Has anyone tried John Dale's "delay shelving" technique on a Helix? He calls it a "filter mod." His technique
is for the Yamaha THR10 mini-amp, and I tried it on my THR10C (the bluesy, classic rock version of that same amp) and it is amazing on that amp. Really kills a lot of the "transistor sound," and produces more of a "tube sound." Like always, not exactly a tube sound, but really close...
I tried it today with my Strat (Fender N4 pickups) and Helix, with the WhoWatt 100 Amp/Cab and Transistor Tape Delay selected, using various very short (0.8 ms) delay, ~70% feedback, ~50 mix, and got basically the same results. Delay before amp, after amp, cascaded delays, with/without distortion, experimenting like that.
It sounds to me to be better than "EQ shelving," because it sounds like there are still some high freq harmonics coming through, along with the "thicker sound." I always hate giving up the Strat "quack" for thicker tone, and this method seems to produce both. It's like I have much heavier strings--my actual strings are 9-11.5-15-26-32-38, so really very light.
I have to be honest though, I can never trust my ears much for this sort of thing--too many years around jet engines. But it does sound good to me. Cascading delays in this way produces lots of other effects of course, like phasing, flanger, Roto-Vibe, etc, but that's what all of these are anyway, just various modulated delays. This single tape delay, however seems to produce a "string-thickening" effect...
I feel foolish posting this--I can't be the first on this forum to try this, but I could find no post that discusses this technique. So if there are relevant posts, I will humbly apologize and join that thread...