pegagos

Last night and today I've been jamming with this chain: 808, panama preamp and with Zilla 4a 3 sigma audio IR with low cut and hight cut. The levels were very low so I compensated on the preamp and and cab block. I must say I ve been enjoying this sound quite a bit. It's different, to me it sounds and feels more like an amp in the room. It does feel like something is missing when switching from amp block to preamp amp, but for the way I play it just feels tighter and more raw and open which I really like. I need to experiment some more with other amps and IRs but definitely going to build some patches of this setup. It don't know how it translate to other amps and styles yet, but for a progressive metal type sound in Drop C with hard picking it's working for me. Just wanted to share my findings. If you guys want, I'll post some clips tomorrow so you guys can hear the type of sound I'm talking about. Peanut butter on the speaker cone? Maybe that's the recipe for the brown sound 😂

Exactly. You know the Kemper comes with stock amps and so does the Bias head, why didn't he use the stock amps? He went out of his way to tone match those two products. Why didn't he spend time to dial in the Helix or at least tone match with the knobs a little. Why didn't he used the same knob settings on the Bias Head and Kemper? He's had an axe fx for so long that he knows exactly what to do to match it to the real amp. It sucks, because I went in there to defend Helix users and posted some of the things wrong with the comparison and naturally I come across as that Helix user upset that everyone is brutally putting the down the Helix, when they don't really understand how he's just comparing 4 iic+ emulations tweaked to perfection vs 1 mark IV emulation not tweaked. Like you said, it could have been unintentional, but someone as knowledgeable as Ola in production, amps and guitars should know that a Mark IV is not the same as Mark iic+. So many things wrong with that video and unfair to potential buyers missing out on a great product just because of an unfair comparison.

You nailed it.

Thanks for this response. So far, I've been enjoying using the Amp block with IRs and it just didn't cross my mind to try the preamp block instead, specially when the IRs are advertised as having power amp coloration. I know this is subjective and if it sounds good, then it's good. I was just curious as to what most people are doing and also to just put it put there for people to at least think about this. I'm going to experiment with this for sure tonight when I get home from work. I usually build my tones from scratch and find something that feels good, responds like I like and fits in my mix. I normally do not like presets that I did not build myself, but I downloaded Ola's to see what kind of settings he used on the amp, because I used to own a real Mark IV and wanted to see if he really dialed like a real Mark IV for that type of sound. You know, low on the bass, mids very low, low presence and high treble and he did. I also owned a Mark III and dialed it very similar.

After watching the explanation video from Ola's blind test comparison https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDF1oFyBI6U, he talks about his IR having the power amp of the Mark iic+ baked into the IR, so he only used the preamp block with the IR containing the power amp, cab and mic. I downloaded his preset yesterday and sounded pretty bad lollipop with my guitar and my system, but I didn't really look at what he did until today. It got me thinking about the IRs from 3 sigma audio that I purchased last week. The manual says that version A was used with the power section of a 5150 and version B was used using a flat power amp. So my question is: do you guys run just the preamp block and the IR that has the power amp baked in? I've been running the amp block with the IR block, but I'm going to experiment with just the preamp block since the IR has a power amp baked in. I am at work right now, so I can't try it, but I just wanted to see what you guys are doing. By the way, I love my Helix. It bothers me that these comparison videos by popular youtube channels don't seem to dial in the Helix right and a lot of potential users are put off by it by an unfair comparison. He didn't even use a iic+ model on the Helix because it doesnt have one. I don't understand why he didn't use a Rectifier since all of the units have that model and I'm sure he has a real rectifier as well. Of course the Helix is going to stick out like not sounding like the real amp. He didn't even tweak them and used the same settings on the iic+, ax8 and Helix. He didn't use his ears at all. So people see that as the Helix can't sound close to the real thing. There are so many wrong things with that comparison. He tweaked the Kemper in a follow up video, why din't he tweak the Helix too? Anyways, I didn't mean to rant, but it just happened. I actually liked all of them and I can see through the difference in settings etc, but most people on that channel don't seem to. Let me know your thoughts on the IRs with baked in power amp. Have I been doing it wrong by using the amp block instead of preamp block. Thanks