talonmm Posted July 6, 2016 Share Posted July 6, 2016 Any thoughts and advise on this matter would be appreciated, thanks! I realize we all have different circumstances, goals and needs for our equipment. I am not sure what I should do. I have a pod hd500x with the hd model packs and find the sound at home to be amazing! I currently drive two marshall stacks through the hd500x (one stack on the left, one on the right). I use solid state marshall heads to keep plenty of head room and am very happy with the sounds I get). I have an older hd500 unit (not the x) that I take to band practice and I will never lug cabinets to a gig or band practice. The hd500 goes into the pa system or a clean amp. The hd500 never sounds as good as the home rig but I have no desire to change the set up for practice and when we occasionally gig, a sound-man can make the whole set up sound fine. I am not a professional musician and will never be one, just a hobbyist. I dread the learning curve of a helix or the time spent dealing with firmware issues, comparability challenges and those sort of things. If I buy the helix it will stay at home, so it will not have the chance to upgrade my band practice sound or gigs. However, if the Helix is a substantial upgrade in sound quality that could sway me and I'm not worried about the cost of the unit. I really like the tones I have and don't feel I am missing anything. Any advise or thoughts? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perfect Posted July 6, 2016 Share Posted July 6, 2016 If you aren't worried about the cost then go for it. I think you will find that the Helix sounds significantly better and you will end up using it all the time. Also, the learning curve is negligible (certainly easier than the HD500) and you will probably be up and running before you know it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigRalphN Posted July 6, 2016 Share Posted July 6, 2016 If you aren't worried about the cost then go for it. I think you will find that the Helix sounds significantly better and you will end up using it all the time. Also, the learning curve is negligible (certainly easier than the HD500) and you will probably be up and running before you know it. +1. I have used the HD series at church for a few years. The Helix sounds so much better. I have heard the HD series sound ok, but never close to the Helix. And the Helix is 100x more user friendly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DunedinDragon Posted July 6, 2016 Share Posted July 6, 2016 There are a number of us in here that upgraded from the HD500X. I myself was skeptical because I was getting pretty good results with the HD500 and I wasn't totally convinced it would be worth the upgrade as I had a significant amount of time invested in building the presets I was using. I went ahead and did it and I couldn't be happier. Although the sound alone could have probably justified it, what really made it worthwhile was the savings in time for building patches. Some of that relates to the more advanced interface, but a lot has to do with the accuracy of the models and cabinets and less time having to tweak settings. And I'm pretty picky about my sound. I think you'll find a lot of what you know from your experience with the HD500 will translate pretty easily. But you'll also find there are much better options for making adjustments to your sound as well as for the routing of that sound to your onstage system as well as the FOH PA. Personally I'll be selling my HD in a couple of months as I don't think I'll need it. I use my Helix at home for building my patches and setting things up for performances, and use it at rehearsal and at the performance. In my case I go through a Yamaha DXR12 as my onstage monitor and for rehearsals, and I have a second DXR12 at home for building my patches and setting things up for the performance. This way everything is consistent both with my onstage sound as well as the FOH sound since all the soundman needs to do is set my EQ flat and gain stage me with the rest of the band and I know the audience will be hearing exactly what I'm hearing on stage. One minor adjustment I had to make was put a direct box in line to feed my monitor as well as the FOH. The reason is we have mic's that use phantom power and some folks have had problems with the Helix if it's fed phantom power. I never experienced it, but better safe than sorry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duncann Posted July 6, 2016 Share Posted July 6, 2016 If you aren't worried about forking over the cash as Perfect said, I also say sure. Go for it. It's a great enhancement over the HD in many ways. As others have said, the learning curve is negligible. For building presets, you can take the general knowledge you learned with the HD and have that be of use, but you can also gladly throw away the HD specific nuisances like the dual vs single inputs, EQs in percentages, and things along those lines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterHamm Posted July 6, 2016 Share Posted July 6, 2016 It took me a couple weeks to really master HD 500.It took me a couple hours to not need my Helix manual anymore.No learning curve to speak of. Ridiculously easy to use... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
talonmm Posted July 6, 2016 Author Share Posted July 6, 2016 wow, thank you so much for your feedback. sounds like it would be a larger improvement than I thought. also, having read many posts in this section, I was worried about the learning curve and complexity of the product. Looks like I will move forward, thanks again for the advise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterHamm Posted July 6, 2016 Share Posted July 6, 2016 ...I was worried about the learning curve and complexity of the product. Complex? YES! (that's a good thing.) There are 8 different ways to do the same thing, none are necessarily wrong, and once you learn it, it is just super easy to navigate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digital_Igloo Posted July 6, 2016 Share Posted July 6, 2016 I was worried about the learning curve and complexity of the product. If you read the 2-page Helix Cheat Sheet, you're 80% of the way to mastering the thing. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glideman Posted July 6, 2016 Share Posted July 6, 2016 Yep... Have yet to read the cheat sheet... LoL! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HonestOpinion Posted July 6, 2016 Share Posted July 6, 2016 Any thoughts and advise on this matter would be appreciated, thanks! I realize we all have different circumstances, goals and needs for our equipment. I am not sure what I should do. I have a pod hd500x with the hd model packs and find the sound at home to be amazing! I currently drive two marshall stacks through the hd500x (one stack on the left, one on the right). I use solid state marshall heads to keep plenty of head room and am very happy with the sounds I get). I have an older hd500 unit (not the x) that I take to band practice and I will never lug cabinets to a gig or band practice. The hd500 goes into the pa system or a clean amp. The hd500 never sounds as good as the home rig but I have no desire to change the set up for practice and when we occasionally gig, a sound-man can make the whole set up sound fine. I am not a professional musician and will never be one, just a hobbyist. I dread the learning curve of a helix or the time spent dealing with firmware issues, comparability challenges and those sort of things. If I buy the helix it will stay at home, so it will not have the chance to upgrade my band practice sound or gigs. However, if the Helix is a substantial upgrade in sound quality that could sway me and I'm not worried about the cost of the unit. I really like the tones I have and don't feel I am missing anything. Any advise or thoughts? Unequivocally, YES! Buy the Helix! This is the greatest MFX device ever created IMHO. Nothing that comes before compares. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glideman Posted July 6, 2016 Share Posted July 6, 2016 Buy one NOW... And load it with 2.0 firmware as soon as you rip it out the box! LoL! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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