Helix Floor/LT/HX/Stomp/PodGo owners' Club - Tips, Ideas & Patches

[carlsim]

Fair play - they have already been sold! That was quick!

1 minute ago, Cliff Edge said:

You bought it, surely it’s yours to do what ever you want. 

 

[LukeFRC]

If you put two heliospheres on a path each (one short, one long) each followed by random chorus and then combine into a long dynamic plate reverb with some modulation it gets pretty close to some of the settings of an eventide black hole reverb!

 

now it probably needs eq too so it’s going to max out the blocks on my hx stomp but interesting exploring 

[Jack]

If we're speaking about effects and sounds, can someone help me sound like Robyn? I need a choppy synth sound, been messing with the tremolo and synths but can't quite get there. Any ideas?

 

 

[BigRedX]

16 minutes ago, Jack said:

If we're speaking about effects and sounds, can someone help me sound like Robyn? I need a choppy synth sound, been messing with the tremolo and synths but can't quite get there. Any ideas?

 

Unless you are lucky and hit upon a combination that suits your playing style you are unlikely to be able to get an envelope to match a sequenced synth. I use a chopped up sound on the chorus of one song which is done live using distortion into the Tremolo with a falling sawtooth wave. However for recording it has been completely replaced with the Step FX in Logic which gives me a lot more control over the envelopes. The problem with trying to do this with Tremolo is that the waveform you really need isn't there. The square wave is to abrupt a cut off and the falling sawtooth wave doesn't have a sustain potion. Having said that the song you linked to appears to be slower than ours so you might get there by playing with the duty cycle of the tremolo waveform and hope there's a sweet spot that does what you want.

 

Of course there's also the issue of synchronisation. I use MIDI clock from the computer that is our drummer and second synth player to keep the Helix in sync with the backing which works on our song, but I have had problems in the past with songs with odd bar and beat counts where using something like tremolo can end up 180° out of sync which is the last thing you want.

 

What is really needed is a MIDI-controlled Filter and gate with full ADSR envelopes for each. I've put a request in on the Line6 IdeaScale but it needs more votes...

[Jack]

Thanks for the response. I kind of feel better knowing that it's hard, makes me feel less like an idiot. It doesn't have to be perfect as this is for my 'acoustic' trio and not like a a loud party band or anything, just the bass line has a very different vibes with me just planting root notes on a fretless. It needs some kind of wooble...

 

I guess I'll set up the tone generator, plug it into my computer and have a real mess around, starting with distortion into tremolo as you have suggested.

Edited March 6 by Jack

[BigRedX]

18 minutes ago, Jack said:

Thanks for the response. I kind of feel better knowing that it's hard, makes me feel less like an idiot. It doesn't have to be perfect as this is for my 'acoustic' trio and not like a a loud party band or anything, just the bass line has a very different vibes with me just planting root notes on a fretless. It needs some kind of wooble...

 

I assume then that the rest of the band will be playing to you? Set the tempo as part of the patch and the tremolo to 1/8 notes. Make sure that you can all keep in sync. There's nothing worse than a sequencer part that sounds out of time.

[LukeFRC]

can the Ashville pattern into fuzz/envelope get close?

[JPJ]

So, having been a bit poorly this week, I’ve been doom scrolling on the couch and catching up on bass related podcasts vlogs etc. Both Janek Gwizdala and Ian Martin Allison rave about the HX Stomp, but in one vlog I saw Janek Gwizdala using the HX One that has piqued my interest.

My gigs rarely call for FX but it would be nice to have a bit of reverb/chorus/subharmonics available every now and again, and the small’ish form factor of the HX One could be squeezed onto my meagre little pedal board. I don’t need the complexity of the Stomp as I’m more than happy with my current preamp choice (EBS Stanley Clarke) so to my question - is anyone using the HX One and if so, what’s your opinion?

[Naigewron]

45 minutes ago, JPJ said:

So, having been a bit poorly this week, I’ve been doom scrolling on the couch and catching up on bass related podcasts vlogs etc. Both Janek Gwizdala and Ian Martin Allison rave about the HX Stomp, but in one vlog I saw Janek Gwizdala using the HX One that has piqued my interest.

My gigs rarely call for FX but it would be nice to have a bit of reverb/chorus/subharmonics available every now and again, and the small’ish form factor of the HX One could be squeezed onto my meagre little pedal board. I don’t need the complexity of the Stomp as I’m more than happy with my current preamp choice (EBS Stanley Clarke) so to my question - is anyone using the HX One and if so, what’s your opinion?

 

I don't use the HX One, but I had its predecessor the M5 for a while. It's really nice to have a device like that on the board for those effects that you will only need once in a while. For me, it eventually became too limiting because I ended up finding a lot of different cool effects in there, and I wanted to start stacking more than one of them together at the same time. For me, that meant that I later became an HX Stomp user, then the HX Effects, then the Helix LT, then the Helix Floor and now I'm using Helix Native (and other plugins) on a 100% laptop-based rig. But that sounds like it might be overkill for your needs 😄

 

I think the HX One is an excellent entry into the Helix ecosystem. You will either be happy with it because you only need one effect at a time, or you will find it limiting and eventually move up to the HX Stomp. If the latter happens, you will already be familiar with the effects of the Helix line, so you will have a much easier time dialing in the HX Stomp down the line.

