Got the Helix and PC+, can you install more sound packs?

[GrampaBob]

Hi, I know you can download user created presets from the community.  Is there any good starter packs you can get that really makes this setup glow right out of the gates?  I keep seeing the term IR, is that the same thing?

[cruisinon2]

1 hour ago, GrampaBob said:

Hi, I know you can download user created presets from the community.  Is there any good starter packs you can get that really makes this setup glow right out of the gates?  I keep seeing the term IR, is that the same thing?

 

Others will disagree... and will probably say as much, but simply put the answer is no.

 

 

 

 

 

Start here, learn how to dial in the sounds you're looking for, and don't waste your time with someone else's patches. No two rigs, players, instruments, and listening environments are the same... as a result, there's little to no tonal continuity when the only common denominator is the Helix patch.

[rd2rk]

What cruisinon2 said.

I have the Fremen big pack - lots of presets, some good ones, nothing that really rocked my world, but I learned a lot that helped me with finding the sounds I like.

That's the real value of Other People's Presets, and if you start with Jason Sadites' Customtone presets and his videos, you'll learn what you need to know to DIY!

[SaschaFranck]

Fwiw, unlike Mr. Sadites I don't exactly recommend to start with a compressor as a sort of standard at the end of your signal chain. Yes, it may help to polish your sound, but it may as well cut off some of the delicate dynamics of an amp that you would otherwise like. Guitar amps by themselves already add a lot of compression (defenitely true for anything overdriven), so there's often not too much of a point in adding some more - at least not straight "out of the box". Especially when playing live, I often want to maintain as much dynamics as I possibly could instead of squashing them yet some more.

This is not meant to say "never do it that way" - but I'd simply not start with it. It's nothing you'd do with your real amps, either. It's also not how things are dealt with in studio recording situations. When dialing in your sound, there's usually *zero* tweaks coming from the engineer operating the console. He/she simply won't slap a master compressor on your sound (unless you explicitely ask for it).

 

As you're just starting out, there's these things I highly recommend (I would probably do all this with the Powercab set to flat mode):

 

- Insert a looper as the very first thing in your signal chain. This allows you to record something into it and do all tweakings while someone else (the looper) is playing. If anything, this is by far the biggest time saviour in my world when creating guitar sounds (I was using external loopers just for that purpose since decades already, can't be beaten, really). It's an entirely different thing from playing something, have a note/chord ring out, adjust things, play again, adjust things - etc. Especially as we're not dealing with a nice amount of physical knobs (but just 6 you need to switch to or the editor), this will save you time. And I'm not talking about saving you some seconds but literally *hours*. Record a riff, adjust, stop the looper, record another riff, to see whether that would work with the same sound, stop the looper, record some single notes, etc.

 

-- Insert just an Amp+Cab block and go through *all* the models while the looper is playing. Sometimes the default settings programmed by Line 6 aren't ideal, so I strongly suggest to spend a little time on each amp to at least adjust the drive(s), master and sag parameters, these are the most crucial to adjust the drive amount (obviously) and the amps dynamic behaviour. In addition, you may want to turn down hum and ripple (they're basically nonsense IMO, at least when it comes to selecting sounds, plus they add noise even in case you're not playing, which is annoying - I have no idea why they're turned up that much by default, if it was like that on a real amp, you'd possibly think about having it repaired).

 

- Once you found an amp that's in your tonal ballpark, play through it. Then go to your global settings and check out the leftmost entry under "Ins/Outs", it's called "Guitar In Pad". It's off by default. Switching it on will globally attenuate your input level. I think the main reason for this to exist is to compensate for guitars with pretty high output, but many people (myself included) think of it to work pretty well on lower output guitars, too. My main axes really don't throw out much level and I keep the Input Pad on all the time. There's still tons of gain if I need it. In fact, I think most amps are a bit too much on the gainier side of things, so I absolutely welcome the additional headroom for clean and slightly sizzling sounds. YMMV, but this might be an important decision to make.

 

- Back to the "ballpark" amp, have the looper playing a bit more and check out all the cabs without changing the amp - or at least the similar cabs. So, in case the Amp+Cab block comes up with a 4x12, make sure to check at least all the 4x12s. This makes a *huge* difference. Like *really huge*. Depending on the amp model, using a different cab might even sound like using an entirely different amp. Gets even more drastic once you change the base cab model (such as from 4x12 to 1x12).

