Mini Helix - HX Stomp...

[Jack]

I used to velcro a trs>xlr cable onto my pedal board permanently.

[Woodinblack]

Maybe it is down to the syle of gigging you do. I have a DI on the B3 which is virginal and untouched. I can't think of a situation where I would use it, and frankly of all the local groups I have seen with one (and there are a few) I have never seen anyone use one.

I suppose if you are the type who does use it it would seem a bit of an odd omission, but I would suspect that well over 90% of the owners of DI-Outputed effects pedals are never used, so it really wouldn't seem an odd thing to lose.

Maybe it is different with the helix stomp because people are going straight to the PA, but I would think that if you were going straight to the PA you would be more likely to be a full helix kind of group, or maybe it is because you londoners gig in a different way to us provincial chaps. I have only gigged in a place with its own PA a handful of times, and even then I went from the DI on my amp.

[CameronJ]

2 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

I have a DI on the B3 which is virginal and untouched.

Comment of the day, surely?

[CameronJ]

 

[lemmywinks]

11 hours ago, Al Krow said:

How much is your Fishman DI box?

There is NO WAY any manufacturer is going to include something of that quality in their pedals. 

Doesn't it make more sense for you to take your Fishman with you to all gigs? You're not, it seems (and fair enough), anyway going to be happy with a cheap alternative costing a few ££ built into a pedal  which isn't focusing on being an excellent DI? 

I take PA, mixer, monitor, lighting, bass, bass amp & cab to gigs plus leads and cables for the above.  (OK - I've just worked out why my bands haven't sacked me yet  😄)

A small DI pedal on top, in one of the bags, is a Stomp in a tea cup for me. 

The Fishman was £230+ at the time of purchase, I think they are under £200 now. I don't think a great whack of that went into the DI portion though as it's a fully featured preamp box which just happens to have a nice DI on it, better than the MXR M80 DI and definitely better than a cheapo DI box. It isn't "focusing on being an excellent DI" in any way shape or form - it's a tuner, compressor, eq with semi parametric mids, notch filter, switchable signal booster, HPF, brilliance control, impedance switch....... it doesn't really focus on anything. Have a look at it:

https://www.fishman.com/products/series/platinum/platinum-pro-eq-analog-preamp/

I'm not sure what you mean when you say the Helix won't have a decent DI signal, it would be exactly the same as the 1/4" output (which is a DI) only with the wires soldered to a different type of connector (the industry standard one that everybody uses). If that signal wouldn't be good enough there would be no point using the Helix at all, which we know to be false.

 

My bass setup comprises of a Gator bass gigbag with all my kit in and an FRFR cab, literally I go bass>Fishman>FRFR which is why I don't want to be adding equipment or carrying dongles. I don't carry anything else and I can get set up ready to play in a couple of minutes, pretty much exactly the same as our dep guitarist who just takes a guitar gigbag and his Helix floor unit to gigs.

 

There seems to be a bit of confusion here, I'm not saying it's the end of the world - just a silly omission. Like I said form over function, unfortunately sacrificing connectivity and buying dongles in order to make products smaller seems to be a trend people put up with nowadays, personally I don't like it but each to their own. Your equipment and preferences might be different to mine, I need an XLR DI out full stop so the lack of this puts me right off this particular unit. That's all I was trying to say, I have no idea why posters are so keen to convince me otherwise! 

[lemmywinks]

7 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

Maybe it is different with the helix stomp because people are going straight to the PA, but I would think that if you were going straight to the PA you would be more likely to be a full helix kind of group, or maybe it is because you londoners gig in a different way to us provincial chaps. I have only gigged in a place with its own PA a handful of times, and even then I went from the DI on my amp.

🤣 I'm in Lancashire, hardly London! We own our own PA, I currently DI off my Fishman pedal and am only looking at Helix units because of the preamp models available (and the ease/cost of adding any required effects for future song picks) and the fact I could replicate the feature set of my current preamp pedal while keeping it to a single piece of equipment. I never DI out from amps (the FRFR I use actually has a very nice DI out though, XLR would you believe!) as if the amp fails you have nothing going to FoH which would spell disaster at someone's wedding or whatever. I could count the amount of times I have used an amp's DI on one hand.

 

That's how I gig and I don't think it's as uncommon as you think, I always kind of assumed most working bands gigged like this. Most of the ones I know who regularly play functions etc do.

