HX FX - Is the serial number coded into the device

[modman666]

Hi

I have a HX effects, have had it for just under 3 months. It is very very velcro'd to my board.  I need support but need to register the product (again, I had already done it but there was no trace on my user page) - I don't really want to wrestle with the velcro. Is the serial number somewhere in the system and available electronically, either via HX Edit or by some hitherto undiscoverd knob pressing sequence on the unit itself?

 

For reference, it sounds DREADFUL with acoustic guitar and my sound guy refuses to let me use it, preferring a DI box, which gives a much much better sound and a much louder one.  He is entirely right.

it is truly awful.  Unplugging it and then connecting it to the desk actually sounds like a real guitar...  The guitar has a baggs piezo and preamp onboard.  I also use the unit for electric so don;t want to tamper with any global settings that might affect other usage.  I'm guessing it's an impedance issue... it sounds really good with electric guitar.

[codamedia]

10 hours ago, modman666 said:

I need support but need to register the product (again, I had already done it but there was no trace on my user page) - I don't really want to wrestle with the velcro.

 

Sorry I can't answer your question directly, but If it needs service you are going to need to remove it from the board...

 

10 hours ago, modman666 said:

For reference, it sounds DREADFUL with acoustic guitar and my sound guy refuses to let me use it, preferring a DI box, which gives a much much better sound and a much louder one.  He is entirely right.

 

If it sounds good with electric, but not with acoustic.... are you sure you are setting it up right? The Acoustic (even through the HX Effects) still needs to go through a DI to head to the FOH... the Electric you would normally route to your amp. 

 

Can you share your routing setup so we can understand what you are trying to do? 

[modman666]

Hi

so my plan was to have the acoustic guitar and electric sharing a lead into the HX FX.  Out of there L and R (via a final pan block) into guitar amp and PA respectively (either direct into PA or via a DI box). A preset for acoustic guitar would have a little chorus,  a tiny bit of reverb and maybe even a Professional IR from an acoustic guitar to offset the piezo duck quack and would route hard Left.   

Then I could unplug the acoustic and change to electric, select another preset with distro, delay etc and that would output hard Right into my guitar amp.

(I had thought about left and right inputs with two leads but I really want minimal number of leads about, they always get tangled - I did try it but it made no difference to the sound)

 

The electric guitar into the amp sounds great

The acoustic guitar into the PA sounds awful, truly dreadful, thin, characterless and quiet. Even with all the effects turned off.

 

It doesn't matter what input and output from the HX effects I use (I've tried every combination) the sound is equally bad on acoustic and great on electric.  Just putting the acoustic through the HX without any of the panned setup sounds awful.

 

If I unplug the guitar lead from the HX effects and plug it straight  into the PA the acoustic guitar sounds great, and is 3x  louder (whether thru a DI box int the PA or direct)

 

The only thing making the acoustic sound awful is it being routed through the HX effects, even with no effects in the chain, or with my minimal effects turned off.  This applies to any input and output from the HX effects unit.

 

The guitar is a Breedlove acoustic with a Baggs element piezo and preamp.     It sounds great straight into a PA.  Crap if the signal passes through the HX effects.    I have tested the unit with a Taylor 3 series guitar and the same happens. 

 

It doesn't happen if I use a TC electronic Nova system for the acoustic, but I don't want to carry two units.  It doesn't happen if I route my acoustic through discrete effects units (eg MXR chorus,  TC electronic flashback) but the object was to use one box. 

 

Live I play acoustic and electric in equal measure and need to be able to switch.   At the moment I am going through the PA for the acoustic (entailing another guitar lead and knots onstage)  and the electric through the HX effects into my amp.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[codamedia]

Something is very wrong based on your description.

 

Although I own a Helix now, I used to have an HX effects, and used it to process all of my acoustic instruments. Steel String, Gut String, Mandolin, and Dobro. It did a great job. For reference, I always setup a dedicated patch for those instruments. General setup would be the Studio Comp, an EQ (or two) an IR to match the instrument, a Reverb and a Gain Boost.  When I went from the Effects to the Helix LT I actually re-created most of those tones and still use them today. There is no weakness in signal (once volume matched) and they sound great. 

 

Things to watch for....

1. Volume compensation... effect to effect, patch to patch. It's important to balance everything
2. INPUT and OUTPUT settings! Make sure the inputs are set to instrument, not line. Whatever output is going to the board, make sure it is set to LINE. That may require using a SEND to go to the board for your acoustic instruments since your electric to the amp wants instrument levels on the outputs. 
3. Even when going out from the HX Effects you NEED to use a DI to get it to the console unless the console is fairly close (within 20').

Good luck! 

[Kilrahi]

15 minutes ago, codamedia said:

Something is very wrong based on your description.

 

Although I own a Helix now, I used to have an HX effects, and used it to process all of my acoustic instruments. Steel String, Gut String, Mandolin, and Dobro. It did a great job. For reference, I always setup a dedicated patch for those instruments. General setup would be the Studio Comp, an EQ (or two) an IR to match the instrument, a Reverb and a Gain Boost.  When I went from the Effects to the Helix LT I actually re-created most of those tones and still use them today. There is no weakness in signal (once volume matched) and they sound great. 

 

Things to watch for....

1. Volume compensation... effect to effect, patch to patch. It's important to balance everything
2. INPUT and OUTPUT settings! Make sure the inputs are set to instrument, not line. Whatever output is going to the board, make sure it is set to LINE. That may require using a SEND to go to the board for your acoustic instruments since your electric to the amp wants instrument levels on the outputs. 
3. Even when going out the HX Effects, you NEED to use a DI to get it to the console unless the console is fairly close (within 20').