 

- Once you found the cab you like best, you might want to fool around with the mics and their positioning (IMO close is fine for a start, regardless of the mic). For mic selections, I find it to be particularly useful to actually play around and enter pedal edit mode, then select "Mic" and use the "Value +/-" switches to go through the mic models.

 

Note: Pedal edit mode in itself is extremely useful for plenty of fine tunings, as it allows you to play around while adjusting parameters simultaneously - and as great as using a looper is, patches always feel a bit (or even more than a bit) different once you play them yourself. Personally, I'm always using the looper to get me as close as possible and then do fine tunings via pedal edit while playing around (ideally with some backings).

 

In my case, doing it like that allows me to come up with very useful patches in a very short amount of time. As usual, YMMV.

Of course, pretty much everything applies to further edits (such as adding other blocks), too.

 

 

[brue58ski]

The two go to's seem to be Freman and Delaune. I have both. They are nice BUT, as has been stated before, the bottom line is they won't help you create patches. In fact many of the patches from those two have IR's created for the patches and a few that are exclusive to the patches they create. For example Delaune has a Boston patch that has an IR that is made just for that patch. Not really useful anywhere else (although I guess I haven't tried). Mr. Sadites is a great place to start but, as implied in the last post, ain't the final word on it. In fact Sascha Frank has some great tips. The looper tip is one I use and is great for dialing in tones.

[DunedinDragon]

11 hours ago, GrampaBob said:

Hi, I know you can download user created presets from the community.  Is there any good starter packs you can get that really makes this setup glow right out of the gates?  I keep seeing the term IR, is that the same thing?

 

To get back to your original question, the problem you will always have with downloadable presets or packs that others create is there are things such as what kind of guitar you're using, what kind of pickups you have, the type of strings you have on it and the output device you're using that can have a significant impact on the sound of any given patch.  As mentioned you can probably learn a lot by dissecting a downloaded patch, and even modifying it, but patches are always so unique to what each person thinks "sounds good" you may be a lot better off learning to build your own.

As far as IRs, that refers to Impulse Response files that are simply an alternative to the stock cabinets in the Helix.  These are created by taking a sonic "picture" of the way a given cabinet, speakers, mics, and mic placements reproduce any sound sent to them therefore simulating a given cabinet setup.  The disadvantage to IR's compared to stock cabinets is you can't change the setup on an IR.  If you want a different mic setup you select a different IR as compared to a Helix stock cabinet where you can change the parameters on the fly.  The advantage to IRs is they're much easier to use and audition within a patch than the stock cabinets as you can simply scroll through the one's you have loaded on the Helix to see how they affect the sound.  Otherwise you can get whatever sound you want out of either.  I personally prefer IRs simply because I build a LOT of preset, so it's a real time saver for me.  However, you can get totally lost in all the possible variations of IRs trying to find what variations you tend to like as a typical IR pack if you don't know what mic setups are most likely to work best for you as most packs have hundreds of different variations.

 

[SaschaFranck]

Two more things:

 

- DunedinDragon already mentioned the possible option paralysis you might be running into with IRs. I would really recommend to stick with the default cabs as long as it takes for you to get the hang of the Helix. IR management is far from ideal, too, so that might add to the confusion.

 

- Before buying preset packs, do yourself a favour and try to build some patches yourself. Even if they might not turn out to sound like the greatest things on earth, you will learn how to deal with the Helix' "architecture" - which will be really important once you need to adjust patches to suit your taste. Even the best presets usually don't work straight out of the box for most people, so being familiar with the various ways to achieve this or that inside the Helix will really help you to adjust things.

[GrampaBob]

Wow love the input from all, looks like I got some homework to do.  Those tips was what I was looking for.  Thanks!

[kylotan]

20 hours ago, SaschaFranck said:

I would really recommend to stick with the default cabs as long as it takes for you to get the hang of the Helix. IR management is far from ideal, too, so that might add to the confusion.

 

Totally agreed on this. IRs morph a sound so much that you risk not really comparing the Helix features but the different characteristics of the impulse response.

 

I would pick a pretty 'standard' cab and mic combination - e.g. 4x12 Greenback25, 57 Dynamic, Mic distance to minimum is pretty standard for hard rock and metal - and then tinker with different amps feeding into that.