Updates/Observations/Questions Answered at NAMM2016

[mileskb]

I was at NAMM and stopped by the Line6 booth a couple of times, here are some random observations and Q&A's.

 

1. Ver. 1.06 was running on the demo.  I noodled mostly with the Matchless which sounded great.
2. I asked about the editor, and they said it was almost ready.  Maybe a couple of more weeks. It was running on the demo station but I didn't get a chance to play with it as I didn't realize until it was there until I handed off the guitar to the next person in line... but it was there.  it exists.
3. I asked about some better explanations of what exactly is Ripple or Sag and other more detailed params and how they interact.  I actually asked this of two people, one was doing the demo and he agreed that the videos available for that aspect were a bit lacking and he'd try to do something about it.
4. The demo itself was a little disappointing and I'm not sure who it was geared toward.  The presenter was great, but as example the "display" that was on the screen was not the whole board, so as he was explaining some cool things like the swapping of buttons by touching both buttons you want to swap...... all you see is the screen, not him touching the buttons.   I had brought someone to see the demo as I think he would love the Helix, but even the basics of "finger touch" vs "press" vs "stomp" weren't clear so he didn't really get anything out of the demo.  At the same time, there was the neat trick of recording silence as a first step to looping, but even that... without seeing the buttons being pressed was a little odd.

The demo station has a JTV89F hooked up, and that was a bit of fun to play with.  Didn't do anything fancy cause I didn't have the time, and there was no one really available for assistance, but I may be getting one just based on noodling,

 

Finally, I did overhear a sales rep discussing with a dealer about the delivery delays and it made sense and while you can file this under RUMOR it really does make the most sense.  Essentially it seems marketing and sales did their thing and came up with initial production numbers.  Generally these are inflated if anything because it doesn't cost anyone anything to say "yeah, I'll take a couple"...  Then, when the time came for "actual" orders, they far exceeded the initial numbers that under normal circumstances would have been inflated already.  While this was "overheard" I really makes the most sense of any of the excuses.  Keep in mind, they have to pay for the units to be built so they can't just say "hey build twice as many" to the manufacturer, they actually have to send a check.  I'm also guessing just based on how things normally go... everyone in the chain was like "yeah... sure they want that many."    It was interesting to see how many people actually had units in hand.   The guy I was talking to said we are the lucky ones as they are still playing catchup on the initial orders.  

 

All in all it was a nice visit at the booth.   Remember, this event is tailored toward distribution, so those of us who are "end users" getting any time from them is appreciated.   I was happy to see 1.06 and that the editor was not vaporware.  

[avantasia]

Thx for taking the time to write. Very clear story.

[fukuri]

Your demo guy was Sean Halley

He does that thing with the looper

[DoeWoe]

Please excuse my foolishness, but what is the benefit to recording silence first in the loop? To be honest I don't mess around with a looper very often.

[tagmusenmagnus1]

I guess it is a trick for making Ambient big sounds. 
This way you will not get that "bump" in the sound when the loop starts over again.

But you cant do stuff in time - or it will at least be very very hard to do :) 

[fukuri]

It's also to simulate how the old tape loopers worked

You didn't have a clear start or finish