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Thank you, Ben Adrian!


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Cartographer has also become my high gain amp of choice. I like the flexibility of the gain staging. I jumped between Park75 and Archetype Drive. Park75 has a nice Marshall tone, but its too scooped for my needs and has too much flub in the bass. Archetype Drive is the opposite - really tight and smooth. But I don’t feel it provides the gain and distortion voicing control I need. Cartographer comes in the middle. It brings back some of the low end and scoop of the Park75, but has similar tightness as Archetype Drive, not quite as tight, but pretty close. What I like is that Cartographer provides the two drive controls to get better control of the gain staging.

 

What I’d still like to see is more distortion voicing control between the preamp gain stages. Maybe just bass, mid and treble shift switches to control what’s going into the distortion stages. The bass, middle and treble controls already handle post distortion tone. I like to hit the front of the distortion with bass cut and treble boost so that I can balance that with bass boost and treble cut after the distortion. This way when I turn the guitar volume down and the amp cleans up, I get a pretty useful clean tone with the pre and post voicings kind of cancelling out. I can get this with an EQ block before the amp and using snapshots to do the voicing between distortion levels. But it might be nice to have it built into the amp, and in between the distortion gain stages.

 

Litigator is still my goto amp though. It just hits the sweet spot for me. Interesting the two amps I use most are both hand crafted by Ben and not models of existing amps. I’m hoping to seem more of this in the future. Helix doesn’t need to be limited by the past.

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Should point out that the Cartographer, unlike the Litigator, is in fact a model of a real amp, which just happens to be a one off custom Ben made for himself. Either way, really cool that we get models of more unique, unusually designed amps alongside the usual Fender and Marshall offerings, and I hope we continue to get stuff like this in future updates.

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Should point out that the Cartographer, unlike the Litigator, is in fact a model of a real amp, which just happens to be a one off custom Ben made for himself. Either way, really cool that we get models of more unique, unusually designed amps alongside the usual Fender and Marshall offerings, and I hope we continue to get stuff like this in future updates.

 

'Cept, I'm imagining from his description, that he added a little more "magic" to the Cartographer that he couldn't do with his real amp.... you know... 'cause he could ;)

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 Either way, really cool that we get models of more unique, unusually designed amps alongside the usual Fender and Marshall offerings, and I hope we continue to get stuff like this in future updates.

Oh yes!! I completely agree. I would never be able to afford a unique amp like that. But being able to get a model of it that is within even 90% + of accuracy makes me very happy!

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It should be telling to Product Management (they probably already know) when they see how many people respond so positively to totally different / non classic offerings. I used to love Revalver for the ability to create really different virtual amps out of different things. After I updated I went to the new, unique amps first and didn't hit the Plexi stuff until last. 

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It's Madness. There's so many tonal combinations just within the amp Block when it comes to the Cartographer.

 

I like pulling the master volume almost all the way back and then almost maxing up the two drives, keeping bass mids and treble under 5, cutting the presence completely and adding depth to get some low end back. Heavy heavy heavy.

 

Then for a sparkly clean sound, bias at 10, raising the master volume up some, taking Drive 1 almost all the way down and keeping drive 2 around 7

 

You can create a huge tonal pallette with snapshots and this one amp.

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I have been trying to track multiple guitar parts for a song for a couple of weeks now and just couldn't find the right sound - and without the right sound I couldn't feel to play the parts properly. Brick wall... and then 2.30 hit so I thought "why not" and updated my Helix Floor.

I thought Trainwreck had a good chance for the cleaner sounds, but it was Cartographer that ended up being used for all of the parts. I tracked listening to the Floor unit directly but just recorded the clean guitar and then in Native duplicated the patch and was able to fine tune the settings for each track to give a distinct sound for each part. And when I get to mixing the track down I will still have the option of unfreezing the tracks and tweaking/automating if needed to suit the final arrangement.

Trainwreck is ideal with Snapshots - a true 8 channel amp should you need it, and what amazed me was that the settings for a nice clean sparkly neck+mid Strat turned into a full singing just breaking up Strat neck pickup, and then a full power crunch Les Paul when fed by VDI from my JTV-69 without touching any amp or guitar controls at all other than the model selector!!!

