Line 6 Helix

Bod

TTBZ said:

I found IRs a much quicker and easier way to get where I wanted. I use York Audio and 9 times out of 10, Mix 01 sounds awesome so I just use that and don't get sucked into the wormhole. The stock cabs take too much faffing to get them to sound as good imo.

Which York packs do you use?

BlueStrat

sgosden said:

Then used stock cabs with Jason sadites methods. And got more compliments from fellow guitarists, and no complaints from provided FOH (as good as a compliment right?) . 

Compliments from fellow guitarists is a huge testament to your sound, we can be snooty bunch sniping at other players tone!
I'll have to take a look at Jason Sadites - thanks for the tip @sgosden ;

fretmeister

I've got some OH IRs but I don't tend to use them.

For Fendery tones I stick with the stock cabs.

For drive stuff I use Celestion's own IR of the G12-65 mixed with a Marco Fanton Mesa IR that came with one of his patches.

For bass I don't use cabs at all. I have a selection of EQ curves instead.

chrishill901

I've had a Helix for a while now and have a love/hate relationship with it. It's mostly hate...

I don't know what I'm doing wrong but I can't dial in a good tone 99% of the time. Im a hard rock player but can't seem to dial in a good heavy sound. Clean models are fine, but I rarely use them. All of the heavy amps seem flubby, none of them seem to have any attack or feel - except for the Placater Dirty that is. Now that is where the love comes in - I have dialed in the best tone I've ever had with that model and regularly get compliments at gigs. I even bought an FM3 in the hope of replacing the Helix (I liked most of the amp models on it) but I couldn't better my Placater Dirty tone. Every time I try a different amp model though, I just fail. I've tried stock cabs which I like but don't love and have followed a lot of Jason Sadites videos to help the 'feel' but I keep going back to my York Audio Bogna V30 IR which just sounds better to me. But even with this IR the rest of the heavy amps sound terrible to me. I have to be doing something wrong but I don't know what. Some of these real amps I've owned or used in the studio (5150, PRS Archon, JCM800) and the Helix models are nothing alike.

I'm running into FOH via XLR but also into a power amp and 2x12 on stage and I can't get a good tone out of either (except on the Placater model of course). I really want to sell the Helix as I never had this problem when I was using a Kemper but my options seem limited - I've thought about something like the BE-OD pedal into something like the DSM Humboldt Simplifier but then by the time I've bought the effects I need I may as well have kept the Helix so I'm sort of stuck using this unit I don't actually like because I have a tone I actually love... maybe I don't have a problem then? If there is some amazing trick I'm missing that makes the rest of the models actually playable then clue me in. I know it has to be me as so many people love this unit but the Kemper is night and day better from my experience. It has to be user error...

TTBZ

Bod said:

TTBZ said:

I found IRs a much quicker and easier way to get where I wanted. I use York Audio and 9 times out of 10, Mix 01 sounds awesome so I just use that and don't get sucked into the wormhole. The stock cabs take too much faffing to get them to sound as good imo.

Which York packs do you use?

Bogner 412, Mesa 212 and M65. The Bogner and M65 get the most use (not with Helix anymore, I sold mine) but the Mesa is great for a tight focused midrange and with the Helix amps I preferred it to the Bogner for most V30 uses. The M65 is really versatile. I still want to try the Mesa OS V2 and Friedman. Tbh I probably would have been happy with the Friedman pack to start with as it has mixes of the Greenbacks, V30s and a blend of the two which would cover all the tones I'm into! The Mesa 212 is ridiculously cheap so it's worth a try.

I sound like a bit of a shill for York but really just trying to share as they simplified the IR process a lot for me, I don't really like Ownhammer etc as there are way too many choices for me. With YA he doesn't use the same positions and signal chain for every cab, rather using what he thinks works best for that particular cab and speaker so you don't get a million choices with cryptic filenames. Mix 01 is usually a nice balanced 57/121 blend which I find a great starting point.

sgosden

@chrishill901 the 5150 and 800 models in the helix are pants in my opinion. 
The archon is ok. 
Placater is brilliant. 

Its likely to do with how their modelling procedure / software has improved since the early amp versions. 

Bod

sgosden said:

@chrishill901 the 5150 and 800 models in the helix are pants in my opinion. 
The archon is ok. 
Placater is brilliant. 

Its likely to do with how their modelling procedure / software has improved since the early amp versions. 

Agreed re: Placater.  It's my go-to.

NPP

not really happy with the stock cabs, I use any of the 3 or 4 reflection-free IRs Jay Mitchell posted on TGP - no risk of option paralysis and a far more natural sound - whatever that is in objective terms, subjectively I find these work in a way the stock cabs and many other IRs don't. I've never tried York though. 

