Helix Review - From a Different Perspective

[gkinder]

First off, would like to thank all the good players on this and the various other forums for your posts...very informative and insightful, and I enjoy your discussions immensely.  This is my first post and the only reason I'm making it is to hopefully help out others that are more at my playing level and/or point in life and are considering the Helix.

 

This review is from a guy who is simply a hobbyist, has no delusions about his playing ability, and has no dreams of being anything more than a guy that enjoys the guitar and music for his own personal satisfaction. A little background about who/what I am and who this review is targeted towards.  In my early fifties, own a successful software company, work on average 80 plus hours a week, have a kid in college, a beautiful wife, three dogs, and a nice home in the country where we commercially grow oranges and lemons (my other job).  Have picked up the guitar and put it down a half dozen times over the years, simply because I didn't have time to devote to it as I was too busy with family and business.  Decided a few years ago that I really wanted to play and found playing was a great stress reliever for me.  Play mostly at home in my "man cave" and with a couple of buddies of mine, we aren't very good but we enjoy trying to sound decent at least.  Don't "gig" and doubt I ever will.  Sure there are any number of folks out there who are in this same boat and looking at the Helix, you pro folks don't have a lock on the GAS thing you know ;)

 

My gear is WAY better than I am but I enjoy and appreciate quality things. Have a number of very nice tube amps, pedals, etc. but have been looking for something that could replace all this stuff, my man cave is getting ridiculously cluttered.  Whatever I ended up with had to provide a variety of really good tones, with an emphasis on the plural there, and be portable so I could throw a compact rig in the back seat of my truck with a couple guitars and head out to play with the guys.  No shot at Line6 here, but have tried most of the more recent POD units and they just didn't cut it for me, all got returned.  Same with the BOSS, VOX, and other floor board style units available.  All took way too much time to get anything useful out of and I just don't have time to invest in tweaking.  Earlier this year I went completely nuts and bought an AxeFx2 rig thinking it was going to be the answer....again too much tweaking required and having multiple pieces as opposed to single floor unit wasn't really what I wanted, it got returned as well.  Then looked into a Kemper but it looked like it was another flavor of the AxeFx, again not in a single floor unit, so passed on going there.  The other thing that these units required was a computer hook up to really set them up which is yet another item to mess with.

 

I had pretty much given up on the modeling units when the Helix was announced. It caught my attention in a big way as it certainly looked to be the answer to what I REALLY was looking for, i.e. a number of good tones, single unit, and NO computer hook up to tweak.  My ONLY question was if it would require endless tweaking to get anything good out of it.  Decided to give modeling one more shot and went ahead and pre-ordered the Helix hoping this was going to be "the one". 

 

Well, my Helix arrived this past Wednesday.  Unboxed it that evening like a kid at Christmas, plugged in with a set of good headphone and my Knaggs Severn with Zexcoil pickups, selected a JTM45 patch, set all the controls to around their mid way settings, added a little reverb, and strummed a few chords....Holy Crap!!  This thing sounded GREAT and I didn't tweak a bloody thing.  There were NO annoying artifacts, it wasn't muddy, it wasn't shrill, it wasn't anything but pristine right out of the box. Figured this was too good to be true, so saved the JTM patch, selected a new button and pulled up a Divided by 13 rig, set it to the mid points with a touch of reverb...the SAME result!!!  Proceeded to do the same for a Plexi, the Deluxe, the Twin, the Dr. Z, and the AC30...for goodness sake, they ALL produced the same pristine results.  To say the Helix was impressive tone wise would be an understatement. Not to say the patches didn't need some minor tweaking to get the best out of them, but it took all of 30 seconds to do...and to do that I didn't have to go through pages of an owner's manual to figure how to do this or that, just took a quick glance at the colorful cheat sheet that was in the box...still haven't read the manual. 

 

The user interface is VERY intuitive, the screen is nice and large so you don't have to get six inches away to read it, and the thoughtful interaction with the UI is extremely well implemented.  Being a developer I know what it takes to write good software interfaces, it's a LOT of trial and error and a lot of work, so my hat is off to the folks at Line6 for doing a fantastic job with the UI. 

