drew_tnbd

Way better dude. I know what you mean, on the HD series the cabs all sounded a bit... I dunno.. muffled and bass heavy, with very little definition. The Helix sounded very good to me, and palm mutes did not go all farty like they do on the HD.

Let me clarify - when you assign a switch to control the bypass of an effect, it's toggle only. Meaning you cannot enforce an effect to be bypassed by a switch. You can only toggle it. So if your effect is on, and you hit the switch.. the effect will turn off even if you wanted it to remain on. If the effect is off and you hit the switch, the effect will turn on even if you wanted it to remain off. This is something I wanted to be able to do, for the purposes of stacking up commands on a switch. So you'd have something like this: Switch 1 - sends out a program change to a guitar amp to switch to the clean channel, and ensures that a boost is disabled. Switch 2 - sends out a program change to a guitar amp to switch to the rhythm channel, and ensures that the boost is enabled. Switch 3 - sends out a program change to a guitar amp to switch to the lead channel, and ensures that the boost is disabled. Switch 4 - sends out a program change to a guitar amp to switch to the lead channel, and ensures that the boost is enabled. Now lets imagine you pressed switch 2 and then switch 4... what you wanted was the lead channel with the boost enabled. What you will get is the lead channel with the boost disabled. Make sense?

Reverbs: Yes. Quite a bit better I'd say. The change from a regular tone knob to a low-cut and high-cut is welcome too. High-gain: They sound as good as the Kemper and Axe FX II to me. I'd be happy to use any of them in a recording situation, but there is still that niggling part of me that can't drop the valve amps. I'd say it's definitely worth upgrading.

My Orville Les Paul Custom with Seymour Duncan Distortions in both the neck and the bridge.

Btw... I would kinda say that people are getting hyped about the IR features... I don't think you're really going to need it. The built in cabs sounded great.

Sorry, we mostly remained in one patch as all my questions were related to routing and assigning footswitches. I don't know what the latency was like. The thing sat on a desk, so I didn't have much chance to use the expression pedal. But it looked solid! It didn't feel warm at all.

Went down to the Yamaha store here in London today to checkout the Helix. Met the fabulous Paul Hindmarsh and had a bit of a walk-through of the unit. I managed to have a play for about 10 minutes myself also. I posted my thoughts elsewhere so excuse the copy pasta: There is a limit to how much you can explore at something like this, small crowd of people that me and Hug scared off, limited time to dig down into menus and such things. But... - I was impressed with the variety of midi/switching options. - It isn't really possible to emulate a "scenes" mode right now. You need to workaround it - lots of ways to do that. - High gain amps all sounded pretty decent, particularly the Soldano channels. - I was impressed at how different the distortion stomps all sounded from one another. The RAT did indeed sound like a RAT. - When assigning switches to the bypass of effects, it's toggle behaviour only. IE: You can't specify a min and max value for the switches. You cannot currently say "make this switch *always* bypass n effect regardless of it's current state" - which is a bit of a bummer. Something I was hoping for. - Obviously you can still assign a min and max for actual effect parameters. We had the volume fairly low, so I can't talk about the feel too much. But I wouldn't say the tones or the feel were in anyway inferior to the Axe FX II and the Kemper. In fact I think we've just reached the point where it's all about "flavour" rather than superiority. You'd be hard pressed to pick a "better sounding" unit between the three of them. I truly believe that, and having owned the Kemper and Axe FX II, I don't feel I am talking out of my arse. Whereas the Pod HD was probably 80% of the way there to matching the Axe and Kemper... the Helix is definitely an equal for raw amp quality. I can say it didn't feel like standing next to an amp. Obviously. If you're expecting that, then you're a loon and you probably need to be put down. No, it felt like a mic'd up amp in a live room and with us monitoring from the control room. And it felt good. The built in cabs. I only went through the 4x12s quickly, but they were head and shoulders above anything inside of the Pod HD unit. The delays and reverbs all sounded very nice, though I didn't explore them as much as I would've liked. All in all, I think the hype is justified. I'm now in the position of having to figure out if I should get one. My gut says YEEESSSS definitely!! My head is going through all the possible ramifications of my band ending, and if it does how that will impact my real world needs. I guess at that point, the Helix comes into it's own as a studio recording tool. But right now I'm really looking at it as a pedalboard replacement unit. If you've got any questions throw 'em at me and I'll try to answer them.

Yes yes! That's exactly what I am wondering. Additionally though, I'm wondering if I can use the CV output to get myself a 3rd switch option. Geddit?

It's a DIN socket, yes. But the amp itself does not use midi. The DIN socket is basically just acting as a tidier way of 1/4" sockets. I'm pretty sure if you send a voltage pulse to the right pin on the DIN, it will perform the function associated with that pin - channel switch, boost activate, etc... The thing I'm not sure about is utilising the CV output to give me a third 'external amp pulse' if you will.

