boynigel

Old habits die hard, which means i've been keeping my Helix LT's big volume knob at noon for assumed unity gain. I think i recall reading more than once though that many people dime their big volume knob, although i can't recall if there's any good sonic reason for doing it this way or not. is there some benefit i'm unaware of? To me, turning up the Helix volume knob means having to turn my tube amp down to compensate, which is never ideal w/tube amps. still curious though if there is some good reason to have it maxed out.

yes, delays/h90 after amp block. as far as lowering the amp Ch Vol, i use those same amps (and settings) on my other presets, some of which have waaaayyy, more post-amp blocks than the presets giving me trouble, yet i have no clipping noises on them. I'll still give your suggestion a try, but that means those presets that i lower the Ch Vol on will be more quiet than all my other presets...unless i can make up for it by adding volume via the output setting (the circle that comes at the end of the chain) without re-introducing the clipping sound. if that doesn't work, then i guess i'd have to lower ALL my presets' volumes so that they match the ones that i lowered the volume on due to clipping.\ perceived volume matching is such a PIA, hopefully i won't have to get into that as i finally got all the levels good between all the presets only recently.

I have 26 presets for my band and I’m noticing that on 5 of them I’m hearing some clipping noises, like an input is being hit too hard somewhere when I dig in to notes. Clean sounds seem to be the biggest culprit which makes sense as they’re going to have more spikey transients, unlike overdriven tones. FWIW, I have the LT’s guitar input set for Auto, and this has never given me a problem. I also went through every block, particularly delays, that have headroom parameters and turned them way up. This eliminated, or at the very least minimized the clipping noises. For the most part, I can live w/the clipping as it’s pretty faint, and I know there’s no way I’ll hear it when all the other instruments are playing along, but in a perfect world I’d like NO clipping. The one preset that it’s totally unacceptable on uses an effects loop block that goes out to an Eventide H90. The effects loop block isn’t clipping, nor is the H90…at least according to their visual meters. I was able to get rid of the clipping by lowering the fx loop block’s send down to -5.0 db, but naturally this creates the new problem of loss of volume, so I raise the Return level up by the same amount and then I’m back to square one. I do use a 2nd effects loop block that runs an always-on J Rockett Airchild compressor, set very subtly…and gives me no grief on other presets. And again, as soon as I bypass the FX loop block that goes to the H90, the clipping is gone. I’ve been running the effects loop in/outs as Instrument on both the LT and the H90, and experimented with switching them to Line, or having one set to Line and the other set to Instrument with no luck their either. Also worth mentioning- every Amp and Speaker block is pretty much the same from preset to preset, so it’s not like I’m jumping around between amps/cabs with different outputs/characteristics. Any other tips/advice to figure out what’s causing this?

I've experienced this but 3.8 seems to have fixed it, or so it seems so far. here's my experience: while scrolling patches via FS1 and FS7, i found that if i toggled too fast, it would lock up. i could get away with scrolling through 4-5 presets before this would happen. my fix was to simply scroll more slowly via the foot switches, or just use the rotary encoder to scroll. FWIW, if you're hooked up to Edit you can just click on to whatever preset you want and it will unlock. last night i actually put 3.8 to the test and scrolled up by a good 10-11 presets via the footswitches very fast and it didn't lock up on me. so far so good.

my Bad Cat Cub 15R Player Series fried my LT's Ext Amp jack...even though i reached out to BC to make sure that the wiring of their foot switch jack was kosher w/the Helix send jack as warned by them in the manual. luckily i got a certain retailer to take the LT back and exchange it for a new one.

i agree that the EXP area is a potential port of entry for dirt, but the inside of my 19-month old LT was pretty darned clean, the exception being the very dirty FS9 and FS8 micro-switches, which couldn't be much further from the EXP pedal. not saying this to pick an argument but rather just to have the details out there for anyone who comes across this post in the future. any and all dirt on the two aforementioned micro-switches came from that very area. i'm still suspicious of the aforementioned T-thingamajigs being the source of the dirt via "erosion" over time...either that or the dirt is coming in via the exterior foot switches themselves...or maybe a bit of both? BTW- 6 years is a hell of a run, lucky you. i keep a very clean house, yet i've had two units that i've had to clean micro switches on within a year and a half for both!

Thanks, good info and i've seen some of your videos. i'm a little skeptical on foam being the culprit because: 1) the foam isn't on the receiving end of any friction which would cause it to flake 2) the little T-pieces that sit between the springs and the micro-switches appear to always be in contact with the little buttons on the micro-switches, which means that they could act as shields to any would-be foam flakes getting onto the surface of the micro-switch buttons. This is just my theory on that, and i could certainly be wrong.

So after 19 months of relatively heavy use of my current LT, my #9 foot switch started to only work intermittently. I’d experienced this a few years back when I had the Floor unit, so I was familiar with the process of cleaning the internal micro switches. When I opened the LT up, it was immediately apparent, visually, which switch was #9 as it was coated with black dust. FS#8 was pretty gross too but wasn’t malfunctioning…yet. All the other micro switches looked brand new in comparison to the dirty ones, which makes sense considering that 8 & 9 are my Snapshots 1 & 2 switches and see the most use out of all the switches. Anyway, they ALL got cleaned while I was in there, and now everything’s back to normal. I’m wondering if anyone else has any theories regarding how the black dust forms, and here’s mine: Those little black T-shaped pieces w/the circular heads that are the contact points for the micro switches and are seated in the springs for each foot switch…maybe the black dust is from them (very) slowly eroding over time with every press of a given foot switch? If the T-thingies are indeed the culprit, too bad they couldn't have used a more resilient material. I could be wrong, but I don’t think its dirt coming in from outside of the unit because when I blew out the spring housing area of every other foot switch there was NO dirt/dust. At the end of the day this is a pretty simple fix that I can live with having to deal with every year and a half, but what happens when the micro switch has gotten clogged one too many times and needs replacement? I did purchase a bag of microswitches to have on hand for when this time comes. Has anyone here tackled replacement of one of these? Specifically I’m wondering how exact the height placement of the new switch needs to be before soldering, or if the travel range and “give” of the spring and T-shaped plunger offer a little “forgiveness” as to the height of the switch. It seems like it ideally needs to be a one shot, one kill scenario where you don’t want to have solder/de-solder any more than you must. Can anyone speak from experience?

okay then, tried a fourth reset and the problem is gone! Now let's see if something else rears its ugly head. ;)

yes, always

Welp, 3 factory resets later and the problem persists. Hmmm...

i did, but forgot to mention that. maybe i'll try again in a few days. In the meantime i've everything pretty well dialed in so I won't need to use that feature in the near future.

I did the update last night and all seemed good until today when i noticed that the behavior of the 6 physical knobs has changed in that when i push down on a given parameter knob to assign a snapshot-specific parameter, say on a delay or whatever, the number value no longer changes to white (w/brackets) signifying that i'm changing the parameter unique to that snapshot. Hiccup or user error? My quick fix was to do said edits via Edit on my computer, which appears to be unaffected by this issue. Anyone else experience this yet?

I've improved my presets immensely by using Jason Sadites' tips on using his "sweeteners" on a given patch.

Is there a current reference out there somewhere that lists where L6 drew inspiration from for a given L6 Original amp model? The names surely tell you what style they'd be best for, but i'd be curious as to what a given Original draws from. Maybe it's, if amp-x had a baby with amp-z, and so on. just curious if they ever gave up that info.