 

Have had the Helix now  a total of four days and spent a couple of hours with it each evening.  Went and deleted ALL the factory presets and have setup a clean and dirty patch for all the amps with the exception of the high gain ones, I'm not a metal head.  Added a few effects to each as well.  I now have a number of VERY good sounding rigs to choose from, every bit as good sounding as the AxeFX2, and am PLAYING instead of tweaking.  The Helix is EXACTLY what I was looking for.  Have the Helix running into a pair of EV power PA speakers and it sounds good in this setup as well.  Going to buy a Mission Engineering Gemini 2 with the blue tooth option to run the Helix through.  ALL of my other gear is going up on Reverb.com this week.  I'm that impressed with this unit, and I'm pretty damn picky. 

 

I know all you serious musicians have much different needs than folks such as myself, and you all truly amaze me with your talents (wish I could be half as good as many of you all), but for those of you that are more in the vein of the passionate hobbyist like myself, do yourself a favor and take a hard look at the Helix.  It's a bit of an outlay fiscally BUT it truly does deliver stunning performance for the buck.  To the folks at LIne6, thank you for developing and producing such a quality piece of gear and one that meets my needs to the Nth degree.  You have hit the ball out of the park with the Helix, IMO.  Cheers!!

 

[TheTonyEmery]

Thanks for the review mate. I'm a semi-pro so my needs are a little different to yours, main one being reliability in the live setting, and I'm expecting my Helix to arrive late October/early November so fingers crossed I have the same first impressions as you :)

[ricstudioc]

EXACTLY the kind of review I'm looking for - and pleased to note that there are others in this vein out there.

 

After the major letdown of the 500x (ymmv) my critera for my next purchase is singular - does it sound good without the need for incessant fiddling/tweaking/eq'ing ad naseum?  Can I just call up an amp and BE THERE, before adding all the candy or customizations?

 

Happy to say the early reviews on this front are looking promising - and a few firmware revs down the road I may be giving L6 one more shot.  On paper this thing looks like what I've been waiting for -  but of course the only paper that really matters is that in the speaker cone.

 

So - congrats on your finding nirvana,  save me a seat by the salad bar.  And keep these "bare bones sound" reviews coming,  folks.  The thing has FOUR loops fer crissake - I'm not concerned about fx at this point.  Stripped down,  is it a good sounding AMP(s)?   That's the gist… .

[BigRalphN]

I am in a similar position here. I play in the church band and I have jammed playing classic rock with a few guys but I am basically a bedroom player. I am 53. I suppose the difference with me was I did Pro sound for a living for most of my 20s as well as taking studio engineer classes and did some analog studio engineering. I still think I have a pretty good ear and I have dabbled in sound through my thirties and forties and while I did tune and setup guitars in my youth I didn't really start playing until about 10 years ago or so.

 

Not to get too far off track, I feel like you do. I am really amazed with how far modeling has come. We have had the Xt live and X3 and now have an HD400. These all got progressively better (though I liked the x3 better than the HD for ease of use, not sound). But the Helix blows them all away. It is easy to use and sounds amazing. I have even started recording a little with it. Wow. I love it.

[gkinder]

I am in a similar position here. I play in the church band and I have jammed playing classic rock with a few guys but I am basically a bedroom player. I am 53. I suppose the difference with me was I did Pro sound for a living for most of my 20s as well as taking studio engineer classes and did some analog studio engineering. I still think I have a pretty good ear and I have dabbled in sound through my thirties and forties and while I did tune and setup guitars in my youth I didn't really start playing until about 10 years ago or so.

 

Not to get too far off track, I feel like you do. I am really amazed with how far modeling has come. We have had the Xt live and X3 and now have an HD400. These all got progressively better (though I liked the x3 better than the HD for ease of use, not sound). But the Helix blows them all away. It is easy to use and sounds amazing. I have even started recording a little with it. Wow. I love it.

