BigRedX

On the Helix Floor the I believe the Expression Pedal Toe Switch is the "joy-stick" like switch to the right of the display. I would want my foot going anywhere near that and also it's even further up on the device which means that there are more switches I might inadvertently press. Looks like I'm going to have to look elsewhere for this functionality. Pity. One of the things that initially attracted me to the Helix was the fact that it could be used as controller pedal and well as a multi-effects unit. Looks as though the controller functions are more limited then I was lead to believe.

Have you run the mix through a frequency analyser plug-in to see what is happening?

Thanks! I've just had a reply from Line6 saying it's not possible although the work-around they suggested to get my sequencer function on a switch sounds like they may have misunderstood my question and why I want to do these things. I've sent a follow-up question. One possible work-around would be to use an external footswitch and give it the required function, although if you've been following my other recents posts on the effects section, I'm trying to cut down on the amount of pedals I have on stage, however AFAICS there are only sockets for EXP2 and EXP3 which would normally be expression pedals. Will these sockets accept a momentary footswitch? I don't have one yet so I wanted to check before I go an buy one and then find it doesn't work. It looks like you need to register separately for the Ideascale page, and so I'm waiting for a moderator to approve my account.

That's brilliant. Thank you. Ideally I'll get an answer from Line 6 through the support ticket I have opened, which I'll post here and you can forward on to the Facebook group. Edit: and if it's not possible is, can you add it as a feature request via Facebook or is there another method for this?

Unfortunately I don't do Facebook anymore, so we'll have leave it there.

I don't do Facebook anymore so unfortunately not.

I'm still waiting for a response from Line6 on this, but just in case someone on here has already figured out how to do it... FS6 (top row, furthest right) is marked as "Preset/ Stomp Hold To Edit". I have no use for either of these functions and would like to replace them with a command of my own set up using the Command Centre to allow me start and pause the playback of the backing my bands use live. Adding this functionality is not a problem, but the switch still retains it's original function which means that when I start the playback the rest of the switches go into "Stomp" mode and I can't access my snapshots (it's set up with 4 presets along the top row and 4 snapshots on the bottom). Any ideas? Or is this function hardwired onto FS6? Ideally I'd also like to swap the functions of FS6 and FS12 (and also FS1 and FS7) so that functions I use while I'm playing are all on the bottom row of foot switches and I don't have to worry about inadvertently pressing the wrong switch while trying to access a top row switch mid-performance.

So the three MIDI outs all supply the same 16 channels rather than being 3 separate MIDI buses like a multi-bus MIDI interface? Unless you can assign a particular MIDI channel to a particular MIDI output, I would have thought that there is a greater danger of running out of MIDI bandwidth first. Can you set the resolution of the CC data that the LFOs generate? A sine wave LFO could fairly quickly flood the MIDI data stream with CC messages, and that's before we consider pumping MTC/clock data etc.

Because if you look carefully Rich has replaced to "i" in his word with a similar looking character to bypass the swear filter.

Yes it could, but the pickup type and positioning say that first and foremost it's been designed as a "guitar". Also as I said, I suspect that the bridge may need modification to be able to fit the heavier gauges of Bass VI strings. IMO there's more to a Bass VI than taking a guitar and sticking a 30" scale neck on it.

How good is a 30" Baritone tuned A-A on strummed first position chords? I used to have a 28" tuned B-B that was great and I loved the low sound/tuning, but all the Bass VIs I've owned/tried have been useless for anything more than 2 notes, or such high register that I might as well play the part on an ordinary guitar.

Baritone guitar rather than Bass VI. Not only does it say it in the product title but also implied by the positioning of the pickups in the typical guitar locations rather than the Bass VI ones. That's not to say you couldn't try using it as a Bass VI, but it may require some extra work at the bridge in order to fit the heavier gauge Bass VI strings, and IME a Bass VI always benefits from the centre pickup for decent bass sounds.

Depending on your DAW, creating a MIDI CC LFO should be easy. I can "draw" one in seconds using the hyper edit page of Logic. I suspect that if I searched on-line I'd be able to find plenty of ready made examples that I could download for my DAW of choice.

IMO when you only have a single pedal, mounting it on a pedal board seems to be overkill to solve a problem that shouldn't be there in the first place. I would have thought that devices like this are designed to try and reduce stage floor clutter, not add to it. If this was the device for me I would hope to be able to use it as my only pedal and therefore wouldn't want the added hassle and bulk of a pedal board for a single device. Since the early 90s all my "pedal boards" have been a single multi-footswitch device, ideally with smallest footprint possible. Only two have required an additional power connection - one used a standard IEC mains connector, and the other had a mechanism that held the cable in place to prevent it from being pulled out. All the other took their power directly from one of the rack devices they were controlling via the same cable as the data.

Which is one of the reasons why I haven't used individual pedals since the mid 80s. Even before I went the multi effects route anything with non-locking power connectors was safely put away in a rack case where there was no danger of anything becoming disconnected mid-performance.

The thing is that a lot of people who are doing MIDI manipulation live are already using a computer at the centre of their performance set-up. In order to compete this device needs to be essentially bomb-proof in build and operation. The PSU connector doesn't say that to me. Given that everyone else apart from EBS-freak and myself seems to be perfectly happy to take devices with consumer-grade computer connections on stage without cocooning them in gig-hardened cases means that we are in the minority and not the target customer base.

