5 days in with Stadium XL after 10 years with OG Floor

[PiFromBRC]

First: Where is a damn PDF on the OM? Seriously. Too big? Do it in chapters. Hullo? Any of the old salts still here?

Set up took a couple of days. Part of it was the no QR-code glitch, part of it was networking tomf**kery, and part was because I have a life. But it's done.

There is a sizeable gap from just onboarding the old setlists, hitting that trusty 11 Blu Eqyp preset, and expecting magic to occur, and fishing through 100+ IRs named way to similarly to one another and having it hit right. That was expected and, honestly, I have too many IRs. But this one IRs better. They sound more organic. 

Two days back I finally got into ground-up tone building. I have a handful of Lifeson builds I've done over the years and...honestly...they sound not-good now. My youngest has finally grokked Rush and, predictably, landed at Moving Pictures, so I decided to build a new Limelight preset. Here's where it gets good:

So much less BS in this build. I got away with just a handful of blocks. OD>Amp>2 IRs>Pitch>Chorus>Delay>Reverb. On one path to the mixer and split into two FRFRs (mono). The biggest headache is that I keep expecting both the app and the box to act like the OG floor, but that's on me. The end tone is one I'm happy with and once I finish tweaking it I hope to be satisfied with it. That's huge.

I'm putting the Floor back into it's ship box and throwing it up for sale. This is a keeper.

[bbehrens]

Glad you are happy with the new Unit. The O.G. Helix PDF Manual is still out there. The new one does not exist as a PDF but is entirely online. The entire eco-system of the Stadium is somewhat different than the O.G. Helix. I have gotten exact matches of the O.G. presets to come in perfectly into the Stadium and they sound great. But other times, they sound really bad. I have developed a whole new methodology for building presets in the Stadium. So far, It has been hit or miss on whether they sound better than they would on the O.G. Helix. But there is definitely more flexibility on the new Stadium. But those Agoura Amp models can chew up your DSP so you think that you are working on the old Helix. I have found many blocks seem to come through the mix more than the old Helix and I find myself dialing them back. I also have had some interaction between blocks work a little differently. An example is that I had a O.G Helix preset with an Autoswell block and a Compressor as I would get the compressor the flatten out and give the Autoswell block something to work with and it worked great on the O.G. Helix. But on the Stadium, the Compressor and Autoswell appear to fight each other and I found that I could put the Autoswell between the Amp and Cab and that worked better. Wierd. I am a modeler guy but some of the things that I have done to get the sound that is in my head are probably not what I would do with a real pedal board. I just like the idea of swapping out pedals and trying things out WAY easier than dealing with physical pedals.

 

Experiment some, and if you don't like what you are getting - then try a different approach. Like the Compressor and Autoswell - I am not one for convention and what I think would make sense. if it works for you then share it on CustomTone. I think that presets should be free for all. The stuff I have paid for is good. But I can usually do better for free - sometimes, if it is worth the time and effort.

[JimGordon]

I had something like 270+ presets I ported over from my Helix.  One of the more notable issues from that was that sometimes the switches got reversed for the reverbs where i had the mix level higher when the switch was on, originally; in the Stadium, some of the patches reversed the switches.

 

I've found Agoura amps are not always better for certain presets I had already made with the HX versions.  My early Van Halen one that I made on the OG sounded noticeably worse with the Agoura Marshall Plexi, in terms of getting "that" sound; the high end sizzle was gone, so I stuck with the HX Plexi.  My mid-90s Helloween patch made with the Ecstasy red channel also didn't quite give me the same sizzle when I replaced the XTC with the Agoura version.  In other cases, the Agoura replacements were definitely more accurate.  I think maybe they really focused on the midrange w/ Agoura, and maybe neglected the high end a bit?

 

They really need to fix up that initial startup process- there'll be people who will return the Stadium, thinking it's broken, when they are unable to log into Line6 to update it, due to the clock issue.  My first unit actually got bricked when I thought I had updated it, tried dragging some proxy clones into it, and then realized the update had only downloaded, and not been installed.  After updating, the unit got stuck during the resets, and trying to do the manufacturer restore did not work at all.  I think the updating process may need a change in the prompts, maybe make it install automatically once it is downloaded.

 

I view the Stadium as an expensive investment in the future potential of the unit, but at this moment, it already is paying off, with all the proxy clones, and all the stuff I already liked about the Helix being there.  And of course, that sexy, sexy touch screen.