Volume pedal does not go to zero when heel down!

[jimbojamz]

My volume pedal doesn't go to zero constantly when in heel down position.  sometimes it does but other times it goes to 3 or 5 % (random low number)

Is there a calibration I can do on it? Brand new Helix less than a week old too. 

TIA

 

 

[FlyingsCool]

I don't have a solution for you per se, but for those that might, I assume you're talking about the built in expression pedal on the floor unit?

 

If not, what pedal are you using, what kind of cable are you using, and what port are you connecting it too?

[jbuhajla]

You might try loosening up a bit with the provided hex wrench. Sometimes if it is too tight, you won't get it all the way to the heel position consistently. They are pretty tight out of the box. 

[jimbojamz]

my pedal was floppy out of the box. (the built in expression pedal) The first helix i had had a bad capacitance switch, this is my second one and it really concerns me about the quality control on a 1500.00 piece of gear.   

[spikey]

my pedal was floppy out of the box. (the built in expression pedal) The first helix i had had a bad capacitance switch, this is my second one and it really concerns me about the quality control on a 1500.00 piece of gear.   

 

I don't blame you a bit for that thought after two of them. If it continues to do this I would return it again. At some point QA will get their lollipop handed to them when enough of these units get returned. OTOH, it's also just possible you have had really bad luck. Is it too late to exchange it cause that's what I would do.

[jimbojamz]

only had this one a week. it'll go back to MF i guess. sigh I really want Helix to work out for me. 

[jbuhajla]

my pedal was floppy out of the box. (the built in expression pedal) The first helix i had had a bad capacitance switch, this is my second one and it really concerns me about the quality control on a 1500.00 piece of gear.   

If it's floppy, try tightening it a bit. Maybe it is dropping a little when you take your foot off. 

[jimbojamz]

I have tightened it. But I'll check that tonight. 

[jimbojamz]

You might try loosening up a bit with the provided hex wrench. Sometimes if it is too tight, you won't get it all the way to the heel position consistently. They are pretty tight out of the box. 

 

my pedal was floppy out of the box. (the built in expression pedal) The first helix i had had a bad capacitance switch, this is my second one and it really concerns me about the quality control on a 1500.00 piece of gear.   

It was doing it still tonight after work. I loosened the pedal screw up until it just about came loose. The pedal was all floppy in there. I tightened it back up and it seems to be working correctly like my last unit did.  

[jbuhajla]

Man that's awesome. Now you can just concentrate on playing and tweaking

[jimbojamz]

It was doing it still tonight after work. I loosened the pedal screw up until it just about came loose. The pedal was all floppy in there. I tightened it back up and it seems to be working correctly like my last unit did.  

The pedal seemed to be working fine on my desk which is where it's been since my quote up there. I had my first band band practice last night ( there are six of us in the band, we all have jobs and five of us have families. needless to say it's hard to schedule a practice) I digress. Helix sounded Awesome! (w/ frfr) Volume pedal wasn't heel downing (that a word?) to zero.   :(

I'm still getting 2-3% until I really mash it whit my heel. the unit doesn't sit square on my desk either: it rocks back and forth from upper left to lower right. The first Helix I had didn't do that. It's going back for exchange to MF on Monday. I hate to be without it, but it cost too much to have to put up with any defect. 

[jimbojamz]

On the bright side: I'm getting very proficient in updating the Helix, as well as backing up & restoring. 

As a test I did factory reset on Helix. Then did a global restore. Worked great-  all patches where I left them. I then renamed my Glen DeLuane patches with numbers in front of the GD_Patch Name That corespnd to the IR's slot number they are supposed to be in. 

1GD_ Patch Name

2GD_ etc

3GD_etc

Imported the IR's in and they are in the correct order!

[PeterHamm]

The pedal seemed to be working fine on my desk which is where it's been since my quote up there.

 

 

No offense, but it's designed to be on the floor... I would expect the pedal to work poorly with a hand. And how do you know that your desk is totally flat? If it works on the floor, it's working right.

 

But I see that you had problems on the floor, too, at least as far as the volume pedal.

[jimbojamz]

No offense, but it's designed to be on the floor... I would expect the pedal to work poorly with a hand. And how do you know that your desk is totally flat? If it works on the floor, it's working right.

 

But I see that you had problems on the floor, too, at least as far as the volume pedal.

This was my second Helix (third on the way) the first helix didn't rock back and forth in the same spot on my desk is how I know it's flat (or first helix warped  :) )

Anyway unit was picked up this morning and I hope to have my replacement in about 5 days. 

[jimbojamz]

 

Warped Helix?

ps: It's not the table.