 

Sorry if I got off track...was trying not to but rather to "set the stage", if you will, for others in similar circumstances to mine...sorry about that if I strayed too much.  Sounds like you have a lot more experience than I do with sound, etc., so maybe you can answer a question about modeling in general.  Is it accurate to say that modeling has a lot more "sweep" in the controls of a given model vs. the original circuit?  It appears they do but maybe I'm wrong....for example, I've got a JTM45 RI running into a 2x12 and where I run say the mids at 7 to 8 on the actual amp with the models I'm getting the same response at a couple of clicks less....I've got the Helix and the JTM sounding damn near identical but the Helix's knob positions are all lower, with the exception of the bass control...with the JTM its set on 2 with the Helix it's set on 3.5.  Same with the distortion effects, lower settings seem to be a couple of clicks less than real pedal (i.e. the tube screamer).  Appreciate any insight you could provide.

[JazzInc]

If the tone matches that's another sign how good this thing is. Different knob positions can be down to difference and in parts used or their tolerance and maybe a different JTM version between your amp and the one they modeled. There are many variations on this model

[jaminjimlp]

I got mine on Friday and I didn't get to mess with it until yesterday started going through the factory presets just to hear them but was surprised there was not more heavy sounding presets I will say that and suggest to everyone that you get a couple of L2M's or L2T's to connected to the L6 link put them on PA reference and when you get to the stereo presets and FX you will notice a lot of nice things going on. Then I realized there was "factory presets 2" and in that one it has about 20 more presents and those have a lot of crunchy and nice rock sounding things going on.

 

Hi am 51 and play in a Christian rock band. I have been using and 11 rack for the past three years or so and I can say right out of the box I was not too impressed but with the help of some folks on another forum and a guy that calls himself Singtall milked out of that unit the best sounding stuff that I've ever used I can say of the Helix that right out of the box impresses me and I tried to duplicate one of Singtall's presets he made for the 11 rack that I use most and I am impressed with what I came up with, it was not hard to do.

 

I have been running the 11 rack through my dream stage which is the line 6 M20D and 2 L3S subs two L3T PA speakers and 3 L2M's for monitors all linked with the L6 link and if you have never seen or heard it I will tell you it is the single best sounding PA system that I've heard outside of going and seeing big-name bands play at a concert hall I run the 11 rack straight into it with XLR's which is the same way I will be running the Helix into it.

 

I am also pleased to say that there is no delay between patch switching which for me is something that I find rather annoying with the 11 rack but always put up with it and try to time the change of preset in the song as to not have it cut out at the wrong time which is very tough to do, I was used to this same thing with my ART SGX 2000 express that is what I used from the early 90s up until I got the 11 rack.

[kemperman]

First off, would like to thank all the good players on this and the various other forums for your posts...very informative and insightful, and I enjoy your discussions immensely.  This is my first post and the only reason I'm making it is to hopefully help out others that are more at my playing level and/or point in life and are considering the Helix.

 

This review is from a guy who is simply a hobbyist, has no delusions about his playing ability, and has no dreams of being anything more than a guy that enjoys the guitar and music for his own personal satisfaction. A little background about who/what I am and who this review is targeted towards.  In my early fifties, own a successful software company, work on average 80 plus hours a week, have a kid in college, a beautiful wife, three dogs, and a nice home in the country where we commercially grow oranges and lemons (my other job).  Have picked up the guitar and put it down a half dozen times over the years, simply because I didn't have time to devote to it as I was too busy with family and business.  Decided a few years ago that I really wanted to play and found playing was a great stress reliever for me.  Play mostly at home in my "man cave" and with a couple of buddies of mine, we aren't very good but we enjoy trying to sound decent at least.  Don't "gig" and doubt I ever will.  Sure there are any number of folks out there who are in this same boat and looking at the Helix, you pro folks don't have a lock on the GAS thing you know ;)

 

