in case you don't want to do full backups all the time (which I rarely ever want). The only way to really keep track of patches and their corresponding IRs is to do it manually and write everything down. Even with the sort of small overall amount of IR slots, this is good to cause much confusion already. Forget to write it down, export a single patch and change something in your IR list = patch will be lost (at least sort of). As HonestOpinion said, there's much room for improvements.

After all, it's just levels, which can easily be adjusted at pretty much any position in the signal chain. Sure, there might be the odd chance of using a Split Y block in front of whatever dynamically processing block, but even in these cases the differences should be small enough for them to not become an issue. I'm really quite a nitpicker on some things, but this very issue - apart from triggering a sort of "just because I can" interest - leaves me pretty cold. I also never got the fuzz back in the days when everybody was complaining about Logics pan laws (which were different from most others and offered no choice).

From all I know, panning laws (or compensations) are used to "help" with the attenuation of a signal that is panned away from center. However, regardless of how they're implemented (Logic for instance is offering 3 different modes), I have never heard of the volume being raised when you pan two centered signals hard L/R - which is what the Helix is doing here. Apart from that, as the signals are merged again later in the signal chain in this case, it shouldn't have any effect. Fwiw, I don't think it's worth to discuss about it too much as this will hardly (if ever) get in the way of anything. Just a little strange how the panning in Split Y is implemented.

You could for example apply further FX to just the delay signal when running it on a parallel path. So, while your dry signal would remain, well, dry, the wet/delayed signal could be sent through, say, a chorus. As a result, only your delay would be chorused. Can't do that on a straight serial path.

What datacommando said. Now, compressors can be used (and are used) in master chains (with delays and reverbs happening earlier in the signal path), but usually these are adjusted in ways hardly making much sense in a typical guitar rig. IOW: If you keep the settings on the compressor tamed (not much peak reduction), you might get away with it, but in that case you may as well just ditch it. Or simply slap it in front of the delays.

As has been said by codamedia, the HX Stomp doesn't serve as a USB host, which rules out pretty much all small sized MIDI controllers available. I have been using my Android tablet more or less successfully for such things (but gave up on it as external MIDI control and snapshots simply don't work well together at all), but that seems to be no option for you. I also own a Behringer BCR2000, works as well - but it's *huge*, so that would be no option, either. It's really too bad - I have been looking for a small MIDI controller with real MIDI outs as well, but there's pretty much none left.

Really, do the same in any DAW. Split (or duplicate) a signal. Keep both of them dead center. Listen. Then pan one hard L, the other hard R - unless you're using a pretty weird pan law compensation (and I wouldn't know of any reasons for that to make sense), the panned version never gets louder.

Wasn't meant like that at all. Just to illustrate that I actually know what you were talking about.