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I love that amp both for clean and high gain, but I can't seem to make it work inside a preset. The volume difference is huge (ch volume has to be at around 10 for clean and 4 for high gain) that it does a kind of "pop" sound when switching between snapshots

 

Has anyone found a workaround?

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I love that amp both for clean and high gain, but I can't seem to make it work inside a preset. The volume difference is huge (ch volume has to be at around 10 for clean and 4 for high gain) that it does a kind of "pop" sound when switching between snapshots

 

Has anyone found a workaround?

 

Try using a gain or volume block to compensate for the volume difference rather than adjusting the channel volume. Or you can control the level parameter at the output block per snapshot as well.

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What I don't get about Cartographer is how Ben could have used even a tiny fraction of what it can do live. There are so many possibilities to all its controls, without presets, or at least like 3-4 channels, you'd either be using only a couple of its tricks, or adjusting it all night. Yay modeling!

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  • 2 months later...

What I don't get about Cartographer is how Ben could have used even a tiny fraction of what it can do live. There are so many possibilities to all its controls, without presets, or at least like 3-4 channels, you'd either be using only a couple of its tricks, or adjusting it all night. Yay modeling!

 

I pretty much just used one sound with a boost pedal to drive it harder and my volume knob to clean it up. I used this amp with mainly one guitar that had single coil pickups. I added the bright switches when I got a Revstar with humbuckers.

 

Thanks for the love!

 

Cheers!

Ben

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Hah, thanks for clearing that up, figured it was something simple.

 

The Helix version really does have a ton of different flavors available, love it, much thanks :)

Yup, going from a "real amp" uni-tasker to a modeled version that is a multi-tasker. The beauty of digital modeling!

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Well damn it! I've been so happy with the Archon Clean for cleans and Archon lead for crunch and rhythm.  Just sounded incredible for the last few months.

And then I read this thread today. 

Started screwing around with the Cartogropher... and now I have my "New" amp.  
Sounds freakin' awesome. :)

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I thought Archon Lead was a bit too "smooth" sounding. Cartographer has a roughness to it that is aggressive, but no ice pick. Its model is similar to Cali Texas Ch2 which also is very flexible. You can't really go wrong with any of these models.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I know I am bumping this thread, but I felt compelled. I have been spending some time with the Cartographer amp model, and it is fantastic.

 

I have a few different guitars, but the one I am using with the Cartographer atm is a Dean Zelinksy Tagliere. (Strat like) I named her "Ember."

 

I am dialing in a lead guitar part. I was pleased with the amp when I first used it, however, I was able to really dial it in using Helix Native, and a little automation. (I love Native for this)

 

This has become one of my favorite models in the Helix, and this lead tone is probably the best I have ever dialed in for this guitar. I prefer having gain1 a little higher than gain2, and like running it parallel with two 3Sigma Audio IRs (both Dr.Z 2x12 ACE -- 1 tube, 1 solid states)

 

So I just wanted to say Thank you to Ben Adrian, and to Line 6, for including this treasure of an amp model.

I'd say most of the models added since launch are quite phenomenal. Looking forward to more. ☺

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How do you like that thing? I've looked over the site a few times, but I'm forever wary of "blind faith" guitar purchases.

All "faith" is blind.

There is a return policy, so not much faith needed. 45 day if I remember correctly. Falls more under benefit of the doubt for me, as I am not a person that confuses faith to be some sort of virtue. However, I understand your reservations on it, but 45 days, or even 30 days, should be more than enough to evaluate.

 

EDIT: I just checked, they have a 30 day money back guarantee.

 

I would have had to do the same with a Strat unless I found one on the wall at a shop, with semi fresh strings, and relatively setup well... And that just doesn't happen around here.

 

As far as the guitar it is easily my favorite Strat style guitar. I love playing it. You can get a Strat sound out of it, however it has its own unique voice. It's beautiful too, which you can tell that from the pics on the site. I highly recommend the Z-glide neck option.

 

He is offering baritone options now, I think. The moment he does superstrats I will be ordering another.

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