Okay so I've got a Fryette Sig X. It takes a 6 pin DIN plug into it's footswitch jack on the back of the amp. This switches relays inside the amp to change channels, activate the channel boost, and activate the effects loop. What I'm wondering is if I can avoid having an external box like the Voodoo Labs Control Switcher, and whether I can make a cable that will go straight from the Helix to the Sig X, allowing me to switch the amps functions from the Helix directly. What I'm wondering is if the external amp output could change the channel, and the CV could enable the boost. Here are some wiring diagrams that I have: One from RJM for their Amp Gizmo: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/630473/101_FUJI/AC-SIGX.pdf One from Fryette themselves: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/630473/101_FUJI/SigX_FS_Pinout.pdf It seems to me that I could skip the FX loop switchability (I'd have it on all the time anyway!) and I could wire the relevant pins on a 6-pin DIN plug, to a pair of TRS jacks, which could then plug into the Helix. Thoughts?

Lets try this.... everyone contribute. A list of songs or tones that we'd like to hear from the Helix... maybe this'll help Line 6 come up with the demos that we want to hear. Or maybe they'll just ignore it, haha. Who knows! My picks: The heavy stuff at the outset: The solo stuff at 4:20: The crunchy riff at 1:13: The chunky rhythm stuff from the start of the song: The clean tones at the start: The chunky riff at 0:58: May not be the best range of clips, but that's the idea with opening it up to everyone. So we can get a sense of the tones we all want to hear.

Certainly it would have to be a preference and not on by default. But I imagine a lot of people are going to be using this unit as a pedalboard replacer. Is what I'm planning on doing! I might even try the modelling live as well though... I've tried the Axe FX II and the Kemper in the past. Had more success with the Kemper, so who knows... could be a potential direction to go in.

IE: Make some edits.... turn the unit off.... those edits are retained.... That was a big feature with the M series, and it just occured to me that it would be cool if the Helix had it as a system pref too.

See what I'm thinking now is you could add the Source Audio Reflex expression controller, and use it's built in LFO to do some really interesting and weird stuff with the Helix. Because the Reflex will put out midi CC's from it's internal sequencer: http://www.sourceaudio.net/products/toolblox/reflex_universal_exp_controller.php It looks pretty slick.

The midi spec limits CC's to 128 anyway, so a full and total map would be nigh on impossible. Because of the dynamic nature of how the Helix is undoubtedly going to work (IE: you can put any effect into any slot) you would very quickly run out of CC's. So a fixed map isn't possible. The way other manufacturers get around this is to use NRPN's, but to be honest, they're a massive pain in the lollipop. It's much better to build dynamic mapping functionality, and allow users to map only the things they want. Realistically, for most people... 128 CC's should be more than enough.

Yup. Agreed.

You don't need stereo jacks for this functionality. You just need a specific type of cable that is wired in a certain way.

I'd rather ProGuitarShop and Ola Englund.

Is it possible to use a switch to set parameters to certain values? So... Example... Switch 1 - amp 1 active, gain set to 9, amp 2 muted Switch 2 - amp 1 muted, amp 2 active, gain set to 2 Switch 3 - amp 1 muted, amp 2 active, gain set to 5 In short... Can you have two amp models in a preset and use control switches to emulate a 4 channel amp setup?

Yes. It's a very common type of cable in studio situations, and will work with all TRS jack sockets. The humbuster technology is just a buzzword invented to get people to part with their hard-earned cash.

I don't care about either of these things tbh. As long as the buffers are high quality and don't add excessive amounts of noise, I'll be fine!

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/43521/line-6-helix/p1

I have to say, as a current Kemper owner and an ex-Axe FX II owner, I found the factory presets for both units pretty poor tbh. I guess they just weren't my thing, but I like hard rock and metal - Tool, Deftones, RATM, SOAD, etc... - and those are the tones I am after from factory presets. Nail the Adam Jonez tonez with the Helix, and I'll be orgiastic!! ;)

Is there a global preset option? IE: - Preset with amp set clean + loads of effects - Global preset with amp set dirty and no effects - Pressing the currently loaded preset switches to the global preset, but remains in the current bank for preset selection.

Thought I'd have some fun pulling the names of effects from the Sweetwater video. Here is what I got: I do wonder whether they're final options or if the Sweetwater guys were running an older beta firmware, because I'm missing a Reverse Delay - and in the video the delay category didn't have a little down arrow at the bottom of the list, indicating more available options - so I hope that isn't the lot for delay! It must not be really... coz they had the Harmony Delay in all the promo stuff, and it wasn't in the list in the Sweetwater video. Anyone wanna take a guess at what an Adriatic Delay could be, or the Elephant Man?? My guess is the Adriatic Delay is some kind of huge washy ambient delay and that the Elephant Man is apeing a real world pedal of some kind, possibly a Memory Man - elephant's never forget and all that....