DarrellM5

I had the Variax 500 for over a decade and I've had the JTV69 for a year and a half now; both are amazing and neither has given me any trouble at all. I run them into a Vetta II Combo, a HD500X and now Helix. The acoustics are amazing; especially into a PA speaker (I'm using the Alto TS110A). I also love setting up custom tunings to cover some of my favorite artists and to simulate a 7 string. I spend most of my time on the Lester - bridge setting.

Man, I agree 100%. I'm having a blast with the effects and the default settings are great on them. I'm going to have to try it as an effects only unit into the front of an amp; bet it would be great with my Peavey Bravo 112.

I'll have to try one. BTW, there is an idea submission on ideascale for a Catalinbread Naga Viper treble booster and the current status is "in review".

So there's a scribble strip labeled 'treble boost' on preset Factory 1 -> 04C Essex A15. It looks like they're using the 10 band graphic EQ before the amp block. The settings are: 0.0dB 0.0dB 0.0dB +1.0 dB +4.1dB +8.0dB +8.0dB +7.4dB +5.4dB 0.0dB +3.0dB 31.25Hz 62.5Hz 125Hz 250Hz 500Hz 1kHz 2kHz 4kHz 8kHz 16kHz Level I like it. I think it really makes the sound fill out. I'm going to use this trick in some of my patches.

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Helix should handle that pedal easily. Also, I've noticed some of the factory presets have a scribble strip labeled 'treble boost'. I'll take a closer look tonight and see what effect they've assigned that switch to and how it's set up.

For the factory reset, I used the 9 & 10 method. After re-flashing the firmware I used the 8 & 9 method. It is an odd problem. Now I have no way of knowing that all of the other presets are good without going back through all of them. I would recommend that gigging musicians test all of the presets they'll be using live after any firmware updates.

Voted +1

Well, re-flashing the firmware seems to have fixed the problem. Weird that all of the other presets worked fine though.

Also, don't take it as gospel that you have to use just preamps. I also own a HD500X and run it into a DT25. Using Preamps in the HD500X was recommended but I have some patches that sound amazing using the full amp models. Let your ears decide.

. I guess I got the name wrong when I posted earlier. It is Factory 2 -> 20B but the preset name is SFX:EXP Disturb. Anyhow, the sound dies regardless of inputs or outputs. I tried it with a regular guitar into the guitar input. I also tried just XLR out to PA and with just headphones hooked up and it didn't matter. So then I did a factory reset and it still didn't help. I started thinking that maybe the memory location that 20B uses could be defective so I cleared all the blocks and built my own patch there. I made sure to fill up as many blocks with effects as I could. Now it seems to be stable. I guess the problem is with the preset; maybe the firmware got corrupted during the download or when I flashed Helix. I have a few more ideas to try: Re-download and flash the firmware. Move the SFX: EXP Disturb preset to a different location and see if it works there. Leave the preset in it's normal location and start deleting effects one at a time to see if one of them is causing the problem.

That's strange. Try activating the tuner and see if it's getting a signal from the JTV. I hate to ask but have you tried a bunch of different presets? Have you tried just using the mags on the JTV? Do you have another device you can VDI into just to make sure everything's okay with the JTV and your VDI cable? That's all I can think of at the moment. If all of these suggestions fail to solve the problem I'd log a support ticket.

If they both have a single Send and Return jack then you just need a 1/4" stereo cable.

I don't think it's the Variax connection because the tuner still works. I'll try it with several different outputs tonight.

If your GT100 has a single fx send then you would need the Y-cable (single stereo end to your GT100 fx send and dual mono ends to the Vetta fx returns). Set up a clean patch with no amps on the Vetta and put a dummy plug into the Vetta guitar input (just one end of a patch cable will work for this). This works fine for me when I run my HD500X into the fx return of my Vetta II Combo.

