3.5 HX Cabinets

[James Freeman]

It's just like samples back in the late 90s, early 00s. Drum machines all but died out at the time because there were hundreds of Akai sample libraries with thousands of kicks, snares, whatever. It's not that the libraries were objectively better; there were just way more sounds to choose from.

Good analogy.

Speakers and cabs have the biggest influence and are the most inconsistent element of electric guitar tone.
The paper cone sounds different every batch and even every consecutive production number... there is no such thing as 'a' Greenback or 'a' Vintage 30, there are hundreds of variations and flavors of these speakers.

Helix 3.50 has five different Vintage 30 cabs and they all sound very different, same with IR vendors that offer various types of Vintage 30, China, UK, Marshall, Mesa, "from 1991", "from 2009"... all sound very different.
I can say that it's not the cab construction that makes such a huge difference, it's the Celestion Lottery ™ .

That's the beauty of IRs, we get to try a "historically significant Vintage 30 from 1987 bought from Slash's private collection", but as far as tone goes all I need is a well balanced flavor of these speaker types which the Helix delivers imo.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Good analogy.

Speakers and cabs have the biggest influence and are the most inconsistent element of electric guitar tone.
The paper cone sounds different every batch and even every consecutive production number... there is no such thing as 'a' Greenback or 'a' Vintage 30, there are hundreds of variations and flavors of these speakers.

Helix 3.50 has five different Vintage 30 cabs and they all sound very different, same with IR vendors that offer various types of Vintage 30, China, UK, Marshall, Mesa, "from 1991", "from 2009"... all sound very different.
I can say that it's not the cab construction that makes such a huge difference, it's the Celestion Lottery ™ .

That's the beauty of IRs, we get to try a "historically significant Vintage 30 from 1987 bought from Slash's private collection", but as far as tone goes all I need is a well balanced flavor of these speaker types which the Helix delivers imo.

all this, plus the same for microphones (varying mic to mic, wearing over time), mic preamps (and impedance interactions with dynamic and ribbon mics), all the different positions/distance from the cab.

As it happens, I had a few more mics arrive today. All of these are basically the same but they all vary at least as much as any 2 of the same speaker:

 

[James Freeman]

Yep, all the membrane elements like speakers & dynamic mics have high deviations.
Finding the better sounding ones or learning to get best results with what you have is the name of the game.

I don't think IR vendors are doing things radically different form one another, it's the speakers and SM57's (usually) that are all over the place.

 

[laxu]

How the hell is Helix Native not HiDPI aware yet? It's either tiny or a blurry mess.

As for the new speaker cabs, they sound really nice. I tried some factory presets and some of them had the old cabs still and swapping for the new ones made things sound just massively better. I would have no trouble using the new cabs instead of 3rd party IRs.

One feature that they do lack is the ability to quickly toggle them on and off so you can easily audition each cab in Dual mode.

Another huge drawback for me is what has annoyed me about the Helix system a long time and that's ditching all your settings when changing models. Line6 should just add some "maintain existing settings" toggle switch in the UI somewhere so if you change cabs they keep the same mics, placement etc so you can easily audition them at the same settings.

 

[Stone]

Gotta say man this update was awesome these new Cabs and ease of dialing in is so awesome and sounds really good

 

[ejecta]

Gotta say man this update was awesome these new Cabs and ease of dialing in is so awesome and sounds really good

View attachment 3041

Same. I wish this would have been around a long time ago. Would have saved me time and money searching and trying IR’s.

 

[vino_buono]

I have mostly been using IRs lately. After installing 3.50 I have done some (admittedly limited) tests with the new cabs. 90% of my presets employ a G25 or G25+V30 cab. It wasn't hard to find something I liked using the Mesa V30 cab, whereas I did not like too much the Marshall V30 which was my first choice. Still need to try the other types of cabs.

I must say, what sounded good in headphones sounded even better at rehearsal last week. If the new cabs had been there when I bought my Helix, I doubt I would have purchased IR packs. Now? The new cabs sound slightly different from my IRs of choice, which is fully expected. It is good to have different options. We'll see what my bassist thinks -- I like to have him listen to my guitar tones and provide feedback .

