chuskey

It happens to all of us! I'll get something dialed in and go to bed thinking it's the best thing I've ever done, and wake up the next morning and think it's total crap :) BTW, I'm glad you took that line from the review in a good spirit. A couple of people thought it was incredibly "arrogant" to say it that way. While I stand behind the thought of it, I intentionally worded it a little bit strongly, and a little tongue in cheek, because it was originally posted over on The Gear Page. People tend to be a little more abrasive over there. But really and truly both of these units are extremely capable of good tone. I was just pointing out that it's not the unit's fault if the user can't get it/them to sound good. You are spot on that some times we have to step back and let our ears reset.

I'm truly not sure if you're serious or trolling, but I've got a couple of minutes so here goes: You ASSUMED that the term Variax Standard referred to all non JTV Variaxes, but even in your opening post you said that you bought a Variax 700. There was a Variax 300, 500, 600, 700, and acoustic all pre dating the JTV. To think that ALL those models would be causally referred to as "standard" models is doing exactly what you did: making an assumption. If you go to Line 6's website, which I know you can since you made it to the forum, and look under the guitar section you see plainly listed Variax Standard and James Tyler Variax. It's about as clear as they can make it. This one squarely isn't Line 6's fault. ALL modern multi FX pedals have a latency when switching presets. Even the mighty Axe FX. It's just a by product of unloading and reloading the DSP for the next preset. These devices are doing a lot of work under the hood. To avoid this you would have to have one DSP chip dedicated to the current patch and one dedicated to the upcoming patch, which would half your DSP power dedicated to any one patch you're on. There have also been many many posts about this issue on this forum as well as over on The Gear Page if you read that forum as well. The new snapshot feature in firmware version 2.x is a great work around for this. I played a gig a couple of weeks ago that included acoustic 12 string sound, clean ambient tones, some U2 stuff with very specific delay and BPM settings, and full out high gain lead tones. All this was done in ONE preset using snapshots with no audible delay. Plus you get delay and reverb spillover by staying in one patch. Your 25 year old Zoom MultiFX most likely didn't have to do nearly enough DSP intensive processes to have audible latency when switching presets. So maybe after giving this some thought it won't be beyond you anymore as to why Helix does this. BTW, I also own a Zoom G3 that I picked up a few years ago on the cheap just to see if it was any good. It also has a small audio drop out between patches. But what killed it for me is that it has the same audio drop out when switching on/off fx within a patch as well. I will say some of the effects models did sound really good on the Zoom. And the amp models on the G3, which are arguably the best that Zoom offers, are not close to the quality of the amp models in Helix. Not saying they're bad, just not on the level of Helix. Which they shouldn't be given the difference in DSP horsepower used to create them in Helix. If you have your Zoom pedal dialed in exactly the way you want it and compare that to stock Helix presets then maybe you are getting a tone you like better with the Zoom right now. But I assure you that the Helix has capabilities WAY past what the Zoom can do. I had my HD500X dialed in and it took me a few days to get the Helix past where I was at with the HD stuff. But once I did there's no comparison. I've done a lot of Helix tutorial videos, maybe not reviews strictly speaking, but a lot of Helix content. I've never once felt the need to inform people that the Helix didn't 100% integrate with Variax guitars that have been discontinued since 2010. The JTV and Standard run a different firmware, have different features, and use a different version of Workbench than the older Variaxes. There's absolutely no reason to think that the new flagship product Line 6 offers (Helix) would be backwards compatible with a guitar that's been out of production for 6 years that runs different software from the current models. I do have a JTV and to be honest I don't personally use the Helix to control it all that much unless there's something very specific in a song that calls for it, such as alt tunings. With snapshots I can see using the integration a bit more, but I hardly see the fact that Helix doesn't completely integrate with your Variax 700 as deal breaker territory. But if it is a deal breaker, and you like your Zoom better, just return everything and be happy. Rather than come on the forum and complain because everything didn't work the way you wanted it to and somehow that's Line 6's fault for not fully stating what Helix would and wouldn't do in every conceivable scenario.