[Woodinblack]

4 hours ago, lemmywinks said:

That's how I gig and I don't think it's as uncommon as you think, I always kind of assumed most working bands gigged like this. Most of the ones I know who regularly play functions etc do.

Well, there we go. I don't know anyone that plays like that, you don't know many people that dont, maybe it is a regional divide or a different type of group playing, so I guess that the truth is somewhere between that. One thing I suspect is that line 6 have done some research into it and decided it wasn't worth their while doing it, and also zoom, as the original b3 (that I have) had a DI, and the new one doesn't. I am guessing the impact on their sales will be fairly minor.

If I was a guitarist I would use a full fat helix anyway, so wouldn't have an issue.

Not that it would matter to me so much, if the amp failed I could go from the low impedance output of any amplified effects unit into a mixer with a jack lead (the mixer takes either), so there would be no issue, but I am not sure why the amp would fail, or why that would be any more likely than the PA failing. Luckily I haven't had either (although the guitarist seems to a lot).

[lemmywinks]

Not really, it's nothing to with regions or anything, just the type of gigs you're doing. If you're playing pubs and using your backline as FoH then you're not going to be using a DI in any form. If you have decent PA (either owned, provided or hired) then you will 100%, if it's a venue PA with an engineer then they will usually hand you a DI box as they'll probably have a varied experience of amp DIs and want something they know will work as expected. If you're going through a decent PA on every gig however then you're more likely to buy something like a Helix. I think Line 6 omit the XLR because they know can get away with it, because people will work around it same as they work around the lack of the headphone port on Apple phones and see it as an acceptable compromise. Again - form over function. Not for me, YMMV and you can spend your money how you like, as can I.

Regarding the amp failing thing (wildly off topic but a quick point) - if it failed mid song then you would definitely have an issue. That's why it's generally a better idea to take the signal before your amp/monitor, so you don't look like a prat playing a silent bass while everybody else on stage stares at you! The engineer can put your bass through the monitors and nobody has to pause between songs to plug jacks into a mixing desk, the audience would never notice. Again if you're playing for beer at the Dog and Duck then it's less of an issue than if it's at someone's wedding and they're paying you a decent wedge for it.

[Woodinblack]

1 hour ago, lemmywinks said:

Not really, it's nothing to with regions or anything, just the type of gigs you're doing. If you're playing pubs and using your backline as FoH then you're not going to be using a DI in any form.

Well, yes, I play pubs and the bass is normally not out of the PA, although I use DI all the time as it goes to the mixer for IEM and sometimes recording.

From the amp though, as the amp is part of my sound. Maybe if I had a helix, I wouldn't need the amp to be part of my sound, but I don't. But if I did and I had a helix stomp instead of a full helix (which seems unlikely), I would just use a different cable. As it is I use a X18 (rather than an XR18) mixer, so I have quite a few TRS to XLR leads, as that is what they did on the X18.

Everytime i have plugged into someone elses pa, which has mostly been on the back of a truck or on those occasions with a house PA, I have gone from my amp.

1 hour ago, lemmywinks said:

Regarding the amp failing thing (wildly off topic but a quick point) - if it failed mid song then you would definitely have an issue

Indeed you would. As you would if your bass failed, or your cable failed, or your helix failed, or one of the wires on your pedalboard failed, or your DI box failed, or the mixer or pa failed, or the speakers failed. ie: with the tens of things that could fail between your fingers and the speaker, why specifically is the amp failing a major concern? I have never had an amp fail mid gig, so I wondered why this one case was a reason to not use an amp?

1 hour ago, lemmywinks said:

That's why it's generally a better idea to take the signal before your amp/monitor, so you don't look like a prat playing a silent bass while everybody else on stage stares at you! The engineer can put your bass through the monitors and nobody has to pause between songs to plug jacks into a mixing desk, the audience would never notice. Again if you're playing for beer at the Dog and Duck then it's less of an issue than if it's at someone's wedding and they're paying you a decent wedge for it.

Well, I have done quite a few weddings and I guess I have been one of those rare souls whos amp never failed

 

[dannybuoy]

I can understand the pain point when a soundman hands you an XLR cable rather than a DI box and you have to fish for a dongle. But if you own everything including the PA, there's not much to worry about, you carry a standard kit to which you either add an adapter or just swap your XLR cable to a TRS-XLR cable.

