Jos_K

That vocal-type sound is not done with a wah. Part of it is the result of playing with your fingers, instead of using a pick. Also, his fingerpick attacks in this solo seem very gentle and soft, which mellows it out even more. Totally different from his older strat uptempo strat work. You could experiment a little with the tone knob, but I almost never do that when playing Knopfler. Don't forget that, when listening to a recording, a lot of post processing (mixing) is done, so it's really hard to completely 'nail' a sound. I prefer to get in the ballpark and just play and make it my own, so it's my interpretation of Knopfler instead of trying to 'be' Knopfler. But that's a bit of a different discussion ;-)

Hi, (Big Knopfler fan, here) I downloaded your patch and made a few adjustments. Maybe it's is more what you're after. If you're not familiar with it already, I attached a picture of a setlist with all the amp settings per song from the 'On Every Street' tour.It helped me a lot in taming the SLO for Knopfler use ;-) I took the settings more or less from 'Brother In Arms' (slightly adapted considering the numbers on a SLO go to 11). Trouble Now.hlx

In my old PODxt live days, whenever I had a risky gig, I would put the unit behind the stage and I used a Behringer FCB1010 to control it. Needless to say both units were always wrapped in thick transparent plastic with cutouts for the jacks. Though I'm not playing gigs with a high "beer flying through the air" factor anymore, I would go the same route with my Helix for sure.

Hello, This weekend the weirdest thing happened. The XLR output were connected to FOH and the 1/4" outputs were connected to a small mixer for my IEM's. During soundcheck the right channel appeared to be about 6dB softer than the left channel on both the 1/4"outputs and the XLR's. When I unplugged the XLR's everything was back to normal for both outputs. Unplugging the XLR's on the FOH side also fixed the problem. I rebooted Helix without success. Changing channels or swapping cables made no difference. After 10 minutes all of a sudden everything was back to normal and I played the whole gig without issues. Last week I played a gig with two L2's in stead of IEM's and I had the same problem, but I thought that one of the L2's was defective, so I played mono on stage. The soundguy (a very experienced and capable technician) complemented me on my sound, so I guess during the gig there were no issues. Anyone ever experienced this?

If you would buy a Variax because you want to dig in to playing resonator and/or banjo, I doubt you'll get a satisfying experience. Variaxes are well built guitars, but they feel and play like electric guitars (body size/neck thickness/string tension/string spacing etc.). This means they don't feel like an actual resonator or banjo. The sounds get close, but are more suited for a guitar player who doesn't want to change guitars for the occasional acoustic/resonator/banjo part. But for instance, I would be very frustrated if I had to change my acoustic guitars for the acoustic sounds in the Variax.

Fantastic stuff! I implented this in two of my favorite patches and it's great. Nice, dense and smooth. Thanks man!

I've had the same issue and I really don't understand Line 6's logic behind it. As soon as Helix is connected to L6 Link, it overrules the regular stereo 'logic'. The only way to make this work for me, is to use an external mixer (or go with the built in mixer of the L2/3M) to connect Helix and the backing tracks to the mixer and then the mixer to the RCA inputs. However, when the speakers (an 'M' and a 'T') are laying down (in monitor position) and they are connected via L6 Link, both of them play back the same signal. So even when you're using the built in mixer, it's always mono. In that case you have to use an external mixer to connect to both speakers individually if you want to hear stereo. But when you connect Helix to speaker A and then speaker A to speaker B, all via L6 Link, it's stereo again. Confusing and annoying for sure!

Just out of curiosity. Does anyone know yet?

I totally agree. This is an unbelievable and very generous move. Thanks, Line 6!

I've tried Beyers and they were way too bassy for me. I own AKG K271's and 240's but my favorites for guitar are by far Shure SRH940. They look a bit plastic, but they sound amazing for guitar. Very nice and detailed mids. And they're closed, so minimal leakage.

The 'Decay' setting determines how fast or slow the gate closes. If it closes fast, you get a sudden 'stop' and if you set the decay to a longer time, it fades out more gradually. If you get a lot of stutter, increasing the decay might help.

