Helix LT DOA?

[shawnt113]

I bought a Helix Lt from Sweetwater, was a little concerned when the box had a slip of paper stating "this box was carefully opened and inspected by a sweetwater service professional". I hooked it up for the first time last night, it started the boot process then said rebuilding presets, it got hung on preset 898 for about 5 minutes. I rebooted it and the red/green lights over the expression pedal came on, stayed on and nothing else happened. The LCD screen never came on. I found the restore steps on L6 so I tried global reset, left it on for about 10 minutes in the screen that says will restore presets, IRs etc... restarted it, again, nothing. One time it did boot up I got to play through the first preset, but as soon as I changed preset no sound, the tuner wouldn't even read an input. I made sure the input of the tuner, and the input block both were set to guitar, not multi, not Variax or anything else.

 

Through the course of the night I reinstalled the most current FW, the previous FW and most current again, being a Fractal user I am well aware of corrupted/bad FW installs. All of this was to no avail. Each time the updater would say that the unit would reboot, and each time it would get stuck on the red/green lights above the expression pedal staying lit and no LCD screen. I went to bed frustrated, this morning it booted fine, still no signal, tried to reboot, got the red/green no LCD and the second time got the LCD with the moving helix symbol and nothing, giving up after 5 or more minutes of waiting.

 

Needless to say I cant use it for may gigs this weekend and it's going back but my concern is, how reliable is this unit going to be? When I couple that with the fact that L6 just extended the Helix Warranty that makes me wonder if there are known issues with the unit. Whats you guys opinions/experience in this?

[PeterHamm]

You re-flashed, and it still didn't behave.

 

This is not normal, and should not be expected. Return it and get another one immediately.

[shawnt113]

I know there will always be issues with gear, especially of the digital sort. I remember when I started gigging in a new band back in 2004 with my Vetta HD, I read about so many nightmare issues with the unit dying just before or during a gig. I did have 2 issues out of it, 1 was before I ever used it live, after having it for a year or so I had to reinstall the FW on a dead boot, 2- was at an outdoor gig and I think it.really was a result of bad power supply to the stage. Either way it was only 1 real issue in probably 100 gigs. But with this being my first experience, and seeing in other posts that other people have had reliability issues it concerns me.

[PeterHamm]

For perspective, I am a beta tester of the Rack, and have been using it with no backup since Dec 2015. Even with BETA builds, I've never had it go down for a performance.

[rvroberts]

1 year new to Helix floor - no problems yet...........fingers crossed!  I've had more problems with computers - biggest problem is when (and it's got to happen one day) it goes down - what am I going to do??!!  

It's the only problem when all your eggs are in one basket of technology.........May have to buy an LT as a backup - but then I'd have to take it everywhere with me........which won't happen!

But seriously, I think reliability is as good as you can hope for a chunk of well built solid technology - LT......yet to see enough of them around for a time.

[themetallikid]

I also have a Helix coming from Sweetwater today actually.....I was told by my rep that they did open the boxes to update the firmware to the latest before they shipped them out.  I'm shocked that it had that issue, I would imagine they have a test process post-upload to verify it loaded correctly, but I suppose there is always be a % that gets missed. 

[shawnt113]

The fine folks @Sweetwater are gonna have me a unit out tomorrow! They didn't upgrade me for 1/2 the difference but it doesn't hurt to ask. The hard part now is getting it set up between work and the gig. For ease I think I'll just run it 4 cable method with my 5150iii head so I should just be able to get by with programming a main patch w/a chorus, flange, delay and drive ti switch in and out,and then a lead block w/drive, delay and a slight volume bump. Sunday's gig is at church for that I'd like to run direct and would need a good almost edge of break-up patch, with a drive, compressor, and a good dotted 8th delay. Anyone have any suggestions on settings? I'm afraid of hooking it to a pc right now for obvious reasons lol

[davidb7170]

Today is Friday, you're getting a different unit in time to want to use it on Sunday? Very cool, but I would not use it out until you are familiar with it. Had my floor Helix for 2 weeks, setting up presets, learning what the globals and other specifics do, and their affect on the sound. The stock presets were not useful to me, in general. I had an HD500X & 500 backup that kept using until I was ready to go.

My 2 cents....

Dave

[shawnt113]

I'll keep that in mind. Luckily where we're playing tomorrow they have a digital board so I will Sound check with my Axe FXII running direct and with my 5150iii mic'd and the soubd guy can save the settings l. I'll have a couple of hours to set up a couple of workable presets, if I can't I'll have the Axe FX already. Probably do The same for church gig on Sunday.