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.

Well, they're definitely more DSP-intensive. As to how they compare to the old reverbs I don't know for sure. One thing is they're are mono versions of the new reverbs, so if having stereo isn't important to you, you can save DSP that way. But if your patch is close to the DSP limit with an existing reverb, I'd venture to guess that there's a pretty good chance that the new reverbs could put it over the edge. The current Plate model, fwiw, is the least DSP-intensive of all the existing reverb, iirc.

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?

I tried to tap in a few songs this weekend and it almost seems like the timing triggers off of the trailing edge of the foot switch (transition from on to off) rather than the leading edge (from off to on). There's no real definitive way to tell that though.

 

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.

I wont disagree with you because i dont know what youre up to over there, but most often as of late, i see guys wanting to copy sounds, and not much of going after a sound in their head,so i guess it depends on what the challenge is.  What i do know is that there are sounds that hlx cabs are simply not capable of getting. Maybe with a bunch of sussing around, a bunch of added EQ time, and/or tone matching capabilities you may get there, but who wants to spend their time doing that? Heres one that ive no luck at all in reproducing without IRs. How about you? Want to give it a shot?

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/afwfhcue3xq3cqf/fooled%20test.wav?dl=0

 

You cant simulate the outboard gear used, the engineer, their room, their mics, or all of the other factors that make IRs sound different from one another (not effectively anyway in the sense we're talking about ) This is why there is room in your library for the same cab from redwirez and ownhammer, because they sound different.

Sounds DO vary in quality. A lot of us just happen to believe that hlx cabs are on the bottom end of the chain.

 

 

DunedinDragon, on 07 Dec 2017 - 05:52 AM, said:

Well yeah...It IS important, but it doesnt change anything. It doesnt have any impact on the matter. They are what they are. Defining their origin simply doesnt have any purpose in my view. Not to mention thats probably the third time ive heard it said exactly like that.  :)

 

Jos_K, on 07 Dec 2017 - 07:57 AM, said:

I wont disagree with you because i dont know what youre up to over there, but most often as of late, i see guys wanting to copy sounds, and not much of going after a sound in their head,so i guess it depends on what the challenge is.  What i do know is that there are sounds that hlx cabs are simply not capable of getting. Maybe with a bunch of sussing around, a bunch of added EQ time, and/or tone matching capabilities you may get there, but who wants to spend their time doing that? Heres one that ive no luck at all in reproducing without IRs. How about you? Want to give it a shot?

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/afwfhcue3xq3cqf/fooled%20test.wav?dl=0

 

You cant simulate the outboard gear used, the engineer, their room, their mics, or all of the other factors that make IRs sound different from one another (not effectively anyway in the sense we're talking about ) This is why there is room in your library for the same cab from redwirez and ownhammer, because they sound different.

Sounds DO vary in quality. A lot of us just happen to believe that hlx cabs are on the bottom end of the chain.

 

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?