LINE 6 HELIX

[clivea]

Is anyone using a Line 6 Helix Rack or Helix Floor Unit?
Clive

[roger bayliss]

Hi

I have the HX Stompj, think Dave Robinson had the Helix till recently but it let him down during a show.

[clivea]

Hi Roger,
Just noticed that my reply isn't inc. here - strange eh!
Anyway, thanks for your response mate.
DR got rid of his because, as you say, it let him down.
The reason I asked the question is because I recently purchased a Helix Rack and considering I'm a 75 year old technophobe, I'm finding it very difficult in creating a decent patch.
I was hoping that there would be other H Rack users on the forum who would be willing to share their patches, but it appears there's only yourself who's using anything like.
Would you know if your pod patches are compatible with my H Rack, Roger? If so, would you be willing to kindly share? I'm hoping so mate.
Take care and keep safe.
Clive

[roger bayliss]

I have not saved any of my patches, just created three or four patches on my unit. So no files created to share as such. Not sure if you can use HX Stomp patches on Helix either.

[clivea]

Thanks Roger,
Could you kindly help me out by letting me know the ingredients and settings of your main patch?
Cheers.
Clive

[dave robinson]

Hi Clive, I realise that you might not want to hear this, but in my experience and if I was in your position, I would sell the Helix whilst there is value in it and buy a Vox ToneLab SE. This is what I did as I had the ToneLab before the Helix and having got another, I have not looked back.
You said yourself that you are not familiar with how the Helix works, so that is just stressful as they are not easy to work with even when you do know.
On the ToneLab LE, you can get a good Vox AC30 or AC15 sound through your system, then make the echoes for the songs you play and store them, just like the EFTP units did.

I recommend the LE version because all the stuff is there for Shadows echoes, including a swell pedal. On some models you can't get Shads echoes as good.
I can give you the method of doing that. If you are playing through an amp, you do not need the Vox AC30/15 as you already have the amp preamp that you are plugged in to.
I know it's not what you wanted to hear, but I sold my Helix well over a year ago now and have forgotten everything that I knew and I can tell you it wasn't easy even for me, I had many stressful hours trying to programme it, letting me down on a major gig by freezing was the last straw.

[roger bayliss]

Hi

If you use an external delay put that before your HX after guitar. This will save you from programming the echos which does require some knowledge to get something like a decent result.

Then all you need is one of the amp sims (Vox ) followed by speaker emulation, EQ and compression . Try to keep the amp gain low under 2 but only need to set EQ. Try using treble about halfway and bass around 9 o clock. Less bass on some tunes more on others.

EQ I like to use is the Parametric , but there is a model of a 10 band graphic EQ available if you prefer that. Use the controls to roll off high end and low end . It varies but use ears to get right amount of cut on top end. You could try cutting lows to as much as 400hz and highs down to around 2- 3 khz. Then apply a parametric to the 250hz low mids and boost gain to around 6-7db . That will give a good sound for say Peace pipe. Add parametric at 2khz boosted up to 12db on some tunes like wonderful Land.

Add some mild compression last, I use the 3 band compressor .

Although you use the amp sim without much gain , you can use extra gain in the EQ or compressor if you want to thicken the sound and drive more.

Sorry I cannot help you more than that as it is one of those things you will have to get into and experiment with to get good results.

Try starting of with your external echo unit and create a patch with just amp and cab and get a good sound with those first. Then add EQ and compression afterwards to shape the sound.

Good luck .

[Oldmech]

Hi All, new to the forum and first post, having read the reviews and on line videos regarding the helix it seemed like the answer to my prayers mainly because of the tone sharing and ease of use. So last back end I purchased the LT version of the floor pedal, browsing through the enormous amount of presets revealed none that were usable for me. So looked through the online tones and downloaded some so called Shadows patches and installed them with ease. These again proved to be very plain sound wise so right lets mak my own Hank patch, 6 months down the line and still cannot get anything suitable, probably me being of a vintage where this unit is far to complex to get to grips with. So just to add to the above comments I would resist buying a Helix unless you are a whiz kid at programming such units.

[Garystrat]

Hi Keith,

I use Helix Native, which is the Software version of the full Helix Pedal and it has some great Vox tones and I wouldn’t be too hasty, the presets from this YouTube video will give you a really good starting point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvQnIXR5MwY

If you open up the SHOW MORE under the description there are links for the downloads.

I don’t use the Helix echo simulations, my system is DAW based and I have Soundtoys EchoBoy, but you might be able to get some ideas from the patches on the Line 6 website.

There are also a lot of tutorials from Jason Sadites that may help:

https://line6.com/support/page/kb/effec ... ites-r891/

Regards

Gary

[Oldmech]

Hi Gary, thanks for the reply and info I think the Helix in the right hands will be awesome, what I was hoping for with the unit was to download patches from the Line 6 market place and tone share pages, most of the patches seem to be aimed at distortion users which doesn't appeal to me. One strange thing is the unit is designed as a multi effects unit and amp modeller and then most people recommend using Ipulse Responses to capture the sound of a cabinet and speaker. Now after paying all that for the Helix it seems wrong to have to buy the IRS to get a good sound. I have bought some to try and they do improve the sound but there are so many options for altering the sound it becomes confusing. I suppose one problem is most of the younger generation of players don't play the Shads style of music so very few patches are made with the clean sound. Whilst it is interesting messing about with the Helix I spend more time trying to get a sound than actually playing the guitar. I've heard good reports about the Zoom G3X and the G5 loaded with Halls Echoes so the path continues in search of the elusive sound. Hank has a lot to answer for when he started playing Apache I wonder if he knows the amount of following his playing has generated. Regards Keith.