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

[burno70]

Anyone use Helix Native? All the bass amps seem to have a tonne of overdrive on them and if I reduce the drive and get a significant drop in volume which I then struggle to compensate with by using the master volume. Anyone experienced this? Am I missing something?

[dave_bass5]

26 minutes ago, burno70 said:

Anyone use Helix Native? All the bass amps seem to have a tonne of overdrive on them and if I reduce the drive and get a significant drop in volume which I then struggle to compensate with by using the master volume. Anyone experienced this? Am I missing something?

You can turn the output level up for each patch using the output block at the end of the chain. 

[burno70]

Ah - I did not know that! Will give it a try. Thanks!

[LukeFRC]

39 minutes ago, burno70 said:

Anyone use Helix Native? All the bass amps seem to have a tonne of overdrive on them and if I reduce the drive and get a significant drop in volume which I then struggle to compensate with by using the master volume. Anyone experienced this? Am I missing something?

Try these as a starting place.

[acidbass]

Yeah I found that the amps are all really gain heavy and sound a lot better to my ears with less bite. You can reduce the bias too on the valve amps for a sweeter tone.

[burno70]

Yeah I'm struggling with them to be hones. I give the bias a try and see if that helps. Thanks for the tip.

[dave_bass5]

You might find they sounds ok in a mix though. 

[LukeFRC]

I forgot the link - sorry @burno70

http://drtonelab.com/lab/balanced-eq/

[Al Krow]

I've kinda been thinking that the way we use our pedal-boards is to kick in certain pedals for certain songs. It's great that with Helix we can set up to 128 separate songs (on the HX Effects and Stomp and I presume even more on the higher end models?) with the combination of effects we want for each song, but conceptually it's easier for me to get my head around the fact that there are actually only a few effects that I want to regularly use including the obvious ones e.g. drive, filter.

Having the ability to set up a few "boards" of 6 pedals in stomp mode on the HX FX which can give me a set of core pedals seems to be just the ticket for this. Had a bit of fun setting up "Board 1"  this evening and will no doubt get onto a few more over the coming weeks. That still leaves plenty of banks for particular set list songs alongside.

I'm guessing a lot the Helix users on this thread have already gone for this approach way before of me - if so be interesting to hear what your different "boards" comprise. Having the scribble strips and ability to engage up to 6 pedals at a time does make the HX FX very well suited for this, so maybe going for the HX FX in place of the HX Stomp was the right decision for me after all!

Edited July 14, 2020 by Al Krow

[dave_bass5]

This was exactly how i used, and looked on my HFX.

IIR i only had 3 ‘boards’, and two of those were identical, with one having just different foot switches assigned to the effects. I like to keep the most used on the front row. 

[Woodinblack]

Exactly how I use mine, I have 3 boards, 2 for my main group and one for my other group. Mostly it is 1, but there are 2 songs that use the second board.

[PatrickJ]

I have 3 virtual boards set up on my HX FX right now.

Board 1 is for use in front of my ashdown tube head! It's got a PARA EQ, Compressor and a drive pedal and that's it.  This is for jamming with my buddies at the studio which is primarily rock based music.

Board 2 is dubbed Jazzcapades and is for use in front of my Markbass head.  This has a bit more going on! 2x Para EQs that are set to match the EQ points of the Little Marcus MB heads, a compressor, Octave pedal and a Tilt control to roll off the high end (adjusted via expression pedal) to allow me to switch between modern and vintage tones.  I dep'd a few times for rehearsals with a couple of jazz bands before lockdown and I built this board incase I got another call back.

Board 3 is labelled Deeper Underground.   This is full of Synths, filters and Octaves for jamming along to Jamiroquai tracks, only at home I can't find anyone else who wants to play these songs.

Edited July 14, 2020 by PJ-Bassist

[Al Krow]

22 minutes ago, dave_bass5 said:

This was exactly how i used, and looked on my HFX.

IIR i only had 3 ‘boards’, and two of those were identical, with one having just different foot switches assigned to the effects. I like to keep the most used on the front row. 

13 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

Exactly how I use mine, I have 3 boards, 2 for my main group and one for my other group. Mostly it is 1, but there are 2 songs that use the second board.

Haha - totally knew I was going to be very late to this particular party!

Obviously it's really cool that you can set up your virtual boards - I'm gonna definitely nick that phrase from PJ-B(!) - with some pedals in parallel paths as and when you want.

That is for one of the biggest plusses of Helix over my budget (but tbf amazingly good value) Zoom multi. My "Board 1" is actually based around an attempt at pulling together a 'Fishman Power Chord board' using a combination of Simple Pitch octave down and Dual Pitch set on +7 and +12 intervals, which I decided to try out in parallel; and with a couple of drives, tremolo and delay. Definitely not going to be "core" pedal board but was a fun starter for 10! My previous attempts at getting a Fishman Power Chord on both Helix and Zoom have been an unedifying mush, but this one was actually pretty good! 

Edited July 14, 2020 by Al Krow

[Jack]

Quick question for Stomp users: is it possible to get the Stomp to default to 'stomp mode' when you turn it on? I have forgotten to switch it several times and panicked mid-song when buttons weren't where I though they would be.

[dave_bass5]

Mine always does. I wasn’t aware you could change that. I don’t use the other modes though. Maybe it remembers the last mode?

