A Brief Helix Impression

[miguel_lopez]

Line6 is not a brand you can compare with something else. My first Line6 gear was the PODXT bean. Since I am a classical guitar player, the idea of introducing myself into the electric guitar-amp world was great by getting close to LINE6 products (I also had two variax guitars: 500 and 700). My experience with this tiny sucker was so amazing that I could NOT stop updating the following products of Line6. So, being my first impression I can say my favorites are Line6 acoustic 2, Spinal Puppeter and Line6 Purge. As you can see, I have it all:

-Ultra sterile cleans(I really love listening nothing but my guitar, that are very dedicated and totally modified -paint, hardware, electronics) with whatever treatment: chorus, compression, delay, reverb and very dedicated eq)

-Ultra high gain: and many possibilities of cranking and punching-in-audience's-faces and managing a strong character to get their spinals broken

-Dirty-Crunch-Warm-Hot tone between Angus and Paige, something very unique and personal style which took me years to find.

I'm not a Marshall-Fender-Vox-Engl-Mesa-ETC... guy. I'm a very serious musician: Classical guitar player 10 years studyng in a fine arts academy, 10 years studying serious composition and nowadays I am a very commited producer. So I don't consider myself an ordinary guitar player. 

Since the first time I plugged a Variax-POD I found tremendous interesting possibilities of creating something else than whole lotta love-sweet chind o mine-satisfaction-panama-paranoid-etc.. As soon as I turned into the real world, by playing real amps, real pedals, real guitars, I found myself so far from these devices that I ended working with my very HUMBLE PODxt/FBV connected to a very modest PA along with my bandmates also connected via BASS POD and POD PRO(for vocals). There was all that magic we expected to hear. The first time I purchased a pair of professional Studio monitors for flat response I got SO impressed when I played the factory patches programmed in those old LINE6 gear I had, nowadays incluided the PODHD family. 

This post caught my attention because there's someone who has noticed certain difference between the old and the new gear. Yes, you get used to something that has been around many years you've been working with. I could say something similar happend to me. The reason is because I'm not too much into the new HD amp family, I like so much LINE6 original tones that I don't find that Marshall remastered-Bassman-Deluxe-HiWatt-whattever attractive. So, what I'm doing right now is taking the amp(no cab-AIR) from PODxt into the Helix(cab AIR, now IR) and I just cannot believe the experience I'm having with this combination!!!

These are just the greatest tones I've ever heard in my entire life. And I'm not saying the new amps are good; actually they are a dream come true, but definetly are not what I'm up to. My POD-HELI>< combination is something so ALIVE, so bright, tight, strong, powerfull, expressive, magical, MUSICAL, that I can't ask anymore but inspiration. Since PODx3PRO manage digital connections I don't loose any data or quality and I can combine as well so much possibilities that I'm getting incredibly inspired by my favorite tones already found in the POD family. I've been reading in other threads the necessity of the FRFR technology... something I haven't work with yet, but soon I will. It's not an advise, but I can share my thought with you: being a composer I find more important to create great music itself than gear and tone. If you have a nice song you will not have to worry about the tone, the music is gonna be so dominant that the audience are NOT gonna pay particular attention to the amp-guitar-pedaltrain-whatever you are connected to. As many singers I've met I always suggest them to go for vocal lessons. The same in here: go and train yourself in music; that's gonna make a BIG difference, not POD-HELIX-FRACTAL-EVENTIDE-whatever...