It is a valid point and it's good to air your discontent so that Line6 take note, but I wouldn't let the omission of XLR put you off trying and buying. For example when I bought a tube amp I just accepted it didn't have speakon outputs and bought a new speaker cable. If I had been firm and said I'm not interested because it didn't work with my existing speakon cables, I would have missed out on the experience of owning one.

[Al Krow]

12 hours ago, lemmywinks said:

Your equipment and preferences might be different to mine, I need an XLR DI out full stop so the lack of this puts me right off this particular unit. That's all I was trying to say, I have no idea why posters are so keen to convince me otherwise! 

Nah fair enough. If a DI out on a multi-fx is important for you, then it's important for you! Not sure anyone is trying (or going to) convince you otherwise; we're just merely having a conversation on the subject and pointing out it's (i) not a deal breaker for many of us i.e. we're quite happy with finding an easy work-around and (ii) we're going to be very limited for choice these days if we're after anything other than a very expensive / large full fat Helix type multi-fx, if we do want an xlr out on the most up to date gear with the best chip sets for modelling (some of the older stuff does have e.g. the Zoom B3). Don't get me wrong - it would definitely be a nice to have.

5 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

Well, I have done quite a few weddings and I guess I have been one of those rare souls who's amp never failed

+1^^ Ditto with several years of gigging under my belt (not as many as Woody tbf) and never had an amp fail on me. I've got an "emergency" passive DI under my board so I can go straight into the band PA should the need ever arise. I often do DI straight into the house PA for central London gigs when it's a pain in the ar*se parking transporting backline and am happy to use whatever DI the sound engineer provides.

But then in reality I'm pretty relaxed about everything to do with bass tone (as long as it's balanced and not boomy) when gigging because unless the audience are going to hear / notice a difference, frankly I don't give a...and I dunno about you guys but I do give a damn about my hearing and will wear ear protection when playing with my bands; so nuances of bass tone are pretty much lost to me and my band mates as well as the audience. So the only time I really hear a difference is when practising solo at home, but that can be several hours a week so if my gear can make a difference to my enjoyment then, well great!

Edited October 21, 2018 by Al Krow

[Cuzzie]

Please tell me if I am being oversimplistjc or thick, but so far as XLR cables go are there not multiple attachments?

Male/Male, Female/Female, Male/Female, Male-1/4, Female-1/4,1/4-1/4 etc. 

No dongle, no extra equipment, just the right cable for your needs with most mixers having various inputs balanced and unbalanced.

Not trying to convince anyone on any connection BTW or to buy something

[dannybuoy]

If you refer to an XLR cable, 99% of the time it has a male XLR at one end and a female at the other. Or an XLR extension cable might have two males/females at either end.

Once you start adding 1/4” jacks to the mix, I would start calling them TRS Jack to XLR cables. But yeah, you just need to make sure the cable can carry two signals and you have the right plug on the end, whatever fits your gear!

[Cuzzie]

Yep, fully appreciate that XLR tends to be 3 pin, just checking I wasn’t going loonytunes in my old age.

So in essence no extra equipment needs to be carried, so long as you have the right cables

[Woodinblack]

2 hours ago, dannybuoy said:

It is a valid point and it's good to air your discontent so that Line6 take note, but I wouldn't let the omission of XLR put you off trying and buying. For example when I bought a tube amp I just accepted it didn't have speakon outputs and bought a new speaker cable. If I had been firm and said I'm not interested because it didn't work with my existing speakon cables, I would have missed out on the experience of owning one.

Yeh, I had the same - its irritating as now I have to have both of the cables, but just what you put up with.

[Al Krow]

3 hours ago, Cuzzie said:

Yep, fully appreciate that XLR tends to be 3 pin, just checking I wasn’t going loonytunes in my old age.

So in essence no extra equipment needs to be carried, so long as you have the right cables

+1 ^^

Bingo! Clearly needed someone who has no intention of getting this pedal (or are you secretly getting your head turned by this little baby, Mr Cuzzie?) to spot the obvious solution, building on the fact that the output from the Stomp is already balanced.

[Cuzzie]

Highly logical mind I am blessed with is a curse!

No plans on this, but I know it will be a good unit.

Cables are pretty cheap these days, Bax Shop often have deals when you are picking up Lava cables normally £60,70 plus for £20-30.