[FlyingsCool]

I'm with you Jimbo... I understood what you meant by it rocking, not acceptable.  Assuming all rubber feet were the same height, if it's rocking, it means the extrusion is warped out of spec, and there ain't no fixin' that.  And it's a possible cause for your volume pedal issue to boot (pun unintended), plus other possible problems it could cause (warping the board inside, connectors not quite fitting inside, etc.. all bad stuff). 

 

The pedal should go from 0 to 100 and back no problem, by foot or by hand... Using the pedal on/off button by hand, that's a different story, but all other operation should be transparent to it's location.

[Danerad]

Mine does exactly the same thing - discovered the problem whilst on tour and it was a nightmare for whammy style things - I'd release the pedal in the 'heel down' position and it would rise back up 1% or 3% or 5%, pulling the whole guitar out off tune with the song. I worked around it by assigning the whammy to a switch so I could turn it on and off but this really messed with my setup. i tried adjusting the tension but this doesn't seem like a hardware issue.

 

[themetallikid]

11 hours ago, Danerad said:

Mine does exactly the same thing - discovered the problem whilst on tour and it was a nightmare for whammy style things - I'd release the pedal in the 'heel down' position and it would rise back up 1% or 3% or 5%, pulling the whole guitar out off tune with the song. I worked around it by assigning the whammy to a switch so I could turn it on and off but this really messed with my setup. i tried adjusting the tension but this doesn't seem like a hardware issue.

 

I had this same issue with my LT, 2 of them actually.....but in toe down position.  I like my auto engages to be 'off' when in toe down.....but same thing, I could build work arounds for wah stuff, but whammy I like to leave the block off until I need that affect and it would constantly go past my 97% 'off' point, but then when I released my foot from the pedal it would counter rock back slightly to a random number less than 97%.  No matter what I adjusted the 'off' threshold to...it would always counter rock when I lifted my foot to lower than that number....unless I set it so stupidly low it almost made it worthless to setup that way. 

 

I created a ticket with L6 and they took care of me.  Mine was registered and all...I now have the full Helix, and so far so good. 

[lordkill61]

Hey everyone! I know this is an older post, but I just ran into an issue with my Helix after a few years. At first, I thought it was a hardware problem, so I opened up the unit—though I wouldn't recommend doing this if you're not sure what you're doing. Eventually, I discovered the solution on an old Reddit post. Here it is for anyone else experiencing the same issue:

"When you turn on the Helix, make sure the expression pedal is at 0%. It calibrates every time during boot up."

 

The original solution actually mentioned 100%, but it's supposed to be 0% to calibrate properly.

Hope this helps!

 

cheers 

[themetallikid]

Interesting, I have usually always used Toe Down (100%) as my starting position....but i'll try it at 0% when I fire it up tonight and see if that seems to help at all.   

[PaulTBaker]

I had sort of the opposite problem... the pedal would not stay at 100%, it would back off some to 89%.  I tightened the pedal and it still didn't work.

What has worked for me was to change the setting on the volume pedal expression 1 setting to Global.  that means that when you change presets, whatever the volume pedal is set to, will be active when you start that preset.

It's possible that it just took a while for the tightening to make a difference??? I really don't know, but you could try that.

It's also good to know that the foot pedal calibrates when turning on the helix.  I have the Floor, btw.

[DG9645]

try this-- when you first turn on the helix, rock the pedal full forward and full backward repeatedly until it finishes turning on. when the screen shows you can stop. somewhere along the line I heard this was the key to calibrating the helix onboard pedal and it seems to work for me every time. Sometimes I use a mission pedal too, but still calibrate the onboard pedal while powering up. the outboard pedals don't seem to need calibrating. hope this helps!

[themetallikid]

On 10/4/2024 at 11:40 AM, PaulTBaker said:

I had sort of the opposite problem... the pedal would not stay at 100%, it would back off some to 89%.  I tightened the pedal and it still didn't work.

What has worked for me was to change the setting on the volume pedal expression 1 setting to Global.  that means that when you change presets, whatever the volume pedal is set to, will be active when you start that preset.

It's possible that it just took a while for the tightening to make a difference??? I really don't know, but you could try that.

It's also good to know that the foot pedal calibrates when turning on the helix.  I have the Floor, btw.

Is yours the Full or the LT?  I had that same problem with the LT, didnt matter what i set my auto-off to, it would go to 100% and then when i released my foot, it would drop to random numbers, thus turning the effect back on.  Horrible problem with it attached to a whammy and heel down is -12 tones.  lol...    Switched to the full helix and have never had the problem on the toe down side.  

 

I have a bit of drift on the heel down side, however i feel its related to the stopper and any rebound from it. as i can get it to sit at <3%, but it gets to 5% pretty often, thus having to set my auto off at 7%.  

