Akai New Headrush: looks like a Helix! (Best thread version)

mixolyd

Hopefully the incompetent messaging is down to it being a large parent company with multiple corporate divisions fighting over responsibility for finance, marketing, PR etc and somewhere there is someone who LOVES great guitar tone AND has been given sufficient resources to get the job done.

I've tried playing through a DAW and it's going to take something of the Helix level as a minimum to get me doing it regularly: PC's are just so inimical to rock and roll! 

Cabicular

I have a problem with touch screens which surely some of you must share
they are intermittent with my left hand (something to do with callouses maybe?) as a result I really don't want a pedal where the main interface is a touch screen
its already like that for my live mixing desks and it's not great tbh..

guitarfishbay

Yep fretting hand callouses mess with touchscreens for me too 

digitalscream

guitarfishbay said:

Yep fretting hand callouses mess with touchscreens for me too 

But...generally speaking, the fretting hand is your off-hand, so you're more likely to use the touch screen with your other, dominant hand.

Cabicular

digitalscream said:

guitarfishbay said:

Yep fretting hand callouses mess with touchscreens for me too 

But...generally speaking, the fretting hand is your off-hand, so you're more likely to use the touch screen with your other, dominant hand.

That's not my experience
I tend to gravitate towards my left hand for that
my right hand is usually holding a pick or stopping the guitar moving forward
certainly when I'm using the iPad for the line6 or behringer desks I seem to always want to use my calloused left stumps ..

General question to all
when you are adjusting pedals on the floor do you use your left or right hand?

digitalscream

Cabicular said:

digitalscream said:

guitarfishbay said:

Yep fretting hand callouses mess with touchscreens for me too 

But...generally speaking, the fretting hand is your off-hand, so you're more likely to use the touch screen with your other, dominant hand.

That's not my experience
I tend to gravitate towards my left hand for that
my right hand is usually holding a pick or stopping the guitar moving forward
certainly when I'm using the iPad for the line6 or behringer desks I seem to always want to use my calloused left stumps ..

General question to all
when you are adjusting pedals on the floor do you use your left or right hand?

Fair enough; I tend to hit and hold notes/chords with my fretting (left) hand and adjust pedal/amp settings with my right.

Cabicular

To be fair I don't think I would be doing much touchscreen stuff in flight... and there are knob controls up the side for adjustment
Im already a bit uncomfortable having the Helix at my feet in radge pubs
having a touchscreen does seem worse to me
although I do have previous of nudging the Helix joystick with my foot accidentally with disastrous results

digitalscream

Cabicular said:

To be fair I don't think I would be doing much touchscreen stuff in flight... and there are knob controls up the side for adjustment
Im already a bit uncomfortable having the Helix at my feet in radge pubs
having a touchscreen does seem worse to me
although I do have previous of nudging the Helix joystick with my foot accidentally with disastrous results

The Headrush does apparently have some capacity for at-your-feet editing, although details on that are fairly slim (along with just about everything else at the moment).

My worry is support now. Given the dearth of actual information that people want, their promises of "constantly updated" firmware are ringing a bit hollow.

Digital_Igloo

digitalscream said:

Sporky said:

digitalscream said:

Yeah, the routing's based on templates rather than "freehand" routing like the Helix. I'd imagine that could be slightly annoying, although seeing the interface I think it might actually be possible to get four amps running simultaneously (albeit only with two actual signal paths).

That'd probably work for an awful lot of people, but if they'd come out at the same time I think I'd still have gone Helix for that routing.

Yeah, that's fair. Obviously, the ideal would be a Helix with a touchscreen interface

We've talked about this since Helix was announced: We originally *did* have a touchscreen. People hated it—for better or worse—so we completely redesigned the UI around cap-sense switches, so the guitarist stays in a pedalboard mindset instead of a signal flow/DAW mindset.

Teetonetal

Digital_Igloo said:

digitalscream said:

Sporky said:

digitalscream said:

Yeah, the routing's based on templates rather than "freehand" routing like the Helix. I'd imagine that could be slightly annoying, although seeing the interface I think it might actually be possible to get four amps running simultaneously (albeit only with two actual signal paths).

That'd probably work for an awful lot of people, but if they'd come out at the same time I think I'd still have gone Helix for that routing.

Yeah, that's fair. Obviously, the ideal would be a Helix with a touchscreen interface

We've talked about this since Helix was announced: We originally *did* have a touchscreen. People hated it—for better or worse—so we completely redesigned the UI around cap-sense switches, so the guitarist stays in a pedalboard mindset instead of a signal flow/DAW mindset.