My gear is WAY better than I am but I enjoy and appreciate quality things. Have a number of very nice tube amps, pedals, etc. but have been looking for something that could replace all this stuff, my man cave is getting ridiculously cluttered.  Whatever I ended up with had to provide a variety of really good tones, with an emphasis on the plural there, and be portable so I could throw a compact rig in the back seat of my truck with a couple guitars and head out to play with the guys.  No shot at Line6 here, but have tried most of the more recent POD units and they just didn't cut it for me, all got returned.  Same with the BOSS, VOX, and other floor board style units available.  All took way too much time to get anything useful out of and I just don't have time to invest in tweaking.  Earlier this year I went completely nuts and bought an AxeFx2 rig thinking it was going to be the answer....again too much tweaking required and having multiple pieces as opposed to single floor unit wasn't really what I wanted, it got returned as well.  Then looked into a Kemper but it looked like it was another flavor of the AxeFx, again not in a single floor unit, so passed on going there.  The other thing that these units required was a computer hook up to really set them up which is yet another item to mess with.

 

I had pretty much given up on the modeling units when the Helix was announced. It caught my attention in a big way as it certainly looked to be the answer to what I REALLY was looking for, i.e. a number of good tones, single unit, and NO computer hook up to tweak.  My ONLY question was if it would require endless tweaking to get anything good out of it.  Decided to give modeling one more shot and went ahead and pre-ordered the Helix hoping this was going to be "the one". 

 

Well, my Helix arrived this past Wednesday.  Unboxed it that evening like a kid at Christmas, plugged in with a set of good headphone and my Knaggs Severn with Zexcoil pickups, selected a JTM45 patch, set all the controls to around their mid way settings, added a little reverb, and strummed a few chords....Holy Crap!!  This thing sounded GREAT and I didn't tweak a bloody thing.  There were NO annoying artifacts, it wasn't muddy, it wasn't shrill, it wasn't anything but pristine right out of the box. Figured this was too good to be true, so saved the JTM patch, selected a new button and pulled up a Divided by 13 rig, set it to the mid points with a touch of reverb...the SAME result!!!  Proceeded to do the same for a Plexi, the Deluxe, the Twin, the Dr. Z, and the AC30...for goodness sake, they ALL produced the same pristine results.  To say the Helix was impressive tone wise would be an understatement. Not to say the patches didn't need some minor tweaking to get the best out of them, but it took all of 30 seconds to do...and to do that I didn't have to go through pages of an owner's manual to figure how to do this or that, just took a quick glance at the colorful cheat sheet that was in the box...still haven't read the manual. 

 

The user interface is VERY intuitive, the screen is nice and large so you don't have to get six inches away to read it, and the thoughtful interaction with the UI is extremely well implemented.  Being a developer I know what it takes to write good software interfaces, it's a LOT of trial and error and a lot of work, so my hat is off to the folks at Line6 for doing a fantastic job with the UI. 

 

Have had the Helix now  a total of four days and spent a couple of hours with it each evening.  Went and deleted ALL the factory presets and have setup a clean and dirty patch for all the amps with the exception of the high gain ones, I'm not a metal head.  Added a few effects to each as well.  I now have a number of VERY good sounding rigs to choose from, every bit as good sounding as the AxeFX2, and am PLAYING instead of tweaking.  The Helix is EXACTLY what I was looking for.  Have the Helix running into a pair of EV power PA speakers and it sounds good in this setup as well.  Going to buy a Mission Engineering Gemini 2 with the blue tooth option to run the Helix through.  ALL of my other gear is going up on Reverb.com this week.  I'm that impressed with this unit, and I'm pretty damn picky. 

 

I know all you serious musicians have much different needs than folks such as myself, and you all truly amaze me with your talents (wish I could be half as good as many of you all), but for those of you that are more in the vein of the passionate hobbyist like myself, do yourself a favor and take a hard look at the Helix.  It's a bit of an outlay fiscally BUT it truly does deliver stunning performance for the buck.  To the folks at LIne6, thank you for developing and producing such a quality piece of gear and one that meets my needs to the Nth degree.  You have hit the ball out of the park with the Helix, IMO.  Cheers!!

