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Incoming Powercabs and Advice


Wondo100
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Some Background:

 

I own a Helix Floor and I had received a set of Powercab 112+ a few months back. I was trying to run them in stereo. Something was not working quite right in that set up...daisy chaining the two cabs through the L6 digital signal path. I ended up sending them back because I was so busy working from home in the pandemic that I was not able to spend the necessary time to troubleshoot all of it within the return policy time. 

 

Since that time, I had been working with my two H&K Grandmeisters and their respective 2x12 V30 cabs with the 7CM. I was able to get the 7CM to work quite nicely. I have a guitar with Humbuckers and Piezo and was actually able to get a third signal chain on the Helix to be fed through the XLR outs into a Fishman Loudbox for the Piezo. However, as you can imagine dialing in the tone on such an elaborate set up was challenging let alone all of connections running in and out of all of the equipment. But suffice it to say, the Helix performs beautifully in managing all of those connectivity requirements. 

 

I found myself bypassing the 7CM and just working with the Helix through my Yamaha HS7 Studio Monitors. It was so much easier to sit at my computer with the Helix on the floor with HX Edit and some nice third party IRs. I was getting some really good tones and not having to do all of that extra routing and programming of the 7CM knowing full well that in a live situation I would never be running 7CM and driving the sound guys crazy. In a small gig, I would just bring a 2x12 and a Grandmeister anyway. In that scenario, I am thinking of investing in a BOSS MS3 to make life simple. Or if the Powercabs prove to work good in a live situation, I could just bring one or two of them for stage monitoring and send the XLR outs to the house. 

 

Where I am now:

 

So, I just ordered another set of Powercab 112+ to run my in-studio stereo set up. After spending much more time with the Helix and not using the Grandmeisters, I have been convinced that I can get pretty damn close to the tones I am after right in the Helix with some IRs. So, I figured getting back into using the PC+ would be the way to go. I know I can run those in FRFR with some of my favorite IRs loaded in to the Helix and then use some IRs into the Powercabs and instantly switch between the PC speaker tones and FRFR and my set up will actually be much simpler. Achieving stereo sounds will be way less complicated than configuring all of that through the 7CM. 

 

The Advice I need: 

 

I want to make sure that I set everything up right from the start and could use some help. Here is what I plan to do. 

 

  • Set up both PCs
  • Make sure the version of PC Edit that I have is current. Put that aside for now
  • Hook one cab up to computer, via USB... update any firmware that it needs. Do the same for the other.
  • Power down both cabs. 
  • Hook the First cab up to Helix with AES cable to L6 Link
  • Take L6 Link out of first cab and into L6 Link of second cab
  • Power up Helix 
  • Power up First PC
  • Power up Second PC
  • Open up HX EDIT and make sure I can see the option of both cabs in a preset. 
  • Start using Helix with PCs
  • Put IRs on Powercabs - here is where I might need help..... I am assuming that I will need to do one cab at a time because if I have both connected to the computer via USB, things might get crossed and the PC Edit will not know which one it is editing. In this case, I would load IRs on to one cab through PC Edit. Then do the other cab in the same way. Then I suspect everything should run smooth??

 

Some other questions I have is how to get good stereo signals with the PCs. I know I can run just a simple one-signal path and use stereo effects at the end. Or I could run two paths and pan hard left and right using mono effects at the end. I could also do one side dry, the other side wet and use some doubling effects, etc. Not sure what is best for a nice wide stereo effect and also not sure what is the best way to get something like a ping pong delay to work in stereo with the ping pong bouncing from cab to cab. 

 

Thanks for taking the time to look at this. 

 

 

 

 

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