Anyway, sorry to hear about your troubles @chrishill901 . I am not a heavy rock player but from what I've read on various websites (so it's all second hand knowledge) possible solutions to get to grips with the higher gain amps would be (1) lower the sag setting, (2) apply a massive low-cut in front of the amp and an equally massive low boost after it or (3) run the master very low and add a gain block after the amp to compensate for the volume loss. All three solutions seem to be based on the idea that the simulated power amp flubs out if you work it too hard.

Sorry if all that is too obvious - so difficult to judge without any context whether such comments are vaguely helpful or likely to waste the recipient's time.  

Seziertisch

chrishill901 said:

I've had a Helix for a while now and have a love/hate relationship with it. It's mostly hate...

I don't know what I'm doing wrong but I can't dial in a good tone 99% of the time. Im a hard rock player but can't seem to dial in a good heavy sound. Clean models are fine, but I rarely use them. All of the heavy amps seem flubby, none of them seem to have any attack or feel - except for the Placater Dirty that is. Now that is where the love comes in - I have dialed in the best tone I've ever had with that model and regularly get compliments at gigs. I even bought an FM3 in the hope of replacing the Helix (I liked most of the amp models on it) but I couldn't better my Placater Dirty tone. Every time I try a different amp model though, I just fail. I've tried stock cabs which I like but don't love and have followed a lot of Jason Sadites videos to help the 'feel' but I keep going back to my York Audio Bogna V30 IR which just sounds better to me. But even with this IR the rest of the heavy amps sound terrible to me. I have to be doing something wrong but I don't know what. Some of these real amps I've owned or used in the studio (5150, PRS Archon, JCM800) and the Helix models are nothing alike.

I'm running into FOH via XLR but also into a power amp and 2x12 on stage and I can't get a good tone out of either (except on the Placater model of course). I really want to sell the Helix as I never had this problem when I was using a Kemper but my options seem limited - I've thought about something like the BE-OD pedal into something like the DSM Humboldt Simplifier but then by the time I've bought the effects I need I may as well have kept the Helix so I'm sort of stuck using this unit I don't actually like because I have a tone I actually love... maybe I don't have a problem then? If there is some amazing trick I'm missing that makes the rest of the models actually playable then clue me in. I know it has to be me as so many people love this unit but the Kemper is night and day better from my experience. It has to be user error...

Try some other IRs and use the high and low pass filters on the IR loader. Depending on what you are after you could lose everything above 6 or 7khz and not miss it

mark_jwedge

chrishill901 said:

I've had a Helix for a while now and have a love/hate relationship with it. It's mostly hate...

I don't know what I'm doing wrong but I can't dial in a good tone 99% of the time. Im a hard rock player but can't seem to dial in a good heavy sound. Clean models are fine, but I rarely use them. All of the heavy amps seem flubby, none of them seem to have any attack or feel - except for the Placater Dirty that is. Now that is where the love comes in - I have dialed in the best tone I've ever had with that model and regularly get compliments at gigs. I even bought an FM3 in the hope of replacing the Helix (I liked most of the amp models on it) but I couldn't better my Placater Dirty tone. Every time I try a different amp model though, I just fail. I've tried stock cabs which I like but don't love and have followed a lot of Jason Sadites videos to help the 'feel' but I keep going back to my York Audio Bogna V30 IR which just sounds better to me. But even with this IR the rest of the heavy amps sound terrible to me. I have to be doing something wrong but I don't know what. Some of these real amps I've owned or used in the studio (5150, PRS Archon, JCM800) and the Helix models are nothing alike.

I'm running into FOH via XLR but also into a power amp and 2x12 on stage and I can't get a good tone out of either (except on the Placater model of course). I really want to sell the Helix as I never had this problem when I was using a Kemper but my options seem limited - I've thought about something like the BE-OD pedal into something like the DSM Humboldt Simplifier but then by the time I've bought the effects I need I may as well have kept the Helix so I'm sort of stuck using this unit I don't actually like because I have a tone I actually love... maybe I don't have a problem then? If there is some amazing trick I'm missing that makes the rest of the models actually playable then clue me in. I know it has to be me as so many people love this unit but the Kemper is night and day better from my experience. It has to be user error...

I have a HX stomp and a couple of things I have done which really helped me might be worth a go. The first two I borrowed from @JohnCordy. ;

Set the Input impedance to 1Mohm - I think that is what is all fractal stuff is as standard. 

Also between the amp and cab block put a shelf eq and set the low shelf to 150hz and boost the low gain by 7 to 12 db. This really gives the low end thump of a valve amp.

The last thing I did was for what ever cab or IR I’m using I googled the frequency range of the speakers in that cab/IR and I set the high and low cuts of the cab/IR to that frequency range. To my mind that means the cab/IR is reproducing the frequency range that speaker would produce in real life.