 

[Stone]

For sure a lot have their go to IR's that work great for them, which is 100% ok
I always say no right or wrong just what works best for any one individual

 

[Jarick]

How the hell is Helix Native not HiDPI aware yet? It's either tiny or a blurry mess.

As for the new speaker cabs, they sound really nice. I tried some factory presets and some of them had the old cabs still and swapping for the new ones made things sound just massively better. I would have no trouble using the new cabs instead of 3rd party IRs.

One feature that they do lack is the ability to quickly toggle them on and off so you can easily audition each cab in Dual mode.

Another huge drawback for me is what has annoyed me about the Helix system a long time and that's ditching all your settings when changing models. Line6 should just add some "maintain existing settings" toggle switch in the UI somewhere so if you change cabs they keep the same mics, placement etc so you can easily audition them at the same settings.

If/when they make a standalone version of Helix Native, I will use the heck out of it.

 

[molul]

Another huge drawback for me is what has annoyed me about the Helix system a long time and that's ditching all your settings when changing models. Line6 should just add some "maintain existing settings" toggle switch in the UI somewhere so if you change cabs they keep the same mics, placement etc so you can easily audition them at the same settings.

+1 that would be really handy.

 

[James Freeman]

Right click -> User Default

 

[James Freeman]

Anyone thinks it will be useful to add more flavors of the same speaker even from the same cab?

Knowing that every speaker from the same cab sounds slightly different and sometimes radically different, maybe it will be useful to have more than one variation of the same cab if it has more than one speaker?
ie. A slider (1-4) for the different speakers inside the cab model.

I personally think the new Brit 30 cab is a dud compared to any other video or IR I've heard of the Marshall Vintage speaker, so I wonder if the internal listening tests by the Line 6 are landing on the 'best' sounding speaker that represents that cab.

 

[the swede]

Anyone thinks it will be useful to add more flavors of the same speaker even from the same cab?

Knowing that every speaker from the same cab sounds slightly different and sometimes radically different, maybe it will be useful to have more than one variation of the same cab if it has more than one speaker?
ie. A slider (1-4) for the different speakers inside the cab model.

I personally think the new Brit 30 cab is a dud compared to any other video or IR I've heard of the Marshall Vintage speaker, so I wonder if the internal listening tests by the Line 6 are landing on the 'best' sounding speaker that represents that cab.

The VIR thing in Amplitube does this. It’s pretty clearly audible when turning the dial that moves the mic position around the outer circle of the speaker, that the speakers nearby has an impact. It’s also presented visually, the adjacent speakers becomes highlighted in red/orange when a mic i closer to it. It’s working pretty good.

Too time consuming for my taste (another tweaker rabbit hole), but definitely useful, not taking into consideration how Amplitube cabs sound generally.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

The VIR thing in Amplitube does this. It’s pretty clearly audible when turning the dial that moves the mic position around the outer circle of the speaker, that the speakers nearby has an impact. It’s also presented visually, the adjacent speakers becomes highlighted in red/orange when a mic i closer to it. It’s working pretty good.

I found the “bleed from other speakers” thing in amplitube a bit of a fad, but there is definitely some nice variation between top and bottom speakers in there. On some cabs I certainly have a preference between one or the other.

I agree about the HX Marshall BV cab - that V30 sounds REALLY fizzy to me and not my favourite representation that speaker/cab. Its usually a good one to have that'll suit lots of stuff so it would be cool to have an alternate take on it. As it happens, its one of the cabs that I think Amplitube has a pretty good capture of. If you own both I'd recommend trying.

 

[laxu]

Anyone thinks it will be useful to add more flavors of the same speaker even from the same cab?

Knowing that every speaker from the same cab sounds slightly different and sometimes radically different, maybe it will be useful to have more than one variation of the same cab if it has more than one speaker?
ie. A slider (1-4) for the different speakers inside the cab model.