Edited July 20, 2020 by dave_bass5

[Woodinblack]

15 minutes ago, Jack said:

Quick question for Stomp users: is it possible to get the Stomp to default to 'stomp mode' when you turn it on? I have forgotten to switch it several times and panicked mid-song when buttons weren't where I though they would be.

How do you get it to start up in any other mode?

Mine always starts up in stomp mode. I assume it just started up how you shut it down

My mistake, I was refering to the HX FX, but I assume it is similar

Edited July 20, 2020 by Woodinblack

[LukeFRC]

mine opens in the mode you turned it off in I think?

[Jack]

44 minutes ago, dave_bass5 said:

Jack's an idiot.

 

31 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

Jack's an idiot.

 

27 minutes ago, LukeFRC said:

Jack's an idiot.

Hmmm, turns out I had the 4 and 5 switches set incorrectly in the global menu. Thanks for your help, carry on everyone.

[dave_bass5]

Quick question for some HFX owners. Is it possible to hook up a 2 way foot switch to scroll through patches. I know you can with the Stomp, but it doesn't look like you can with the HFX.

Asking for a mate as i don’t have mine anymore. 

[Al Krow]

2 hours ago, dave_bass5 said:

Quick question for some HFX owners. Is it possible to hook up a 2 way foot switch to scroll through patches. I know you can with the Stomp, but it doesn't look like you can with the HFX.

Asking for a mate as i don’t have mine anymore. 

Interesting question - not one I've given any thought to as it's already got 8 stomp switches. Ok not all of these are for scrolling but you can still very quickly scroll through  banks of 4 patches, each of which can be a virtual pedal board of 6 pedals as we were discussing a page or so back. This would seem for most of us to eliminate the need to use an additional footswitch on the HX FX. Having a couple of extra foot-switches on the Stomp obviously has a bigger payback.

But HX Effects is midi enabled, which might give an option...I'm guessing if any of the HX FX users knows the answer to this, it might be @Woodinblack

[stoo]

9 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Interesting question - not one I've given any thought to as it's already got 8 stomp switches. Ok not all of these are for scrolling but you can still very quickly scroll through  banks of 4 patches, each of which can be a virtual pedal board of 6 pedals as we were discussing a page or so back. This would seem for most of us to eliminate the need to use an additional footswitch on the HX FX. Having a couple of extra foot-switches on the Stomp obviously has a bigger payback.

But HX Effects is midi enabled, which might give an option...I'm guessing if any of the HX FX users knows the answer to this, it might be @Woodinblack

Preset up/down might be a tricky one as the MIDI implementation only has preset recall by explicit preset number. 

On the Stomp there's 2 ways around it (1: dedicating FS4 + FS5 to preset down/up, and then using the MIDI commands for those, or 2: send a sequence of MIDI commands to change the stomp screen to the preset list, then send FS1 or FS2 to change preset, then another command to change back to the normal stompbox view) but I don't think either of those would work on the HXFX.

You could do it via MIDI if you have a MIDI controller that can keep track of the currently selected preset and adjusts which messages it sends accordingly, but I would think you'd probably need to build your own controller to achieve that (not as hard as it sounds as long as you're OK with a bit of soldering)

Maybe there's some scope for doing something via Command Center with a regular footswitch connected to the expression pedal inputs on the HXFX..... if you can send a PC message whenever the expression pedal value goes over any non-zero value, it should detect a footswitch press. Probably a bit of a long shot, mind.... and unfortunately I've not got an HXFX to test with.

[Woodinblack]

Yep, not something I have had a need for. i know there isn't a bank up/down message as bank in this context means nothing outside of the HX display. 

Although you don't mean banks of patches do you, you just mean patches, like where you have the footpedals all in stomp mode, then switch an external key to go to the next set of footpedals? If so, yes, you can send a program change to the next value from a midi footpedal. I don't think you can do it from a dumb switch though

[dave_bass5]

Thanks for all the replies. Sorry if I wasn't clear but I’m not talking about midi, just the standard 2 way footswtich with a TRS cable. 

Specifically to scroll from patch to patch, as described by Woodinblack. My mate has just got a HFX and has chosen to use it mounted on a stand, and to switch patches with his hand. Its just for home use. He has this connected to his PC for editing but i thought it might be useful if he could at least have something on the floor to help.

Midi is 100% out of the question. 

Seems like it as a no then. 

[dave_bass5]

I’m not sure if this has been discussed recently, or at all, but i wanted to ask about Expression pedals. 

The guy I spoke about recently who got a HFX was asking about using his Boss expression pedal. We both did a bit or research and it seems (or seemed) that you cant use a lot of the cheaper ones as they are TRS and the HFX/Stomp need TS. 

I was asked agin today by @Al Krow about this and i did a bit more research. I have a Yamaha FC-7, which is TRS. I tried it before but it didnt work, then i found the posts about not using TRS so left it at that.  I have a few adapters laying around that go from stereo to mono. Thought I’d give them a go, but no luck. Then i managed to get the FC-7 working perfectly, without any adapters. 

Now I’m puzzled. Is it now a case that TRS do work ok? Was this something that changed over the past couple of years? We those people just not working hard enough to get it working......or are am i going mad. 

[Al Krow]

37 minutes ago, dave_bass5 said:

...you can't use a lot of the cheaper ones as they are TRS and the HFX/Stomp need TS. 

Just thinking that a TRS --> TS cable would be the way to go here?

Be interested what expression pedals folks are using with their Helix kit and if they are Helix specific kit, whether these are completely fine to use with non Helix pedals (which I would assume / hope they would be)?