I've never bought patches, though I don't fault anyone who buys or sells them. So I can't comment on the quality of any of these guys' work. I know they are all talented and I'm sure they make good sounding presets. I also don't fault them for charging for their time they put into building these presets. It can be time consuming, although the Helix really makes it much faster than other units I've used. The Fremen pack is 175 presets....wow! Dude has some patience to make that many :) I do think however that you really should learn to program the Helix to your taste and figure out what works for you. I wouldn't count on other people's patches being your "dream tone" because it's your ears you have to satisfy, your guitar affecting the tone, and the way you play ultimately. Not to mention the speakers you play through. No two players and setups are exactly alike. So whether it starts with someone else's patch first, or one you've made from scratch, I don't think that learning to dial in the Helix for your own specific needs will be a waste of time. Like the saying goes: Give a man a fish he'll eat for a day Teach him to fish he'll eat for a lifetime :) Just my .02

I was in the same position you are in and upgraded to Helix back in March. I was very happy with the tone of my HD500. The approach I took when I first got Helix was to recreate my signal path I had been using in HD and to be honest the tone was better, but it wasn't "night and day". Yet. Even if I had stayed on that level tone wise, the increased number of useable effects per patch, flexibility, routing, and options were worth the price of admission. And that was before firmware 2.x and snapshots. Now it's on a whole other level. I did find though that after a little bit of tweaking and building up some presets from scratch rather than just basically recreating my old patch from the HD I can say that I'm getting tones that are an order of magnitude greater than I did on the HD. Now that I'm learned a few small tricks like which mic's and cab's I like getting amazing tone is SO simple and really is better than what I was getting from the HD, no question. Now I can't image playing without Helix. I feel like it's as much an instrument as my guitar is. I am absolutely in love with this thing!! So I hope that helps. I recommend buying it from a place that has a return policy just in case. But I don't think you'll have any second thoughts about switching. BTW, here's a clip I did like the 2nd day I had it comparing it to the HD. You can hear in the clip that it's pretty close. https://soundcloud.com/chuskey/helix-vs-hd500 If you also want to check out my YouTube channel you can hear examples of me using Helix and I think it stands out now how much better the tone is. https://youtu.be/OoeOz8yTaDw

That's a good point, and I would also say that even if you buy patches take the time to examine them and see how they're put together. I think it's important to understand how tones are built and how the Helix works. Other people's patches can be a great starting point, but nobody's patches are going to be 100% perfect for your needs. Too many real world variables (different guitars, speakers, amps, playing styles, etc) that are going to affect your tone. Even if you always start with someone else's patch or a template, it's still important to learn how to make Helix sound great with YOUR setup. Plus learning how to tweak is half the fun, as long as you can avoid completely going down the rabbit hole and getting lost in it :)

Congrats on the Helix and Variax!! Opens up a world of possibilities. I have quite a few videos on my channel about how to perform various tasks on Helix and patch creation. You can also download the patches I use in the videos for free. Here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO9JwLO8HgC91MxohYw1Paw/videos I use a Variax as well, but for the sake of keeping my videos as universally applicable as possible I generally don't have any Variax changes programmed in my patches. But it's simple to add if you'd like to. Have fun!!

Thanks guys! I'm glad they were helpful. I'm still getting my head around all the possibilities with snapshots. I know I've only scratches the surface :)

What about the soundtank ts? Lol Sad to say that was the first one I owned. I was young and naive, and broke.

I did a couple of videos talking about the new snapshot feature in the 2.0 firmware, which is awesome!! I'm still learning and these are pretty basic overview videos, but thought they might be helpful to some.

I have a friend with an AX8 and we've compared them a couple of times. We came to the same conclusion. If you can't find good tone out of both of these boxes, it's not the equipment's fault :)

You're very welcome! Since I posted the patch I've adjusted the eq a little bit. I think it was a little bit on the bright side when I posted it, but other than that it's what I still use. Of course with anyone's patch you'll need to adjust a little bit to your own setup. Rock on!

Thanks so much!

