HX Effects and Jet City Amps

[medieval21]

Hello all.Has anyone used HX effects with Jet City 50w or 100w head in amp's loop or with 4cm?How does it sound?

[michalski]

Using rhe 20w head, 4CM, works perfectly, and also changing amp chanel thru the helix using the ext amp plug.

[digitalscream]

Bit of a necro-bump, but...after a successful test at rehearsal last week, I'm using the Helix LT with the JCA50H in 4CM. It sounds absolutely awesome for heavy rock and metal tones.

 

I'm using the crunch channel with the gain maxed for rhythm (boosted with the Timmy model, to take into account the Lace Sensors on my main guitar), then switching to the drive channel for gain and level boost for solos. Cleans are mostly done by rolling off the volume on the guitar (yes, even with the Timmy in front of the amp's preamp), but there are a couple of songs where I disable the amp's preamp and use the SLO clean model in the Helix.

 

The one thing you have to watch is the signal level going back into the amp's loop return. Because the loop on the 50H and 100H (but not the 22H or Custom 22) sits between the main gain stages and the tone stack, you have to be careful not to drive the tone stack too hard...in particular, not harder than the preamp would do, otherwise you get a nasty fizzy overtone. Also, if you have your reverbs and delays after the preamp, then you need to keep the mix slightly lower than you normally would because the tone stack does distort a bit at normal levels (I believe this is what gives the Jet City and Soldano amps their familiar "zing") and so you get a bit of compression and thus slightly louder repeats than you'd expect.