 

I tried the heel down fully when power on, and it seems to be 'less', but still noticeable.  

[theElevators]

My LT sometimes only went to 98 percent, then 97 percent.  Then this just stopped after one of the updates.  Make sure your pedal is not crooked, too loose, too tight etc... so try adjusting it if that's the case.  It could be a mechanical issue where the mechanism that blocks the light next to the light sensor inside is crooked.  So it could be resolved by moving it to its proper position, or widening the slit for the light. 

 

Otherwise get an external pedal, as the LT exp pedal is not of the highest quality.  Floor's exp pedal also can have some issues as well, but it can be fixed by taking the unit apart, tightening all the nuts of the claw-like mechanism so the pedal is not crooked.

[PaulTBaker]

On 10/6/2024 at 10:05 PM, themetallikid said:

Is yours the Full or the LT?  I had that same problem with the LT, didnt matter what i set my auto-off to, it would go to 100% and then when i released my foot, it would drop to random numbers, thus turning the effect back on.  Horrible problem with it attached to a whammy and heel down is -12 tones.  lol...    Switched to the full helix and have never had the problem on the toe down side.  

 

I have a bit of drift on the heel down side, however i feel its related to the stopper and any rebound from it. as i can get it to sit at <3%, but it gets to 5% pretty often, thus having to set my auto off at 7%.  

 

I tried the heel down fully when power on, and it seems to be 'less', but still noticeable.  

I have the Helix Floor.  Wow that would be huge problems when changing the tones!

[themetallikid]

On 10/7/2024 at 12:45 PM, PaulTBaker said:

I have the Helix Floor.  Wow that would be huge problems when changing the tones!

Yeah we were playing a song with the whammy and toe down was auto off.  We started the song and i could not figure out who was out of tune....then i saw my whammy block was on. I literally could not shut it off, once it was engaged (auto off was above 93%) except by change presets and going back to the current songs preset where it was saved as off....   

 

That 93% mark had crept down from the 97% i started with.  I even for fun set the auto off down to 80% and it didnt matter, my toe down would read as 100%, but then without the pedal moving drift down to a few points below whatever I had it set to.  No win situation.  Since I had the floor, no issues, except the last year with the 0% not staying at 0%, but I still feel that this is not the same issue.  At least its not as prominent.  

[theElevators]

On 10/7/2024 at 5:34 PM, themetallikid said:

Yeah we were playing a song with the whammy and toe down was auto off.  We started the song and i could not figure out who was out of tune....then i saw my whammy block was on. I literally could not shut it off, once it was engaged (auto off was above 93%) except by change presets and going back to the current songs preset where it was saved as off....   

 

That 93% mark had crept down from the 97% i started with.  I even for fun set the auto off down to 80% and it didnt matter, my toe down would read as 100%, but then without the pedal moving drift down to a few points below whatever I had it set to.  No win situation.  Since I had the floor, no issues, except the last year with the 0% not staying at 0%, but I still feel that this is not the same issue.  At least its not as prominent.  

For all these auto-engaged sounds, it's a good idea to have a "panic" snapshot where the effect is mixed at 0%. 

[trhx]

On 10/4/2024 at 7:54 AM, lordkill61 said:

Hey everyone! I know this is an older post, but I just ran into an issue with my Helix after a few years. At first, I thought it was a hardware problem, so I opened up the unit—though I wouldn't recommend doing this if you're not sure what you're doing. Eventually, I discovered the solution on an old Reddit post. Here it is for anyone else experiencing the same issue:

"When you turn on the Helix, make sure the expression pedal is at 0%. It calibrates every time during boot up."

 

The original solution actually mentioned 100%, but it's supposed to be 0% to calibrate properly.

Hope this helps!

 

cheers 

Just to add data points, I had the problem one day where the pedal didn't go lower than 23% or something like that. Putting the pedal toe down, then turning it off and on fixed it. I assume an update fixed the problem along the way because I still sometimes forget to set it toe down before turning on and I haven't seen the problem again. It's also possible that there is occasionally a fluke at power on that causes the problem, which is not unheard of for digital equipment.

[gregbarry]

My problem is the pedal has to come up about a quarter inch from heel down before the volume changes from zero. It makes swells awful.

[PeterHamm]

On 11/5/2024 at 8:44 PM, gregbarry said:

My problem is the pedal has to come up about a quarter inch from heel down before the volume changes from zero. It makes swells awful.

Where is your volume pedal in the chain? If near the beginning, this is the way it works. You need to have your volume control after amps/cabs/compression/distortion, but before time based FX like delay and reverb.