I personally think the new Brit 30 cab is a dud compared to any other video or IR I've heard of the Marshall Vintage speaker, so I wonder if the internal listening tests by the Line 6 are landing on the 'best' sounding speaker that represents that cab.

I think it'd just add extra complication without a sufficient enough reward. With cab sims like these it's easy to move a mic around and if that doesn't do it for you, use a different mic model or the dual mic setup. Or different cab.

I've messed around a lot with ML Sound Lab MIKKO and found that the usefulness of extra mics tops out at 3-4. MIKKO can do up to 9, each mic with its own position, model and even a different cab. So dual mics like on Helix and QC atm is more than enough.

With cab sims I find myself mostly thinking in terms of "is this too dark or bright" and "is this too thin or fat" and it's pretty intuitive to learn where to move the mic to fix that.

 

[dk_ace]

I spent some meaningful time with these last week, and they are exactly what I was hoping for. Comparing them to my York IRs, they hold up. I won’t bother replacing my York IRs, I’ll use the ones I have. But these new stock cabs fill in some holes of speakers that I don’t use frequently but do want on occasion and speakers that York doesn’t have IRs for yet. There were a handful of IRs I hadn’t bought just because I didn’t use them enough to justify buying them all. Really glad to have those sounds back, I just couldn’t get along with the old stock cabs. These new ones have opened up some new territory for me in Helix.

Strongly considering setting ther user default for every single cab to be an sm57 1” off the cap edge position to make it easy to scroll through and compare them when looking for a cab by ear. I was kinda surprised which cab I preferred for a few sounds I was making. I’ve never gotten along with the mesa extension cab even though I generally like EVs. Now it’s one of my favorites?

Not sure I’m changing those defaults yet, might be a mistake, but I’m considering it…

@Digital Igloo - we need more

D

 

[Baba]

I’ve been digging a 121 at a 45 degree angle. Am I weird?

 

[Digital Igloo]

I spent some meaningful time with these last week, and they are exactly what I was hoping for. Comparing them to my York IRs, they hold up. I won’t bother replacing my York IRs, I’ll use the ones I have. But these new stock cabs fill in some holes of speakers that I don’t use frequently but do want on occasion and speakers that York doesn’t have IRs for yet. There were a handful of IRs I hadn’t bought just because I didn’t use them enough to justify buying them all. Really glad to have those sounds back, I just couldn’t get along with the old stock cabs. These new ones have opened up some new territory for me in Helix.

Strongly considering setting ther user default for every single cab to be an sm57 1” off the cap edge position to make it easy to scroll through and compare them when looking for a cab by ear. I was kinda surprised which cab I preferred for a few sounds I was making. I’ve never gotten along with the mesa extension cab even though I generally like EVs. Now it’s one of my favorites?

Not sure I’m changing those defaults yet, might be a mistake, but I’m considering it…

@Digital Igloo - we need more

D

More cabs are coming.

 

[dk_ace]

I’ve been digging a 121 at a 45 degree angle. Am I weird?

I don’t know that I’ve ever tried that?

D

 

[shanesiegle]

I spent some meaningful time with these last week, and they are exactly what I was hoping for. Comparing them to my York IRs, they hold up. I won’t bother replacing my York IRs, I’ll use the ones I have. But these new stock cabs fill in some holes of speakers that I don’t use frequently but do want on occasion and speakers that York doesn’t have IRs for yet. There were a handful of IRs I hadn’t bought just because I didn’t use them enough to justify buying them all. Really glad to have those sounds back, I just couldn’t get along with the old stock cabs. These new ones have opened up some new territory for me in Helix.

Strongly considering setting ther user default for every single cab to be an sm57 1” off the cap edge position to make it easy to scroll through and compare them when looking for a cab by ear. I was kinda surprised which cab I preferred for a few sounds I was making. I’ve never gotten along with the mesa extension cab even though I generally like EVs. Now it’s one of my favorites?

Not sure I’m changing those defaults yet, might be a mistake, but I’m considering it…

@Digital Igloo - we need more

D

I’m a York guy all the way but in my stomp I’m using the new cabs and don’t miss them at all. Really well done!