My pizza analogy would be that instead of a proper tasty pizza-dough base that shows off the flavours of the topping, you've been given the cardboard or polystyrene packing.

Who thought that ideal colour match for an exotic blue top would be an anaemic featureless piece of "natural" wood?

Considering that they are both better known than I am, I suspect they will already be eligible and their share will probably reflect their overall popularity, so nothing to be worried about.

You need a MCPS (mechanical) licence if you release any copyright material that you (or your band) do not own. The cost of that licence is based on the number of tracks which are owned by other copyright holders on the record/CD and the number of records/CDs being made. This only applies to physical releases - CDs, records, cassettes. Mechanical royalty allocation for downloads of covers are generally handled by your aggregator. Performance royalties (PRS) are handled differently. For CDs and other digital releases each track has an embedded unique ISRC code which is used to allocate royalties for radio play, so long as you are a member of the PRS. As a PRS member you can also receive royalty payments every time you play a song that you have written at a gig, although you'll need to submit a setlist to the PRS in order to receive this. If your band play regularly it is worth being a PRS writer member and submit a playlist every time you gig, as the performance royalties soon add up. As I've said before in similar threads when this subject has come up the performance royalties The Terrortones accrued from playing gigs paid for all our studio time and then some. I'm still earning performance royalties for songs written and recorded over 40 years ago by bands who are long gone. Once a song has been released by someone you don't need permission from the songwriter or original artist to release your own cover. I don't know exactly how it works at the moment, but it used to be that the money from PRS licenses such as those paid by your garden centre went into a pot for "unrecorded royalties" which would generally be distributed between all the members who earned more than a certain amount a year, based on the assumption that if they were popular enough to be earning a certain level of performance royalties then their works would have been included in these "playlists". The threshold to obtain a share of this pot is quite high, and I've only qualified once (mostly as a result of my band recording a session that was broadcast on Radio Trent in the 80s), but IIRC it boosted my royalty payments for the next 3 years. The way these payments are allocated does mean that the bulk of this money goes to those already earning signifiant performance royalties, but unless your retail space caters for a very niche customer base with very niche musical tastes the chances are you'll be playing popular music anyway. Hope that answers all your questions.

Smiley face shape in the graphic EQ, or boosting the lows and highs over the middle frequencies. Sound great when you play your bass solo but generally disappears in the typical rock band mix.

For me I'd be more worried about it getting pulled out at the wrong moment. I suspect that this device also takes a while to "boot up"? For me on stage all connectors must have at least the locking equivalent of the standard 1/4" jack plug - ideally that of an XLR. Everything else is either cable-tied or glued permanently into place. It looks like a great piece of kit. Unfortunately for me it's about 20 years too late (and even then I'd have preferred it in 19" rack mounting format).

Partly the screen -as an owner of a Helix Floor, I'd be reluctant to have another foot switch with a big screen on it. For me the layout is all wrong for a pedal that I would want to use at a gig. The top row of foot switches are all but useless since I won't be able to use them mid-song without worrying about inadvertently pressing the ones below. Even the ones at the side aren't particular well-placed for me. I have my Helix set up so the switches I use while I'm actually playing are all on the bottom row, and I only need to press any of the upper row of switches between songs when I can ensure I'm not pressing anything I shouldn't be. It's even got to the point where I am considering ordering my patches in reverse set order so that I've using the patch down pedal (on the bottom row) to select the patches for the next song. The only foot controllers I've had where I have been happy to use the upper row of switches were the Roland ones where the switches themselves are nice and big two rows are staggered. Everything else for me is a disaster waiting to happen. Also an external PSU with no means of locking the cable in place makes me nervous and want to put the device somewhere safe in a rack, where I can run it from rack mounted PSU and hot glue the power cables (and all the other connections) in place.

You do realise that this is just a controller pedal (albeit a very sophisticated one) but it doesn't actually do any audio manipulation itself? This is the sort of device I would have paid a lot of money for back in the early 2000s. These days I do everything that I would have done with it using a combination of my Mac and Helix. I would have also questioned the form-factor the need for foot switches on it since I would have been using it in conjunction with a standard MIDI foot controller that was a bit more gig-ready and robust, and would have wanted to be able to tuck this device safely away in a rack.

It's very difficult to cut vinyl when there is stereo movement of low frequencies. The groove on a record contains the left and right channel information on opposite "slopes" If the bass frequencies are centred the groove will be close to symmetrical on both sides. As you pan this information from side to side you end up with a groove that gets wider and narrower as the low frequency information moves from left to right and back again. The wider the groove the less likely the cutting lathe is going to be able to create it, and even if it could be cut most record decks wouldn't be able to play it. for this reason Its recommended that all frequencies under 300Hz are in mono. There are mastering plug-ins that will do this for you, so we can use one to listen and see how much of the bass panning effect is going to be lost should we decide to put this track on vinyl in the future. On the whole vinyl is a very poor delivery medium for modern music when compared with CD or better digital formats. Lots of stereo effects are simply not reproducible - certainly anything using phase changes to make the sound wider and bigger will cause problems. Also due to the nature of record and the way the stylus moves slower in relation to the groove as it reaches the centre of the disc have implications for the running order of an album. Ever wondered why all the noisy high energy tracks are at the start of each side and the last track is nearly always more quiet and laid back? That's why.