Is it time for me to break down and get a helix?

[zionstrat]

Hey guys.. I got rid of my pedal board 4 or 5 years ago because I just love the sound of my tubes by themselves and I've got decent effects in my modeling environments..

However my spawn street rod does not have reverb and for a long time I've been looking at the stryman big and blue sky to get basic reverbs with tons of creative spatial tones to boot.

If the striman had modulation, I would have already broken down and bought it.. I do use chorus and delay at times... However, I absolutely do not want to carry more than a single pedal so I haven't done anything.

I was listening to the Helix firmware upgrades and it sounds like they now have a big spatial reverb, good spring reverb and I liked the tape saturated delay as well. I wouldn't say it's as good as the striman but it might be good enough.

Honestly the helix Flangers and chorus never knocked me out... Of course I was comparing them to the stryman Mobius.

As far as styles, I play and teach pretty much everything other than metal so that doesn't narrow the field down much.

A part of me is saying just keep waiting and the other part of me is saying order the helix from guitar center so I can send it back if I don't like it :-)

Open to any and all thoughts!
M

[Mincer]

I like the Helix effects..in fact I use the HX Effects. But for amp modeling, I like the Fractal a bit better. It especially excels at the clean and semi-clean sounds.

[zionstrat]

Thanks Dave.. that's probably enough to get me to check them out!

But don't get me started on the other path... I know I've got to downsize at some point and I've got way too many tube amps I'll give you a ring when I finally decide to cross that bridge :-)

[PFDarkside]

An HX Effects would be pretty cool with your setup.

[Synapsys]

The recent 3.10 update for the Helix got a massive sound improvement due to oversampling.

Bet with time exploring it a Fractal will get stellar results, but the Helix is easier to work with.

If you can, try both before you buy, and see which fits you best.

[Aceman]

So I'm going to go low-brow here, because its what I do. Honestly, I got a Zoom G3N for doing exactly what you speak of. I want a number of Delays, some Chorus options and the occasional Reverb. Just need echo, swirl and verb in my Mesa loop. I suppose you could spend a crap ton of money for all that - but is it really necessary? My Zoom sounds better than any rack of doom up through the 90's could ever be, and let's face it - there are not a bunch of 2k guitar tones I'd want to emulate.

The bar for entry into digital multi is stupid high, yet we keep thinking it is never high enough.

Dave's Helix FX is a great suggestion for you IMO.

[allstarrme]

If you’re happy with you amp you can get an hx fx used for 400ish and get all the great fx from the helix. They are adding things all the time.

If you’re gonna go full helix MF has some blemish LT’s going for $700. That leaves enough to get a FRFR speaker and not need to carry an amp around.

Either way it’s a win.

[Mincer]

If you’re happy with you amp you can get an hx fx used for 400ish and get all the great fx from the helix. They are adding things all the time.

If you’re gonna go full helix MF has some blemish LT’s going for $700. That leaves enough to get a FRFR speaker and not need to carry an amp around.

Either way it’s a win.

Yes, this makes sense. You love your amp. So, no need to get any amp modeling right now. The HX Effects does some pretty crazy reverb and delay stuff, so that's covered, and you can put those effects in your effects loop.

[zionstrat]

Ace, as always you are absolutely correct from a logic perspective.. anything these days is better than the rack I used in the 90s. But once I heard the Stryman, I developed a pretty serious GAS attack.

So thanks to you all, I think I'm going to give the Helix FX a shot, but if anyone else thinks of anything I'm always open to ideas.

Cheers,
M

[Aceman]

Where is Bruce? He should be in here pimping the Eventide H9 by now...

[zionstrat]

Where is Bruce? He should be in here pimping the Eventide H9 by now...

Yep, the sounds are magnificent.. it definitely fits the bill however I was concerned that there aren't enough foot switches which would cause me to take out my MIDI controller which would bring me all the way back to take a bunch of stuff out in the real world which is what I want to avoid.

On the other hand, considering all I really need is reverb that's on practically all of the time and I would add course flange or delay occasionally we're really just talking about a couple of patches so this could make sense and I'm open to input from anyone that has gone this direction.

[Aceman]

Which is why I got my G3N - it's basically banks of 3 effects with on/off buttons.

The Helix FX is a cooler version of the same.

[Synapsys]

Well, the modeller stuff can escalate quickly. In the most recent Line 6 iteration, I went from HXFX + MIDI controlled tube amp ---->> HXFX + HX Stomp ---->> Helix Floor.

It al depends on what atre one's needs. I don't see myself returning to tube amps anytime soon.

[Mincer]

The cool thing about the HX Effects is that if you need reverb on all the time, you don't have to assign it to a switch at all. It can just be 'on' when you switch to the patch. Which leaves 6 button to be used for other effects.

[Despair]

Helix 3.10 (3.11 now for hardware, though it's just a few bugfixes for the hardware models) is an enormous improvement. The oversampling improved not just the amps, but the builtin cabs, anything that had distortion (dirt boxes, but also including the various tape echos, univibe, leslie, etc). And not just for distortion, though that's the most obvious, there's some of the clean amps I couldn't make work for me before that sound great now. I'm having to try everything again, which is pretty fun.

I used to find the builtin cabs difficult to use and fiddly, very prone to harsh frequencies so I had to aggressively use lowpass filters, usually around 8KHz but with heavy distortion or particular amps as low as 3KHz, which of course made things dull. Oddly, things were mostly better with IRs, though I still usually used a 10-12KHz lowpass, sometimes as low as 8KHz. I'm more likely to use the builtin cabs than IRs now, it's easier to adjust mic choice & distance than rifling through IRs for one that sits better with a particular amp.

With 3.10, I generally use 20KHz or no lowpass either way. Squirrels largely banished.

There's amps that I could never get to sound good before that I like now. Marshalls now longer have an ugly edge that I can't get rid of, sound much closer to what I expect from given models.

As far as effects, yeah, there's some great recent ones, I love the Dynamic Hall and Hot Springs, and the Retro Reel is great for any guitarist who used a tape device for warming their tone (without the echo section, though it can emulate tape wow/flutter). There's 3 different tape delay models you can play with, and you can always stack the retro reel for some tape saturation effects wherever you want in the chain (after amp or end of chain for recording hot effects, in front of amp for Blackmore/EVH/etc warming, etc).

I'd probably prefer Fractal Audio's amps, they have models of many that I love that Helix doesn't have. Helix has it's own unique amps, though. They're both close enough that you can pick either and be happy with amp models, it's a matter of which one has the feature set that works for you.