3rd party presets

[shawnt113]

So I was looking through some Helix related stuff, til now I’ve not considered Helix a viable option for quality recording, but lately I’ve been pondering selling my Axe FX and going the vst route. I’ve had Helix + Native for a couple of years now, and keep seeing people that are selling “Helix Preset Packs” for example the ML Plexi pack. Other than the IR, what can they really offer that makes the price worth it? With the Axe FX is can get it because Tone Matching and advanced parameters but the Helix has neither. 

[qwerty42]

All they are is Helix amp blocks with the settings adjusted to make them match the sound and feel of some piece of real-life hardware. The ML stuff, for example, just takes an existing Helix amp model and tweaks it to make it sound like his real amp heads. These presets also usually include custom IRs which contribute hugely to the overall sound. Is it worth it? To me, no, but I know how to edit my own patches deeply to get what I want. However, for somebody who doesn't have the time, knowledge, or desire to do so, yeah, maybe they're worth it. They're pretty limited in utility because if you move the knobs from their settings, you've already strayed from whatever specific tone it was dialed to be.

 

FWIW, some of these 3rd party presets like Glenn Delaune's include tonematching IRs, but again, these are pretty simple to make yourself if you have a good matching eq like Izotope Ozone and Voxengo Deconvolver to create the IR. To really make these sound good, they need to be matched to your specific guitar, so again on the question of whether it's worth it...? Only if you don't want to do it yourself. Once you've purchased a few of these custom preset packs, you've spent enough to buy the tools to make the tonematches yourself. You can make stereo tonematches with a left and right channel IR with these tools which sound every bit as good as any other modeler I've heard that has built-in tonematch capability.

[shawnt113]

Thank you for the reply. I think I agree wholeheartedly with you. I’ve purchased a couple of individual presets from Worship Tutorials but mostly for the fx and they were only like 2.99 a piece.

 

Ive had my Helix for a couple of years now and I still struggle with it, for me it’s not the tone as much as the distortion and feel. My Axe FX feels like you’re playing the real thing and the way the amp breaks up and the overall distortion/gain structure is like the real amp, I feel that is missing in the Helix, along with realistic sustain, and clarity and note separation (same thing I know) of the real amps. If there was an update that addressed that and improved it I’d be Helix all the way!

[Nylander88]

2 hours ago, shawnt113 said:

I’ve purchased a couple of individual presets from Worship Tutorials

I was about to post a link to worship tutorials then I read your second post lol, I wish that they would expand a bit with making presets and maybe a separate site for other genres.

[shawnt113]

1 hour ago, Nylander88 said:

I was about to post a link to worship tutorials then I read your second post lol, I wish that they would expand a bit with making presets and maybe a separate site for other genres.

Their presets have been invaluable for playing with the worship team at church. I tweak them, but they save me so much time. I could just load them in and go on a Sunday morning with no tweaks if I wanted. A lot of worships guys have been going through this boutique snob thing for a while but, I’ve been seeing more and more looking into or going with platforms like the Helix and for good reason. I can carry my LT in a bag On my back, guitar in hand, in ears in my pocket... done!

[Nylander88]

13 minutes ago, shawnt113 said:

Their presets have been invaluable for playing with the worship team at church.

Cool! not the first worship guitarist I've come across on these forms. Keep on Worshiping God in all things!

[shawnt113]

Just now, Nylander88 said:

Cool! not the first worship guitarist I've come across on these forms. Keep on Worshiping God in all things!

I try to! Mostly a metal head, So I don’t play like a normal worship guitarist. I don’t noodle near as much, I try to keep the music sounding full but give it room to breathe when it needs to.

[Nylander88]

7 minutes ago, shawnt113 said:

I try to! Mostly a metal head, So I don’t play like a normal worship guitarist. I don’t noodle near as much, I try to keep the music sounding full but give it room to breathe when it needs to.

That's ok! I like bands like Thousand Foot Krutch and Skillet but I mostly like Pop/Punk (Not metal but but Rockin anyway) I don't play on a worship team yet but maybe someday.

[SaschaFranck]

On 5/16/2020 at 10:36 AM, qwerty42 said:

FWIW, some of these 3rd party presets like Glenn Delaune's include tonematching IRs, but again, these are pretty simple to make yourself if you have a good matching eq like Izotope Ozone and Voxengo Deconvolver to create the IR.

 

You don't even need to deal with deconvolving.

- Use whatever match EQ and what not in your signal chain.

- Remove everything from the mixer channel you don't want to be included in your IR. For instance, if you run Helix Native, bypass that (you can't capture most things it does with an IR anyway as IRs don't support non-linear processes).

- Slap a dirac IR onto the track and bounce it. A dirac IR is a simple full range spike. Here's a bunch of them in all common formats:http://www.saschafranck.de/tmp/diracs.zip

- For additional safety, load the bounced file into any wave editor (or reimport into your sequencer) and trim it the way other typical IRs are trimmed (just have a look at some and you'll get the idea).

 

Fwiw, this method also works tremendously well for mixing IRs.

[qwerty42]

8 hours ago, SaschaFranck said:

 

You don't even need to deal with deconvolving.

- Use whatever match EQ and what not in your signal chain.

- Remove everything from the mixer channel you don't want to be included in your IR. For instance, if you run Helix Native, bypass that (you can't capture most things it does with an IR anyway as IRs don't support non-linear processes).

- Slap a dirac IR onto the track and bounce it. A dirac IR is a simple full range spike. Here's a bunch of them in all common formats:http://www.saschafranck.de/tmp/diracs.zip

- For additional safety, load the bounced file into any wave editor (or reimport into your sequencer) and trim it the way other typical IRs are trimmed (just have a look at some and you'll get the idea).

 

Fwiw, this method also works tremendously well for mixing IRs.

Thanks, and yep, I have tried that approach as well. It did give me slightly different results but I didn’t spend much time with it; I’m sure it was just a flaw in my method. Thanks for sharing those files, I’d like to give this approach another try, although the convenience of generating MPT IRs from Voxengo is handy too.

[cruisinon2]

On 5/16/2020 at 12:45 AM, shawnt113 said:

what can they really offer that makes the price worth it?

 

Nothing... other than the having somebody else do the grunt work for you.