Helix jazz tones

[RandallBSmith]

I'm new to Helix, having used it for about 3 weeks. I have had no history of working with modeling equipment and software. I've gone through most of Jason Sadites' tutorials - very instructive and helpful. I am interested in developing some presets for jazz guitars, particularly hollow bodies such as the D'Angelico Excel EXL1. I'm looking for a clean, round sound. I've attached a preset I made with dual amps and cabs, hopefully to give more depth to the tone. I'm using a Roland 40 amp, but plugging the Helix into the effects jack on the back; this appears to bypass the preamp. The tone was created for the D'Angelico. I applied some compression to the lows and highs of both modeled amps to decrease muddiness and too bright tonalities. I used EQs to specifically target frequencies which feed back on the guitar. Any thoughts/assistance in the elements and/or layout of the preset would be much appreciated. Randall

RBS JC40 EXL1b.hlx

[cruisinon2]

12 hours ago, RandallBSmith said:

I've attached a preset I made with dual amps and cabs, hopefully to give more depth to the tone. I'm using a Roland 40 amp, but plugging the Helix into the effects jack on the back; this appears to bypass the preamp.

 

Yes, going into the FX return bypasses the preamp.... that's the whole point. If you're using amp and cab models in your patch, the last thing you want to do is take that signal and run it through another preamp... it'll color the tone significantly, effectively undoing all the effort you put into creating the sound in the first place. Another thing to consider is that since you are using an actual guitar amp, the cab models that you have in your patch are really unnecessary, and are probably doing more harm than good. Running a modeled cabinet through a real one is very likely the source of the muddiness that you had to EQ out. You'll probably get better results ditching the cab models altogether.

 

If you want to use the amp for your basic tone, that's fine too... but you'll need to run the 4 cable method (4CM). There are numerous threads around here detailing how it works, but in a nutshell it allows you to insert the amp's preamp into the signal chain in place of an amp model, while also allowing various FX to be placed either before or after that preamp. Then everything is fed back to the amp's FX return, and into the power section. Needn't bother with cab models in this scenario either.