Did a cover of Since I've Been Loving You using Helix recorded direct via USB. The patch used (with minor tweaking) can be found here: http://line6.com/customtone/tone/1964822/

Joined the FB group, thanks for approving my request so quickly. I think what you're doing is really cool and I'm excited to get home tonight and load up your presets and IR's. Thank you so much for the time you're putting into doing this! Out of curiosity, and you don't have to go into any more detail than you want to of course, but how do you capture IR's of the artist's sounds to an IR? I know you mentioned having the isolated tracks, but I've never done any work capturing IR's and I find that process fascinating :)

Thanks for the feedback and the suggestions! You make good points about fx order and impact. The patch for this video wasn't really made with any tone considerations in mind, but I'm going to go back to my actual presets and play around with your suggestions. I don't remember how I ordered my reverb/delay, but I know I have my compressor after the distortion. I'm going to play around with that and see how I like having it in the chain first. Always new tricks to learn :)

Thanks man! I'm glad the video was helpful with the lead boost tip. I love the fact that there are always several ways to accomplish any goal with Helix. It's so flexible, which is great for us who like to geek out on all the options :)

You're very welcome! As stated above an IR is essentially just a cab block. There are companies out there that make impulse responses (IR's) that you can buy and then load those into your Helix. Some people prefer them to the built in cabs. I've done a couple of videos comparing the stock Helix cabs to IR's, and for me and the type of tone I'm going for I'm perfectly happy with the stock cabs. There are SO MANY IR's out there that it can also be very time consuming and overwhelming to sift through them and find what you like. Not trying to dissuade anyone from using IR's, lots of people have found some they love. Just giving my .02 :)

You're welcome!! :)

You're very welcome! I'm glad it was helpful. The possibilities with Helix are practically endless :)

Here's the URL to the FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/line6helixusergroup/ It's a pretty active group and some cool guys on there. The admin is a guy named Chad Boston. He does a great job with it!

You're welcome :)

There were several questions on the FB user group about Helix related stuff, and a request to show the process of building a patch from scratch. So I decided to do a YouTube video building a patch from scratch and trying to answer as many questions as I could along the way. I was pretty surprised when I hit stop and realized I had been going on for over 40 min! I guess there's just never enough you can say about what the Helix can do :) Anyway, this covers a lot of bases and would be a good watch for folks starting out and anyone who has questions about setting up routing, different path options, wet/dry, etc.

Thanks for all the replies! I had a gig that night, a busy day at work Friday, and a slam full day Saturday and this is the first time I've had the chance to check in on the boards. I haven't heard back yet from the repair guy in my state. I'm going to open a ticket now with Line 6. Haven't even had the chance to do that until now. I want to make sure if I order the part I get the right one. Since it's working with the 1/4" it hasn't been full crisis mode thank goodness :)

I was installing a set of strap locks on my JTV69. The strap locks came with 2 lengths of screws. The ones that came out of the Variax were closer to the length of the longer screws, though slightly shorter. I figured I'd be better off using the longer once, hence more support. Well I put the one in on the back of the guitar first and when it was almost all the way in I felt it hit resistance. I got a sinking feeling, and to confirm my fears it had penetrated the rear circuit board. Just a little bit, but still, it went in. I panicked and started testing the guitar. Conclusion: If I use the 1/4" cable I can get the guitar to function. All the Variax models and tuning works fine. I get zilch with the VDI cable. One way or the other I'm going to need a new circuit board. My question is, it appears that there are only four screws holding in the circuit board and the wires can be more or less easily disconnected. Should I attempt, if I can even buy one, to get a circuit board and install it myself? I don't know if Line 6 even has those parts available to he public. Or should I send it off to a support tech? I'm in central NC and the only person listed on Line 6's site I talked to and he only does it part time and doesn't mess with the Variax stuff. I explained to him that it's a simple circuit board swap and he's going to look into getting the part. Of course I have a gig tonight. I'm so frustrated with myself right now.....any advice would be appreciate.

That's awesome! Thanks for sharing!!