The helix interface is genius. I for one am not a lover of touch screens so don't get the clamour. Editing on the helix is about as easy as it gets.

Good call from L6 in my opinion.

Cabicular

Digital_Igloo said:

digitalscream said:

Sporky said:

digitalscream said:

Yeah, the routing's based on templates rather than "freehand" routing like the Helix. I'd imagine that could be slightly annoying, although seeing the interface I think it might actually be possible to get four amps running simultaneously (albeit only with two actual signal paths).

That'd probably work for an awful lot of people, but if they'd come out at the same time I think I'd still have gone Helix for that routing.

Yeah, that's fair. Obviously, the ideal would be a Helix with a touchscreen interface

We've talked about this since Helix was announced: We originally *did* have a touchscreen. People hated it—for better or worse—so we completely redesigned the UI around cap-sense switches, so the guitarist stays in a pedalboard mindset instead of a signal flow/DAW mindset.

Correct decision IMO

mr-mac

Can't say I'd ever want to use that on a pug gig... One misplaced foot from a drunken twat and a very expensive night.... I much rather stay with GSP and strong metal control 2 which I reckon you could jump up and down on and not worry it... If they did a rack version with a control board I'd be more interested. And maybe a remote software so any tablet can replicate the touchscreen functionality

TimmyO

The NAMM video I saw the demo guy completely ducked the question on what they have changed/added re the old Eleven technology.

So is it an Eleven rack with touchscreen? 

digitalscream

Gee, that went well...dude went on the same schpiel that he did on all the other videos out there, and as soon as it departs...oh dear.

mixolyd

digitalscream said:

Gee, that went well...dude went on the same schpiel that he did on all the other videos out there, and as soon as it departs...oh dear.

Awkward.    

Edit: at least we got to hear some actual guitar tones and yeah, they sound thoroughly mediocre.  The first Helix vids were the same so we're just gonna have to wait for someone to load some decent IR's in there.

digitalscream

mixolyd said:

digitalscream said:

Gee, that went well...dude went on the same schpiel that he did on all the other videos out there, and as soon as it departs...oh dear.

Awkward.  

Edit: at least we got to hear some actual guitar tones and yeah, they sound thouroughly mediocre.  The first Helix vids were the same so we're just gonna have to wait for someone to load some decent IR's in there.

That's what I don't understand - the original 11R sounded *much* better than that when set up right. Either those sounds were set up by a total incompetent, or they've actually gone backwards in terms of modelling quality.

mixolyd

@digitalscream ;;

I don't think we need to doubt the incompetence of the guy: watching him floundering at the controls of the thing reminded me of being the nominated IT Support for my pension-age mother and her long suffering iPad Mini!

Of course it is possible that they could have gone backwards.  If reports that the original team had zero involvement in the project are true, then there can be mistakes anywhere in the hardware signal path especially since 11R had some special sauce in that area.

EricTheWeary

Got The Andertons video on, this really isn't selling it to me - not that I was likely to buy one but that's a direct feed from a £900 modeller that doesn't sound very good at times and the chap on the stand seems to be struggling a bit. I think it's evidence for an argument that says too many options are a bad thing if you don't really understand what you are doing, wether it's reflective of the Headrush if used properly I'm not really sure. 

digitalscream

EricTheWeary said:

Got The Andertons video on, this really isn't selling it to me - not that I was likely to buy one but that's a direct feed from a £900 modeller that doesn't sound very good at times and the chap on the stand seems to be struggling a bit. I think it's evidence for an argument that says too many options are a bad thing if you don't really understand what you are doing, wether it's reflective of the Headrush if used properly I'm not really sure. 

Indeed. One problem is that I've made a POD X3 sound better than that, whereas a POD X3 never sounded as good as the Eleven Rack.

The main problems I see are threefold:

1 - They're touting the interface as the main selling point, but the guy demonstrating it doesn't seem to find it particularly easy. This could well be down to him as a demonstrator.

2 - They made a big thing about it being the Eleven modelling revamped, but they're not telling us which bits they've fixed or why it's better than the Eleven Rack; that's all left to supposition and guesswork.

3 - They've also spectacularly managed to fail in the PR department...as a new company, answering questions from very interested punters should be the first priority. Thus far, they've failed to answer every meaningful question put to them on every social media account they have. That doesn't bode well for the hope of better support than the original unit had.

I've gone from being a dead-cert on buying one to not being even slightly interested in the space of a couple of weeks. The one thing that I've gained is a very real sense of disappointment.

John_A

Sure it's just early days, and the demonstrator hasn't had any time with it, bet it's going to sound great but with the Helix going from strength to strength with all the updates they have some catching up to do