 

First off, would like to thank all the good players on this and the various other forums for your posts...very informative and insightful, and I enjoy your discussions immensely.  This is my first post and the only reason I'm making it is to hopefully help out others that are more at my playing level and/or point in life and are considering the Helix.

 

This review is from a guy who is simply a hobbyist, has no delusions about his playing ability, and has no dreams of being anything more than a guy that enjoys the guitar and music for his own personal satisfaction. A little background about who/what I am and who this review is targeted towards.  In my early fifties, own a successful software company, work on average 80 plus hours a week, have a kid in college, a beautiful wife, three dogs, and a nice home in the country where we commercially grow oranges and lemons (my other job).  Have picked up the guitar and put it down a half dozen times over the years, simply because I didn't have time to devote to it as I was too busy with family and business.  Decided a few years ago that I really wanted to play and found playing was a great stress reliever for me.  Play mostly at home in my "man cave" and with a couple of buddies of mine, we aren't very good but we enjoy trying to sound decent at least.  Don't "gig" and doubt I ever will.  Sure there are any number of folks out there who are in this same boat and looking at the Helix, you pro folks don't have a lock on the GAS thing you know ;)

 

My gear is WAY better than I am but I enjoy and appreciate quality things. Have a number of very nice tube amps, pedals, etc. but have been looking for something that could replace all this stuff, my man cave is getting ridiculously cluttered.  Whatever I ended up with had to provide a variety of really good tones, with an emphasis on the plural there, and be portable so I could throw a compact rig in the back seat of my truck with a couple guitars and head out to play with the guys.  No shot at Line6 here, but have tried most of the more recent POD units and they just didn't cut it for me, all got returned.  Same with the BOSS, VOX, and other floor board style units available.  All took way too much time to get anything useful out of and I just don't have time to invest in tweaking.  Earlier this year I went completely nuts and bought an AxeFx2 rig thinking it was going to be the answer....again too much tweaking required and having multiple pieces as opposed to single floor unit wasn't really what I wanted, it got returned as well.  Then looked into a Kemper but it looked like it was another flavor of the AxeFx, again not in a single floor unit, so passed on going there.  The other thing that these units required was a computer hook up to really set them up which is yet another item to mess with.

 

I had pretty much given up on the modeling units when the Helix was announced. It caught my attention in a big way as it certainly looked to be the answer to what I REALLY was looking for, i.e. a number of good tones, single unit, and NO computer hook up to tweak.  My ONLY question was if it would require endless tweaking to get anything good out of it.  Decided to give modeling one more shot and went ahead and pre-ordered the Helix hoping this was going to be "the one". 

 

Well, my Helix arrived this past Wednesday.  Unboxed it that evening like a kid at Christmas, plugged in with a set of good headphone and my Knaggs Severn with Zexcoil pickups, selected a JTM45 patch, set all the controls to around their mid way settings, added a little reverb, and strummed a few chords....Holy Crap!!  This thing sounded GREAT and I didn't tweak a bloody thing.  There were NO annoying artifacts, it wasn't muddy, it wasn't shrill, it wasn't anything but pristine right out of the box. Figured this was too good to be true, so saved the JTM patch, selected a new button and pulled up a Divided by 13 rig, set it to the mid points with a touch of reverb...the SAME result!!!  Proceeded to do the same for a Plexi, the Deluxe, the Twin, the Dr. Z, and the AC30...for goodness sake, they ALL produced the same pristine results.  To say the Helix was impressive tone wise would be an understatement. Not to say the patches didn't need some minor tweaking to get the best out of them, but it took all of 30 seconds to do...and to do that I didn't have to go through pages of an owner's manual to figure how to do this or that, just took a quick glance at the colorful cheat sheet that was in the box...still haven't read the manual. 