Conversations with high volume gigging mates of mine tell tales of going through XLR cables frequently, because being prized they are often stolen, Jack ones less so.

Yamaha/Line6 are thinking about their public 

[Woodinblack]

All of my XLR cables are coloured, so they don't 'blend in with other peoples' cables! It does mean though that as for some reason I provide all the cables that people take the cable they view as theirs (drummer always gets the yellow one, guitarist the red one, noone touches the blue one as its mine). Then there are the florescent orange ones, they are purely for things relating to the mixer.

Mine are all from ebay using proper cable and proper connectors.

[tonyclaret]

So are the bass pre-amps worth having on this? Is there a list of available amp sims?

[CameronJ]

20 minutes ago, tonyclaret said:

So are the bass pre-amps worth having on this? Is there a list of available amp sims?

Hey Tony, here are lists of the available amp sims (guitar and bass) as well as a separate list of the available effects:

https://dshowmusic.com/line-6-helix-amp-models/

https://dshowmusic.com/line-6-helix-effect-models/

[tonyclaret]

50 minutes ago, CameronJ said:

Hey Tony, here are lists of the available amp sims (guitar and bass) as well as a separate list of the available effects:

https://dshowmusic.com/line-6-helix-amp-models/

https://dshowmusic.com/line-6-helix-effect-models/

👍

[lemmywinks]

On 21/10/2018 at 02:29, Woodinblack said:

Indeed you would. As you would if your bass failed, or your cable failed, or your helix failed, or one of the wires on your pedalboard failed, or your DI box failed, or the mixer or pa failed, or the speakers failed. ie: with the tens of things that could fail between your fingers and the speaker, why specifically is the amp failing a major concern? I have never had an amp fail mid gig, so I wondered why this one case was a reason to not use an amp?

Well, I have done quite a few weddings and I guess I have been one of those rare souls whos amp never failed

 

I have a spare bass, DI preamp and cable lying next to my setup, tbh it's more about covering every eventuality and making sure any problems are sortable with minimal fuss. Having to trek across the stage trying to plug you DI into a mixer would be something I wouldn't want to do. Not a major concern, just one I would like to bypass easily should it happen. As it stands if my bass monitor failed then I would still be FoH, doing things your way I wouldn't with no quick fix (ie 5 seconds) remedy and that's all I need to know. 

 

I've also never had an amp failure, however I know people who have and it's a PITA. Like I said you gig how you like and use what equipment you want, it's honestly no concern of mine. 

[Al Krow]

8 minutes ago, lemmywinks said:

I have a spare bass, DI preamp and cable lying next to my setup, tbh it's more about covering every eventuality and making sure any problems are sortable with minimal fuss. Having to trek across the stage trying to plug you DI into a mixer would be something I wouldn't want to do. Not a major concern, just one I would like to bypass easily should it happen. As it stands if my bass monitor failed then I would still be FoH, doing things your way I wouldn't with no quick fix (ie 5 seconds) remedy and that's all I need to know. I've also never had an amp failure, however I know people who have and it's a PITA. Like I said you gig how you like and use what equipment you want, it's honestly no concern of mine. 

You seen Cuzzie's posts above? He's spotted the obvious solution that means not having an xlr on the pedal itself should become a complete non point, given that it is providing a balanced line out. It's pretty much taken away my last excuse for not getting one (other than I'm not sure I really need it anymore given my existing pedals - lol!)  

[Woodinblack]

7 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

 It's pretty much taken away my last excuse for not getting one (other than I'm not sure I really need it anymore given my existing pedals - lol!)  

Having watched the andertons video last night, I quite like it again, although the 6 unit and 3 buttons still seem a bit restrictive. But then, it is quite a bit of money and I don't think it actually gives me anything I don't currently have, so it might be another basschat led GAS thing

 

[Muppet]

I'm seriously considering this as an 'alternative' to my Helix Floor. I currently run XLR out from Helix to Desk and 1/4" out from Helix to FRFR for monitoring. With the flexibility in the Helix Floor I can adjust my monitoring sound and volume independently from the FOH. 

The Stomp appeals as I can replicate my amp/cab/effects setup in it but I'm not sure I'll still have the routing flexibility without additional hardware.

The Stomp has the same snapshot functions as the Floor which reduced the reliance on just the three buttons.