maddog24

Amen.... And if you guys insist on continuing the argument on here can you resort to just calling each other names - it will be a lot easier to read.

I think you nailed it there for me. I reckon wether or not you're going to like this, or not be bothered, will depend on how and what you are going to use it for. I have a HD 500X and when i'm in rehearsal with the band, sometimes the preset that I created for a new song, that sounded great on my own, just doesn't cut through the mix when playing together, and I have to spend ages poking around the menus to sort it - which is a right pain in the lollipop. I'm hoping this unit is going to bring a new dynamic to our rehearsals and gigs - i.e. editing on the fly and trying out stuff without p****g off your band mates. There are a lot of "great" sounding modellers out there. So long as the sound on the Helix is "great" - I don't really care if the unit is better or worse than Axe FX or Kemper. I get the feeling this unit is going give me more confidence in achieveing the sound I want on the night, and personally that affects my live performance. I guarantee 90% of the crowd won't have a clue what I'm playing with anyway - they just want to have fun ;)

Yup - I’ve been through all the factory presets in band rehearsal and reckon none of them are usable live at all! Some sound 'fun' when playing alone as no one else is filling the frequencies that the factory presets are hitting – but when you are with a band those frequencies get swamped out! None of the sounds had any ‘oomph’ and made my DT25 sound like I was playing out of a tin box. My best recommendation is to not even bother tweaking the presets, and to setup your own. If I had a Stagesource, I would probably do the opposite of what I originally posted, and concentrate first on setting up a clean preset with just a full amp model /cab and nothing else. Maybe setup a few of your amp models and get the sound out of your stagesource that you are happy with as if playing your favourite amp. Remember to lean a bit more on the mids as the bass frequency is taken care of by the ‘bass’ and the highs by the vocals and percussion. I would then save these to disk and use these as a solid base for experimenting with when adding effects (assuming you are using HD Edit – if you are not, it’s definitely worth the hassle). I’ve spent a few days now messing around with just simple effects and reckon I’m starting to get tones I’m happy with. It's actually helping me to understand effects a lot more. On a side note - I’ve been really tempted by a Stagesource myself, but guess I need to figure out how to use what I’ve got first!

Thanks for the replies so far – general consensus in this thread others I have read since point to lots of experimentation – so I have bit the bullet and spent more of my precious time on the unit, but I am determined to take small steps. Definitely don’t want a spinal tap moment! (I have pretty much already been there). Just as an update to this thread - I tried out my theory last night in rehearsal with some fairly patient band members - and it seems to work for me – leaving the amp model and cab out of the presets meant I controlled the overall amp model from the DT25 (realise this is probably not best way of using a preset – but it works for me at the minute as I am comfortable and familiar with my current DT25 amp sound – and it gives me a starting point and one thing less to worry about when setting up effects). Not sure ifthe delays I setup after the empty preamp icon still cut in after the preamp stage of the DT25, but it sounded ok (am hoping the line 6 cabling and routing takes care of all the '4 cable method' stuff). To control my levels in practice I made sure that I set up a volume pedal (set the range from 100% max to 50% min to reduce the sensitivity of the sweep – and tweaked my master volume on the fly to set the max range) When I get more time, I will experiment with controlling amp and cab models from the HD500X, but for now my priority is to get some usable sounds I am happy with. Have got to say though – a laptop and HD Edit is pretty much essential. Not used anything like this before and gotta say it’s amazing. I love the way I can experiment with dragging the effects to different parts of the chain and hearing the difference it makes.

Hello all - was wondering if someone could offer some advice or thoughts. I have a DT25 amp with Variax and getting tones I'm happy with for now using the DT25 amp models, but with a few stomp boxes. Recently acquired a HD500X and have a gig coming up that I want to try this out with live (fairly new to gigging as well!). Got all the relevant cables to make up the dream rig. Was a bit thrown when the practically all sounds coming out of the standard presets sound really thin and wiry and not really usable for me in a live band setting. So I have spent a little time creating my own presets to get a chunkier sound. At this point in time though I don't really have much time to play around and experiment much so I have just concentrated on getting some presets created with the right amount of drive/effects, FX switching, and volume pedal for our set list. At the moment therefore all my presets do not have an amp model in them – I figured I’d just use the amp models on the DT25 – and fiddle around with the basic e.q. and master volume on the amp itself, and change the models on my guitar manually like I have been doing so far. My reason for this is that I don’t want to lock the presets into a preamp model just yet as it’s a pain to get the laptop out in a practice to change stuff if the sound is not right. (i.e. in HD Edit, the icon for the amp is just blank). Does it matter that I don't have a preamp specified in the preset? - Is this a valid approach or is it kind of dumb? Is this actually doing what I think I’m intending it to do? (I don’t really know what switching the dream rig does by itself in this situation) – is there a setting I need to check to make sure that the DT25 pre-amp is not bypassed or does HD500X realise that you are not specifying a preamp and automatically sends signal through the DT25 preamp? I do realise that i'm not yet using the full potential of the unit, and somehow I probably need to get to the point where the HD500X drives everything including acting as the preamp (bypassing the preamp on my DT25 and just using the power amp stage and cab) - but for now just want to stay as flexible as possible as its the first time I will be using this in a gig. Thanks in advance