 

The user interface is VERY intuitive, the screen is nice and large so you don't have to get six inches away to read it, and the thoughtful interaction with the UI is extremely well implemented.  Being a developer I know what it takes to write good software interfaces, it's a LOT of trial and error and a lot of work, so my hat is off to the folks at Line6 for doing a fantastic job with the UI. 

 

Have had the Helix now  a total of four days and spent a couple of hours with it each evening.  Went and deleted ALL the factory presets and have setup a clean and dirty patch for all the amps with the exception of the high gain ones, I'm not a metal head.  Added a few effects to each as well.  I now have a number of VERY good sounding rigs to choose from, every bit as good sounding as the AxeFX2, and am PLAYING instead of tweaking.  The Helix is EXACTLY what I was looking for.  Have the Helix running into a pair of EV power PA speakers and it sounds good in this setup as well.  Going to buy a Mission Engineering Gemini 2 with the blue tooth option to run the Helix through.  ALL of my other gear is going up on Reverb.com this week.  I'm that impressed with this unit, and I'm pretty damn picky. 

 

I know all you serious musicians have much different needs than folks such as myself, and you all truly amaze me with your talents (wish I could be half as good as many of you all), but for those of you that are more in the vein of the passionate hobbyist like myself, do yourself a favor and take a hard look at the Helix.  It's a bit of an outlay fiscally BUT it truly does deliver stunning performance for the buck.  To the folks at LIne6, thank you for developing and producing such a quality piece of gear and one that meets my needs to the Nth degree.  You have hit the ball out of the park with the Helix, IMO.  Cheers!!

I must say this does seem like a fair review,as a kemper owner I am interested to see if the real-amp feel is there like on my unit,to say the kemper is in the same bracket as the Axe-fx is not true as it is totally amp-like in its control and the usb stick update is simplicity itself also the profiling is spot on,where it fails me is in the need for a separate mega-board to control it which is a pain,if they make a floor unit then it will be my ideal but I am willing to try this Helix to see if it will meet my needs.

I play professionally so need to sound as good as I can get ,I have tried all the L6 boards and up to now not liked the feel of them, I also used a couple of variaxes with some success especially the 69 jtv which I like a lot apart from the fact that my main usage is for the acoustic guitar which  cant be combined with electric patches so I have fitted my PRS with a G/tech ghost unit that does and now use it mainly.The new V/axe model from Yamaha is frankly 

appalling and a joke compared to the JTV and wont win any fans. I will be checking out HELIX and if it does the biz' will buy one,the demo's on line of all the gear seem aimed at the

rocky o/d players with scant regard to clean/country/club players needs which is a pity because the majority of working guitarists need all round sounds for gigging 

[deadlocked]

... I also used a couple of variaxes with some success especially the 69 jtv which I like a lot apart from the fact that my main usage is for the acoustic guitar which  cant be combined with electric patches...

kemperman, if you like the sound of the JTV's mag pickups, you can always "separate" the mags from the Variax acoustic models and send each to a different path on the Helix (i.e. you can send Variax only (set to acoustic) and send it to Path "1A" and build your acoustic chain there, then, at the same time, you can send "Variax Magnetics" to path "1B" and build your electric patch there.  With a bit of clever use of merge mixer block, you can even set the volume pedal to control the mix between the two.

[kemperman]

Thanks but way to much messing about for me now , I have recently sold the JTV to a home- player as although it is a good guitar it just

doesn't compare with the prs studio which with coil-tap and extra switching plus the acoustic mod covers most guitar sounds I need, I also have two custom tele's that do the rest.i will give the Helix a fair trial, but my main criteria is the feel' that comes back from the guitar

When you have the response from a great amp, which the Kemper gives in spades' mine is loaded with Mike Brits profiles of dumble,C-clones and other vintage amps which are half a million $ worth of hardware all for $45, my one niggle is as stated I don't like extra control

Boards as having a one-piece stand alone unit is my ideal.i run my unit into p.a but also now a tech 21 power-engine which is great for pedal boards etc.