uk_lefty Posted January 30, 2021 Share Posted January 30, 2021 I pre ordered an HX Stomp from Andertons a few weeks back, orders due to arrive with them on the 29th. It arrived with me today at lunch time. Just need the kids to go to bed early tonight! I funded it almost in full by selling off my Boss GT10B which I loved, but found a pain to carry around, a Zoom guitar multi effects (G7.1ut) and a Zoom 506 ii acoustic guitar pedal. Figured I'd get everything those pedals do and more out of an HX Stomp, except a bass Wah. So the plan years back was to get rid of my pedal board and have a decent multi. In the time I've not had an effects set up for bass I've been thinking I could loop a bass Wah and synth pedal in with my HX Stomp and I'd need a board and power supply and....... I've read the manual today and I've read chunks of the long Helix thread on here, but any tips on starting points other than downloading latest softwares of course, very gratefully received! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimbobothy Posted January 30, 2021 Share Posted January 30, 2021 (edited) ... well I bought one over a year ago with the view to it being my main pedal. Mmm, well if you ask the missus if that plan happened she might have something to say about it!! I’ve now got 3 boards built, 3 empty boards and no gigs for a while ha ha!! I guess you could try to emulate whatever effects you used before, a good starting point. A little hint (you well may already know this one), when you use a looper or Poly Sustain have them at the end of then chain of 8 blocks, then when you change sounds the original set drone or loop won’t be affected. However if you want to see how tweaking the parameter controls alters the sound, have the looper block at the start, play a bit, then but your bass down when the loop is playing and tweak to your hearts content 👍🏼 Edited January 30, 2021 by jimbobothy additional info. 2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uk_lefty Posted February 4, 2021 Author Share Posted February 4, 2021 Am sure this has been done a hundred times over but hey, I have no social life these days so just incase anyone hasn't heard about these or wants another opinion, here tis What's good... It packs in a serious amount of effects for bass, guitar and acoustic guitar. Very small footprint, lightweight, won't be carrying a metre long flight case any more. That's all good. Its quite easy to use when hooked up to my PC, and though I haven't tried properly, I've not worked out how to change settings once it's set up to play live. It's really easy to edit in the PC. I just chose a bass preset that was OK then started adding in things, swapping the order, trying out different compressors with the filter and seeing what works best. I guess once I find what I want I can easily set up effects under song names as I had on my previous multi. Quality of tones... Well, I'm comparing this to a Boss GT10B which I thought was incredible, though big. Through headphones I'm not hearing a massive upgrade on the Boss but I expect through FOH or recording is where the HX will really take over. Negatives... None, but some watch-outs The HX is very good but I expect to do a lot of tweaking to get close to what I had at my toe tips on the boss as presets. Some of the Boss presets really were very good, and this is where the HX is lacking in my opinion. Then again, it's so much easier to edit the HX and the voyage of discovery will be a great learning experience, so I'm not downbeat about that. I can create my super clean compressed amp sound and my driven more traditional amp sound and learn about all the stuff that lies in the middle. What surprises me is that, though never owning one, I have an idea in my head that the MuTron must be the best filter sound, so I go to that first on the HX. Well, for me it's actually not. So work through the effect types in order to find what works best for you. I love just dragging the order of effects around on the PC and then the endless options on tweaking each effect how you want it. I'm not bothered that there's much more guitar stuff, I'll play guitar through it too, but the guitar effects work really well on bass you just need to tweak them right or give them the right input. I can see me spending a lot of time on this. It was easy to do synthy 80s stuff on here too. Filter, octave, fuzz, compress, tweak to make it work. Might get rid of my EHX Bass Mono Synth now, I'm not sure I need both. Only thing I now want is an expression pedal so I can bring in some Wah. I do like a Wah pedal! 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
javi_bassist Posted February 4, 2021 Share Posted February 4, 2021 I've had mine for some months and I think that, in order to get nice sounds, you have to tweak and work a lot. The good: once you have it, it's always there. In my case, I used to take with me a big board with 9-10 pedals in a heavy pedalboard. Now I have only 3 pedals: JHS Compressor, HX Stomp and my Ashdown preamp. I could live only with the HX stomp with good results too. So far, the only effect that I kinda miss is my Source Audio Aftershock, because I had already good presets on it. In the HX I'm still working on getting a good fuzz and overdrive (even though I found the Legacy Big Muff and I love it). But I think the HX stomp is not plug and play once you get it out of the box. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gab.deto Posted February 5, 2021 Share Posted February 5, 2021 I start with a Floor, and After one year i downsize to Stomp, without regrets. Now in 99% of the occasion i go out without a "real" amp and cabs I confirm also that I the HX stomp is not plug and play, but require some works and, study to use it at the maximum. -> i suggest to go ahead at the same times the study of the "real effects", the user manuals and some stuff related at d how to manage property the frequencies more likely as Sound Engineer than a bassist. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acidbass Posted February 5, 2021 Share Posted February 5, 2021 Definitely HX Edit is a good starting point. I would be lost without it! I use a good set of studio cans to make sounds at home but sometimes they don't work live due to different EQ requirements etc. Another tip is that most amp models are very highly gained and distorted, the first thing I would do is turn down the gain to hear what they are really like. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crawford13 Posted February 13, 2021 Share Posted February 13, 2021 On 05/02/2021 at 13:21, acidbass said: Another tip is that most amp models are very highly gained and distorted, the first thing I would do is turn down the gain to hear what they are really like. I also found this to be the case, however I updated to 3.01 this morning and they seem to have fixed that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dannybuoy Posted February 14, 2021 Share Posted February 14, 2021 Adjusting the overall input gain goes a long way towards sorting that - I think the manual says to adust it so that your input is peaking at -18 to -24 dB, when most people's natural inclination would be to set it much higher than that. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SumOne Posted February 15, 2021 Share Posted February 15, 2021 (edited) Nice. I was torn between the Stomp and Effects. I have a cab sim pedal so I went for the Effects which arrived yesterday. I'm impressed and will be keeping it- it's bumped a few pedals off the board which I think the Helix covers quite well, I'll probably keep others that it doesn't seem to do so well....but they might go too if I can tweak the Helix to sound as good good as them: Edited February 15, 2021 by SumOne Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acidbass Posted February 15, 2021 Share Posted February 15, 2021 On 14/02/2021 at 14:40, dannybuoy said: Adjusting the overall input gain goes a long way towards sorting that - I think the manual says to adust it so that your input is peaking at -18 to -24 dB, when most people's natural inclination would be to set it much higher than that. I didn't think it was possible to set the input gain on the Stomp? AFAIK that applies to the full fat Helix. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dannybuoy Posted February 15, 2021 Share Posted February 15, 2021 🤷♂️ I don't have one! But I know I found all the amps too overdriven in Helix Native until I reduced the input. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
javi_bassist Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 16 hours ago, dannybuoy said: 🤷♂️ I don't have one! But I know I found all the amps too overdriven in Helix Native until I reduced the input. Yes, I agree with you. Any amp has to turn down the gain and the master up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uk_lefty Posted February 25, 2021 Author Share Posted February 25, 2021 So my idea of going down to just a single pedal to do everything isn't really coming true. I've got an expression pedal on order for my Helix stomp. I've still got my EHX Mono Synth which may or may not survive. And I quite like the idea of adding a 2 button foots witch to change the presets and leave the stomps own footswitches for changing snapshots. I'm going to need a pedal board and case again aren't I?! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fretmeister Posted February 25, 2021 Share Posted February 25, 2021 (edited) 37 minutes ago, uk_lefty said: So my idea of going down to just a single pedal to do everything isn't really coming true. I've got an expression pedal on order for my Helix stomp. I've still got my EHX Mono Synth which may or may not survive. And I quite like the idea of adding a 2 button foots witch to change the presets and leave the stomps own footswitches for changing snapshots. I'm going to need a pedal board and case again aren't I?! Or more money... https://i.imgur.com/G110eBJ.jpg Edited February 25, 2021 by fretmeister 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fretmeister Posted February 25, 2021 Share Posted February 25, 2021 (edited) 13 minutes ago, fretmeister said: Or more money... https://i.imgur.com/G110eBJ.jpg It's real. It's not a photoshop Eric Klein (head of Helix products at L6) has confirmed it. There's a FAQ on TGP written by him. Link to the FAQ: https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/hx-stomp-xl.2221270/post-31861903 Edited February 25, 2021 by fretmeister Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uk_lefty Posted March 4, 2021 Author Share Posted March 4, 2021 I'm getting there with this pedal now... Still some things I can't do but progress so far has been good. I downloaded some presets off the Web for free, some have been ok and some are wide of the mark. Strange how we all want different things... I just thought it could be a shortcut to some usable tones or at least a starting point. I can't get over people selling their presets! Not sure I'd pay for any when there can't be too many variables in there if you know roughly what you're listening to. I'm glad I haven't paid for 90% of those I've downloaded. Anyhow, I built a few effects of my own. A synth that actually isn't very good now I come back to it, and a fretless sound that's perfect for 80s pop and I've been playing Wherever I Lay My Hat over and over. That's one on the new band set list. I don't have a spare block to add a tremelo but I'll copy the settings over, swap out the Bass octave for a tremelo and I'll have a Take My Breath Away effect. Super. I need to build up some usable synth effects so I can ditch my EHX Bass Synth. I've received my expression pedal now so will experiment with making some bass effects that involve Wah for a bit of Sabbath NIB and some other songs where I like to kick in some bass Wah. I also want to experiment with it in other effects types, something I've not done before. Overall, after spending some time with it I'm pleased. Still wish it had the best of the Boss GT10B Bass presets but I am a creature of habit! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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