Okay, here's an interesting glitch. I can only stay on preset Factory 2 -> 20B: SFX:Holkulani for about 20 seconds before all sound ceases from Helix. The only way to get sound back is to reboot the unit. It's repeating every single time I try it. I've spent all weekend running through the other presets and creating my own and 20B is the only thing giving me any trouble. Perhaps some of you guys could pull up that patch and see if the sound holds for more than 30 seconds. Firmware 1.02.2, JTV69 via VDI, XLR out to PA, L6 Link out to DT, MIDI out to DT, USB Not connected.

Hold on a second! The DT25 Guitar Amplifier Pilot's Guide plainly states the following on page 6: • Changing Tone settings (for example) on either the POD HD or DT25 immediately updates the other, with the result that both units stay perfectly in sync. • “Edit†a preset on a POD HD by simply turning knobs on the DT25 as one would on any other guitar amp, then save it on the POD HD to perfectly recall every time the preset is selected. So if the knobs work while the HD500X is controlling the DT, they could do the same with Helix. I posted the following on TGP earlier this evening: I got a chance to play around with MIDI and my DT25. It's really easy to accomplish. First I set up a new preset with the German Ubersonic Preamp. Then I connected a MIDI cable from the Helix MIDI Out/Thru to the DT25 MIDI In and added 2 instant commands to my preset. The first command was MIDI CC 19 and Value 65 to select channel B on the amp (which probably wasn't even necessary). The second command was MIDI CC 89 and Value 21 to select the Bomber Uber Amp along with the default cab and settings. When I switched to my preset, the amp instantly went to Channel B, Class A/B, Pentode and Topology 4. Plus it sounds great. This was a really simple way to set up the DT25. Once I get used to doing this I figure it will add a couple minutes to creating a preset. If I had wanted, I could have gone much deeper and changed cabs, mics and other settings as well with additional MIDI commands. I think I did this correctly. What I'm unsure of is whether or not I ran an Uberschall Preamp (Helix) into an Uberschall Preamp (DT25) and then into a cab, essentially stacking 2 preamps. I don't think so because turning off the preamp block in Helix takes all the gain out and gives me a nice clean tone. One other thing is that the DT will remain on those settings until it receives additional MIDI commands, as in another preset telling it to change it's configuration. By the way, this is the first time I've ever used MIDI commands. While this is a workable solution, it would be much simpler, and quicker, for Line 6 to add DT functionality to Helix, which they're probably working on.

There's a thread over on TGP with some actual measured preset switching results. http://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/helix-patch-change-time-testmetrics.1630577/#post-20775145

I just run updater and let it download and install the latest firmware. No need to manually download the firmware file.

Helix wasn't intended as a HD500X replacement but as an entirely different product line. That being said, it's definitely replacing mine. I didn't intend to get rid of my HD500X when Helix arrived, but now that I've been playing it for a few days, I can't go back to the HD.

The latest update went perfectly on my Windows 7 system.

Upgrading from Win 8 to 10 is a no-brainer. From a stable platform like Win 7 though..............I think I'll give them some more time to work out the kinks.

Helix is so simple compared to the HD series (or any modeler I've ever tried). The HD series forced me to spend a considerable amount of time learning to tweak eq's and cab settings. I didn't like any of the HD500X presets until they released the Variax setlist earlier this year. I'm really enjoying the stock presets on Helix. I even created a couple enjoyable patches from scratch in under a minute each. The intuitive UI is amazing and I'm having a blast tweaking stuff. While I'm on vacation I'm running via XLR into an Alto TS110A powered PA speaker or into headphones and the sound is amazing. When I get home I'll be running it into a DT25 or into the effects return of a Vetta II Combo or even straight into Reaper. I'll be selling quite a bit of gear soon , including the HD500X.

Preset switches are lightning fast and are not an issue like on other Line 6 products. It's just an empty patch with the Taylor IR followed by just a touch of reverb. It takes about 30 seconds to set up.

You bet Geeman. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1XgNa5vH3j1ZkVoTFJLQ241WTg/view