Good luck! 

 

This. In my opinion, you're not boosting the gain. In HX Stomp it's popular to use the basic microphone pre-amp to boost the sound of an acoustic guitar, but with that not an option on the HX Effects you'll have to go it another route.  Fortunately, you do have a lot of options. Once you do that it should be fine. 

 

While not required, if you really want to make it sound good, you'll then sculpt it as suggested above. EQs are the basic musts, but you'll be shocked how much throwing a IR on top of it will do, and there's tons of free ones out there.  I can point you to a few if needed.

[caledoneus]

with HX effects, since it does not have a XLR out, you would still need a DI of some sort to make the acoustic sound right. Maybe set up your acoustic presets to run mono out of the left output and run that to a DI to the board, and have your electric ones run mono out of the right into the amp?

[Josef5150]

Bump,

 

is there anyway to find the serial no? I have bought a 2nd hand one and would like toregister it, but the serial no label is  mostly missing so only the last few digits are readable.

[ZwAgni]

On 5/21/2020 at 12:27 PM, Josef5150 said:

Bump,

 

is there anyway to find the serial no? I have bought a 2nd hand one and would like toregister it, but the serial no label is  mostly missing so only the last few digits are readable.

Did you ever find a solution similar boat bought from reverb no sticker.

[datacommando]

On 5/21/2020 at 7:27 PM, Josef5150 said:

Bump,

 

is there anyway to find the serial no? I have bought a 2nd hand one and would like toregister it, but the serial no label is  mostly missing so only the last few digits are readable.

 

14 hours ago, ZwAgni said:

Did you ever find a solution similar boat bought from reverb no sticker.

There is a thread on these forums specifically about issues with product registration.

 

Quote:

Q: I'm having trouble registering my unit. How do I get help?
A: Make sure you are signed in to your Line 6 account and open a support ticket to send an inquiry to a Line 6 representative. 
If your unit is missing the sticker with the serial number, please connect the unit to Line 6 Monkey (free download at http://line6.com/software/) and use the ESN number shown on the left side on Monkey. Provide the ESN number when making your inquiry.

 

Hope this helps/makes sense.

 

The complete post in English, French and German, can be found here.

 

[daniellyus]

Hi there, it seems the L6 Monkey app does not support the HX Effects unit. I've downloaded what appears to be the latest v1.77 and in the drop down device list on startup... no Helix/HX devices of any kind are listed.

Impossible to register this device and purchase add-ons without the serial number, the sticker is also missing on mine.

[phil_m]

1 hour ago, daniellyus said:

Hi there, it seems the L6 Monkey app does not support the HX Effects unit. I've downloaded what appears to be the latest v1.77 and in the drop down device list on startup... no Helix/HX devices of any kind are listed.

Impossible to register this device and purchase add-ons without the serial number, the sticker is also missing on mine.

Line 6 Monkey doesn’t support the Helix or HX devices - that’s correct. All you need is HX Edit. And there are no ads-ons or model packs for the Helix. There’s Helix Native but that license is tied to your Line 6 account, not to the Helix/HX hardware. All you need to do to register your HX Effects is go to the Line 6 site and register it.

[daniellyus]

On 10/3/2021 at 7:01 PM, phil_m said:

Line 6 Monkey doesn’t support the Helix or HX devices - that’s correct. All you need is HX Edit. And there are no ads-ons or model packs for the Helix. There’s Helix Native but that license is tied to your Line 6 account, not to the Helix/HX hardware. All you need to do to register your HX Effects is go to the Line 6 site and register it.

Thanks for the reply Phil, quite possible I'm being remarkably stupid, but when I attempt to register the HX FX unit and fill in all the details, the serial number box already has "21hfx" entered. If I submit that I get an error that the serial number cannot be found and registration fails. I'm assuming I do need the serial number of my device, which I'm having trouble finding thanks to no sticker. I've got it connected to HX Edit but can't see any device serial mentioned anywhere. Am I missing something obvious?

I'd like to buy HX Native and obviously want to pay the discounted rate! 

[phil_m]

20 minutes ago, daniellyus said:

Thanks for the reply Phil, quite possible I'm being remarkably stupid, but when I attempt to register the HX FX unit and fill in all the details, the serial number box already has "21hfx" entered. If I submit that I get an error that the serial number cannot be found and registration fails. I'm assuming I do need the serial number of my device, which I'm having trouble finding thanks to no sticker. I've got it connected to HX Edit but can't see any device serial mentioned anywhere. Am I missing something obvious?

I'd like to buy HX Native and obviously want to pay the discounted rate! 

Did you buy the HX Effects new, and/or do you have the box? There should be a serial number sticker on the end of the box as well. Other than that, I’m not sure what else to tell you. Open a support ticket and see what CS recommends, I guess.

[projectsapiens]

Hi All, so to save some stress and trouble - YES, YOU CAN ALWAYS LOOK UP SERIAL NUMBER ON THE DISPLAY OF THE HX STOMP. What you need to do is:

-switch off your HX Stomp XL
-press and hold encoder 3 (the third knob the right under the display)
-switch on your HX Stomp XL
-you should see the serialnumber displayed

 

This is what I got from Line6 support and I just tested this solution as I was missing the serial number sticker as well. I assume this works the same for Effects and regular Stomp.

 

Happy product registration and shopping for discounted Native plugin! :)

[MusicLaw]

This method also works on the HX Stomp!

[Wentz37]

Hi, is there a way how to look up serial number also on Helix LT please?