ozbadman

You should be able to get pretty decent AxeFX control out of the HELIX I would think. I haven't done it, but you should be able to both choose patches and turn effects on/off using the HELIX as your controller without too much effort. And, you should be able to name the HELIX patch the same name as the AxeFX2 patch so you know what you're selecting. It's not too difficult to set up either on the HELIX or the AxeFX2.

Hey Robbie, Did the patch you were using have a wah pedal in the chain (maybe disengaged), or no wah pedal/controller anywhere in sight?

L6 told us some weeks ago. Have you got the latest firmware?

Can we get some input from L6 on this? Do they see it as a problem? If so, is it a hardware problem? Will they need to change the circuit for future builds to fix this problem?

Just a comment rsto010, Really nice job on trying to isolate and reproduce the problem so L6 can fix it at some time. Hopefully, soonish for all you guys affected by this. :)

The DT25 is an excellent and very versatile amp. It is in no way a "cheap" amp, and will match expensive guitars. Playing a USA strat through it will sound stellar. Mexican strat will sound OK. My USA strat sounds infinitely better than any of the Mexicans I tried, and I have no regrets. A great guitar through an OK amp can still sound great. An OK guitar through a great amp, not so much.

It would be nice to get a confirmation of that from L6 to set our minds at ease. L6?

Unfortunately, you can't get a neutral sound without a tweeter. A PA/FRFR system is the closest you can get to a neutral sound. You might get some great sounds out of the Junior, but they will not be neutral.

American strats are definitely better than Mexican strats. Apart from generally better hardware, the major tonal difference is that the pickups are different. Mexican strats sound OK. American strat pickups sound very different. There's a reason American strats are the norm. I would suggest just an American Standard, and you'll never be second guessing yourself as to whether you should have spent the extra $.

I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make. L6 has said that the Variax Standard is a Pacifica variant, allowing L6 to put out a Variax at a lower price point due partially to economies of scale, and partially to lower individual component costs and sure, not paying James Tyler (but I doubt that was their main motivation). Seems like a pretty obvious business opportunity to easily marry the strengths of the two companies, and put out an entry-level Variax. DI has stated they have no current plans to discontinue the JTVs.

That's a pretty cynical view. As DI said, it looked to me like a way of getting Variax tech into a more cost-effective product. FWIW, I will be getting one early next year as I hated the look of the JTV69, but like the feel of strats. I may use the Standard as a transplant, possible even into a Variax 700 (which is an awesomely built guitar), but I like the knob layout more than the 69 layout, so if I do, it'll make a better transplant for me. YMMV.

Except Variax Standard is clearly a collaboration of some sort, so there is some cross pollination going on. It's not totally hands-off.

Just curious, if you say it sounds great through the headphones, have you tried taking the headphone out to your monitors? Does it sound great or crap? Does it sound the same as it does if you use the outputs? I am just starting to wonder if some units have some physical problem in the output stage that hasn't been identified since we have seen a few people reporting here that their units sound crap at volume even when the headphones sound OK, whereas most report they sound fantastic.

Well, I'm not sure you can make that guarantee. I would be VERY sorry to see Line 6 do that. As a non-metal head, every tone that guy played sounded identical to me (OK, I'm exaggerating somewhat). The presets in the HELIX have a nice blend of different styles. If you guys think this guy nails the metal tone (you guys would say tones, :)), then maybe he could put the metal presets together, but I have no interest in metal tones, so well done Line 6 for putting in a wide mix of styles in the presets. :)

I disagree with everything you say here. Line 6 is doing exactly what any other reasonably well-run company would do and frankly, meeting expectations, which is not something they have always done in the past with product shipments. Whether that is because of them or Yamaha's influence I don't know, but I congratulate everyone at Line 6, and particularly Product Management, for their vast improvement in this area. They still need to do a bit more work on their pre-release testing and QC, but that has also improved greatly compared to days past.

HELIX cannot do note to MIDI conversion. If you don't want to do it in your PC, you need to do as suggested above with a bass pickup and something like a Roland processor.

Bearing in mind that people often forget when using true bypass that the extra cable between their effect and the amp then causes loss of high-frequencies. See the article by Pete Cornish as to whether true bypass is really a good thing or not. Any "tone suck" is often caused by comparing the guitar plugged directly into the amp, to the same guitar and same cable, plugged into an effect, then an additional cable going from the effect to the amp. With true bypass, the capacitance of each cable contributes significantly to loss of high frequencies/sound coloration.

CS would be Customer Service

As I understand it, "tone suck" is usually caused by the difference between plugging a cable directly into a guitar, vs into an effects box. When a passive guitar is plugged directly into an amp, the circuit interacts directly with the preamp, so the capacitance of the cable becomes part of the resonant circuit along with the preamp circuit itself, and the passive pickup and volume/tone controls of the guitar. So, any device between the guitar and amp becomes a "tone changer". Devices like HELIX try to compensate by presenting a variable impedance to the guitar, then process the signal, and send the result out the device to the amp, with a low impedance output to stop further coloration. HELIX has a variable impedance input for the guitar, which should mostly compensate for this, assuming the guitarist used the same cable between the guitar and HELIX that he/she would normally use between the guitar and their guitar Amp. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Sorry, but yes, it is extremely normal. I do not work for Line 6, but this is perfectly normal across all industries for all types of products. Your rant against Line 6 in this case is misplaced. Here's just 1 example from Apple this year: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/06/04Apple-Watch-Arrives-in-Seven-More-Countries-June-26.html

This is normal for every company. No dropping of the ball. Production has ramp up times. Try being one of the first people to get an Apple product. I realise you're probably anxious like a kid at Chrsitmas to get yours, but this is bog-standard production releases of any new product for any company. And no, it's not ridiculous, it's entirely normal.

Actually, only 3x even in Australia. Same as the US prices. See my maths above.

In Sydney, the HD500X is AUD$800, so in both AUS and the US, the HELIX is 3x the price of the HD500X. Pretty much the same as the US price after including currency conversion and GST: US$1500 = AUD$2400 (using 0.70 conversion rate, 10% GST).

Ahhh. Interesting. Good point.

Yeah, but the point is I don't think Line 6 would make an update where you have to buy a special adapter a normal thing, especially for their marquee product. If they intended people to use a USB stick in the future, they would have put a socket on the Helix. MIDI is a little different since the Helix is intended to be used with MIDI. I still doubt they'll ever change from expecting users to download over the USB cable from their computer though.