Edited March 14 by Naigewron

[Cliff Edge]

Control a Stomp and an iPad using MIDI?

 

May have been discussed already but before trawling 96 pages here I thought I would ask. 
I use OnSong on iPad, each song in a set list has BPM and elapsed time. I select the songs using a bluetooth page turner pedal and then select the Stomp patch I want using buttons on an Ampero Hotone. It’d be nice to do all this with one button push on something, possibly using MIDI as the Stomp doesn’t do Bluetooth?

[BigRedX]

How are you controlling the Stomp from the Hotone Ampero? Because AFAICS it only has MIDI in?

[ratman]

I control an iPad from my HX Stomp via Bluetooth MIDI with a WIDI Jack.

https://www.thomann.co.uk/cme_widi_jack_din_5_midi_bundle.htm?msclkid=4378f7436f9515e9fe9b90b76414017b

 

[MartinB]

The Pedalnetics stuff is really nice, but I built myself this for under a tenner 😁

 

 

The volume knob fits into a hole in the back - I only use it for the headphone level, so I don't need access when gigging.

 

- 66.5 x 31.5 x 20mm box (RX2KL07) https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/121941168040

- Momentary footswitch https://www.bitsboxuk.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=116_128&products_id=3060

- Flat patch cable https://www.thomann.co.uk/harley_benton_fpc10_flat_patch_cable.htm

 

Edited Monday at 17:35 by MartinB

[Cliff Edge]

4 hours ago, ratman said:

I control an iPad from my HX Stomp via Bluetooth MIDI with a WIDI Jack.

https://www.thomann.co.uk/cme_widi_jack_din_5_midi_bundle.htm?msclkid=4378f7436f9515e9fe9b90b76414017b

 

This looks interesting, thank you. 

[Cliff Edge]

4 hours ago, BigRedX said:

How are you controlling the Stomp from the Hotone Ampero? Because AFAICS it only has MIDI in?

It’s just buttons 4 and 5 via the expression socket to select presets. 

[BigRedX]

8 hours ago, Cliff Edge said:

It’s just buttons 4 and 5 via the expression socket to select presets. 

 I think you are going to need to draw a diagram showing how everything is currently connected up and what protocols each device uses to talk to another.

 

What you want should be do-able as I do something similar using an AirTurn Pedal, Helix Floor and MacBook. However I suspect that you might need to get a MIDI interface for the iPad.

 

Also does OnSong support MIDI program change messages either to select the next page/song or send them when a page/song is selected?

[ratman]

Here's a photo of my HX Stomp with the WIDI Jack (small blue thing, top L corner of the Stomp), a MIDI Baby 3 controller and a Pedalnetics Helauxy Duo. This is how it all works:

 

The Helauxy Duo is connected to the EXP socket on the Stomp, and gives me Foot Switch 4 & 5 on the Stomp. I use FS5 as my 'scroll down' command (via the WIDI Jack) to OnSong on my iPad. This scrolls the page down, or if it cannot scroll further in that chart, it goes to the beginning of the next song in the OnSong set list.

The WIDI Jack is connected to the Stomp's MIDI OUT. It recieves MIDI info from the Helauxy FS5 > Stomp, and sends via Bluetooth MIDI to OnSong on my iPad.

The MIDI Baby 3 is connected tho the Stomp's MIDI IN. There are three functions - PRESS I use to alternate stompbox mode & snapshot mode, SHORT HOLD I use to alternate play view & scroll preset view, and LONG HOLD I use to go to tuner.

 

I hope that explains how it all works clearly.

OnSong has lots of MIDI functions to choose from (PC, CC etc) including 128 SONG SELECTs but I've never used that function myself. As I have over 1200 charts in OnSong, 128 isn't enough for me to use in that way. If you can manage with 128 songs or less, that might work for you @Cliff Edge

 

Edited Tuesday at 13:18 by ratman

[tauzero]

22 hours ago, Cliff Edge said:

Control a Stomp and an iPad using MIDI?

 

May have been discussed already but before trawling 96 pages here I thought I would ask. 
I use OnSong on iPad, each song in a set list has BPM and elapsed time. I select the songs using a bluetooth page turner pedal and then select the Stomp patch I want using buttons on an Ampero Hotone. It’d be nice to do all this with one button push on something, possibly using MIDI as the Stomp doesn’t do Bluetooth?

 

According to the blurb, OnSong does MIDI, and you can get Bluetooth MIDI (eg https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008408092026.html) so maybe select the song on OnSong and have it send the MIDI PC signals to select the patch and mode (if you want to be in stompbox mode for some and snapshot mode for others).

[Cliff Edge]

Thanks for all the info guys, If I had looked at the OnSong website which I haven’t done for several years now, all the info is there. Including some useful video tuts for doing exactly this. Even my old version of OnSong has all the required midi functions. I think all I need is the Widi Jack and I’m good.