It all comes down to personal taste, of course. But I tend to keep the tone controls around noon (e.g. bass 4, mid 5, treble 6 and presence 6). I also go easy on the gain and use a klon or timmy for gain boost. For my 'fatter' JCM800 Marshall sound, I ended up using the 412 Greenback 20 cab with the 121 mic (5" away, lo cut at 80, hi cut at 10kHz) and the Matchless H30 with the 409 mic (lo cut at 90, hi cut at 6 kHz). The master volume parameter is at 8 as higher settings muddy the tone). Marshalls are made to scream, but I use the above as a basis for my crunchy, mellow lead sound. I also play a lot with my fingers and that mellows the tone too.

When I use my acoustic guitar (a Cole Clarke Fat Lady) with Helix, I find I don't need a lot. Only a little EQ, the LA2A compressor and some reverb. The preamp in Helix is very good and gives great results, so when you use a path without any amp modeling you're already good to go. The EQ's in Helix are also very suited for acoustic guitars. When playing bass, well, you have the bass amp models and cabs and headroom in Helix is not an issue.

The phone is also inline with Paul's amp. Joe's amp is all the way in the back explaining his less 'in your face' sound (aside from his more violin-like tone of course). But I wouldn't call it mediocre.

It keeps getting better and better!

I've owned various POD XT/HD models, Vetta II, M series FX etc. Right now I use a variax 69 for the coverband I'm in and I use one big patch with eight snapshots controlling four amp sounds and Variax: clean tele, clean strat, acoustic, crunch LP junior, crunch strat, lead Les Paul and two weird ambient sounds. Works great. Creating patches couldn't be easier, though programming Helix to control Variax was not the easiest. But it does work and has been reliable so far. I really like the versatility of Helix to be able to use it in all kinds of situations, before an amp (or in 4CM), direct, frfr, with or without Variax or all of it at the same time. Experimenting is easy, creating a quick and simple patch from scratch is simple too. The effects sound amazing. In your case it sounds as if Helix LT would be ok for you. You can always try. Good luck with your choice!

Very useful stuff indeed. Thanks!

There's also a website called helixhelp.com with many resources, original amp descriptions etc.

Thanks

@phil_m: Are you allowed to share if the new reverbs use more CPU power? In other words, if I have a patch that is nearly maxed out, could I swap, say an old plate reverb model for a new HX reverb?

Interesting. I hadn't thought of that. Will try this tonight. I'm on Helix floor, by the way

I use tap tempo mainly for delay and I did notice that tap tempo is very hard to get right. I often get unpredictable results, sometimes very fast, sometimes really slow, sometimes no change at all or just plain wrong. With older Line 6 products it worked much better. I hope it can be fixed in the next update because I find it quite annoying right now.

I play in many environments. Partyband, church, projects of my own and at home. I didn't get rid of my tube amp/pedals rig but I hardly use it anymore. Helix covers all my needs. I also like ambient stuff and the flexibility of Helix's routing is great for creating new sounds and spheres. But, since Helix was designed also to be a centerpiece, you could also consider buying it without selling the gear you love most. You could start out with Helix, maybe your amp and your Strymons. And you could sell some of your gear, only if you feel that Helix is ready to replace it. More of a modular approach so to speak.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-yIHkFoiKzjTQGlMjmEZPbjAWGUckQXr Here's what I came up with. Like I said, I didn't have a lot of time, but it took me only 15 minutes to create this sound. Plexi bright, a little EQ (Simple EQ) and Greenback 25 cab with 409 mic. some early reflections, no hi/lo cuts (or maybe lo cut at 90 Hz, can't remember, forgot to save :blink:). Of course I hear (small) differences, but to say the file you provided sound 'better' or 'doesn't hold a candle', no. If I really really, wanted to nail that sound, there are many more variables I'd worry about, like guitar/pickups (I used a Yamaha Revstar, which is a darker sounding instrument), amp/settings and so on. And then there's always me vs the recorded player. But to me that is pointless because the context you play in constantly changes. I think there's no point in trying to clone a sound 100% if the band doesn't sound 100% the same too. Even the same band, playing the same thing always sounds different.

Thanks for the challenge! I'll get to it. might take a couple of days as I'm quite busy, but i'll get back on this one. Just to be sure: no double tracking or other stuff that's impossible to reproduce in Helix going on, right?