Give it a go and see what you think 

oooh and update to the latest firmware if you haven’t already so you get the benefit of the oversampling update. There is a lot of debate about the difference this actually makes but to my ears it was a definite improvement.

Bidley

My latest Helix breakthrough was turning input pad on - most of my guitars have high output pickups, now I can actually have clean amp sounds with little to no hair, and the high gain sounds are less flubby.

abw1989

I use my Helix with a power amp into a H&K 2x12 V30 cab on stage and with an IR to go the PA. I looked around to find an IR of my own cab so I can get as close as possible to my on stage sound out of the PA. 

I know that it isn't going to be exactly the same, IR has a mic involved, stage cab doesn't etc etc but they are a very good match for each other.

duotone

@chrishill901 ;
Rhett Shull’s video may give you some helpful tips, of how to get a more amp in the room tone.

https://youtu.be/J02heFTwEXY

normula1

I'm considering purchasing a Helix rack (probably 90% of the way to convincing myself) and have a couple of (probably) dumb questions.... Sorry for War and Peace.

1. Currently I have a powerful MIDI controller that I plan to keep and use to control the Helix. I'll continue to use it to control other devices so don't plan on using Helix as my "prime" for MIDI. Ignoring the nice scribble strips and colours around the switches am I likely to lose anything by not buying the controller? Not bothered about configuring Helix on the fly with my feet either
The cost of the Helix controller is not an issue, it's more from what I've read so far I don't think that it gets me anything I can't do with my existing controller.

2. My MIDI controller has 10 switches (plus bank up/down), I have the top 5 configured in a "global stomp" mode which means they have the same function on all banks and control a TC Nova Drive and G-Major 2 (they also control a Line6 POD at the same time, but let's not complicate it too much here ). They're really basic, overdrive, distortion, modulation, delay and "filter" (think tremolo etc.)
 The bottom row of 5 typically call a preset and change amplifer accordingly. A second press pulls up an alternative configuration, e.g. turn off a pedal compressor, turn on a drive pedal and, the delay on the g-major. 
Each "patch (trying not to use the preset word here too)" on the TC is configured to have everything (apart from reverb) off and the MIDI controller determines what gets turned on on the G-maj with a bunch of CC messages.
My main bank has
1: clean sound with a stomp box compressor, chorus and delay enabled,    
2: clean sound with a stomp box compressor by themselves
3: Cruncny Marshll by itself
4: Marshall with a the TC Drive switched on
5: is a "stomp" that adds a Neo ventilator2 rotary

On all the main 4 I can independently turn on / off the "global" stomps and the secondary setting does that as well.

So I think that this is fairly similar to what snapshot achieves... set up a preset and the snapshot varies which of the blocks available in the preset are active. So far so good.

What I can't seem to properly determine is whether within a snapshot I'd be able to dedicate footswitches to toggle individual blocks on and off in the same manner as I do today.

thanks in advance folks

Bidley

normula1 said:

What I can't seem to properly determine is whether within a snapshot I'd be able to dedicate footswitches to toggle individual blocks on and off in the same manner as I do today.

Yes - you can do that with a Helix. If you have a block assigned to a footswitch, it will still bypass/activate regardless of the snapshot. You can also set blocks to ignore snapshots, which is handy.

Of course I've never used a third party midi controller with mine, but I don't see why it can't be done.

normula1

Brill, thanks. The manual says you can have a CC message linked to a "footswitch", so hopefully good to go.

Jota

3.15 is close!

I think it will be availble next week.

smudge_lad

Bidley said:

normula1 said:

What I can't seem to properly determine is whether within a snapshot I'd be able to dedicate footswitches to toggle individual blocks on and off in the same manner as I do today.

Yes - you can do that with a Helix. If you have a block assigned to a footswitch, it will still bypass/activate regardless of the snapshot. You can also set blocks to ignore snapshots, which is handy.

Of course I've never used a third party midi controller with mine, but I don't see why it can't be done.

I can do this with my MC6 and Stomp.

I have my 3 x Stomp footswitches set for Snapshots, then on my MC6 I have switches for the individual blocks in the snapshots, so reverb on/off, delay on/off etc.

The only downside (unless I’ve just not got it configured properly) is that while you’re still in that preset, the Stomp remembers the changes you’ve made. So if you turn off reverb in snapshot 2 and then you went back your snapshot one, the reverb is still off in snapshot 2. This will stay this way until you either turn it back on, or move away from the preset and back into it.

I’ve sometimes been caught out in a live situation with this, when changing stuff on the fly

AsterixTG

Jota said:

3.15 is close!

I think it will be availble next week.

This would be my first update while owning the Helix - what's the deal, back up everything (how's that done, copy all the presets you want to keep?, do the update, re-load presets?

Bod

Jota said:

3.15 is close!

I think it will be availble next week.

Really!?  Exciting!  Any leaks about what it includes?