So... Line 6 Litigator inspired by boutique mid-gain amps - DISCUSS ! :)

[andreluisarruda]

Tried the Litigator yesterday for the first time (I only have the Helix for 3 days) and I was blown away! What a nice amp indeed!

 

I'll try it again today. I'm loving the Helix so far! Yesterday I simply forgot to eat and drink water spending 5 hours playing nonstop!  :)

[hideout]

With a tube screamer and my MXR EQ, I can get nearly any tube amp to sound very similar to another amp. When you've got 25+ digital amps in a MFX unit, there is guaranteed to be a TON of overlap ... especially in the lower to mid gain settings ... The differences in tone are very subtle in many cases ...

 

I also think, if you had al 25 of those tube amps in a room and plugged into each one, by the end of the day you'd be thinking that a lot of them have a very similar sound and feel too. Certainly there's a huge difference between a high gain soldano and a Fender Twin ... but when you get into that sweet spot of where a lot of rock and blues tones are rooted, the similarities in sound tend to be greater than the differences.

I agree somewhat but like Honest Opinion, I too like the Litigator quite a lot. The thing is, for me, what you say about the sweet spot where rock and blues tones are rooted, is akin to how I feel about metal and high gain amps. I don't have to listen to 25 of them before that "sameness" takes effect. I'd need two... maybe three.

 

I think that with the plethora of amp models available in the Helix, tonalities are reasonably easy to match. The more difficult thing to emulate is the feel and response of the amp. The way it breaks up and distorts is a much more complex variable that's not so easy to emulate. Prior to when the Litigator came to us, I had a few patches that were very similar but they didn't respond the way the Litigator does. Not by a long shot. I was happy with the old pre-Litigator sounds I had but what we have now is just pure icing.

[zooey]

I'm with hideout, feel is different in many of the amps, how they respond to different picking, turning your guitar down, etc.

 

OTOH, certainly there's a lot of overall similarity, not just in Helix tones, but in the tones out there in the world of "rock" music. The differences that feel so huge to us holding the guitar are subtle shadings, really.