Helix 3.7: The Freeman Update

[the-trooper]

Dear Line 6, can we have 2203, 2204, 800 that has the stock KERRANG please?

This is how I imagine the negotiations would go:

 

[EOengineer]

Brit Plexi Brightt doesn't have a bright cap either which I would expect to be in a Super Lead circuit form any era.

Not sure if this was a reply to me, but I mentioned the Brit Trem, not the Brit Plexi. The Brit Plexi is another model we’re in agreement on…useful for some things but does NOT sound like I expect a Superlead to sound.

FWIW, I’d recommend giving the Brit Trem Bright a fresh shot. When first loaded up it sounds pretty dark and mushy…but pull the bass back and push the mids, treble, and presence to find the good stuff. This is mostly where I get my Marshall kicks in the HX world. If Marshall was the only sound I use I’d have to switch over to Tonex, who is KILLING it with the Marshall tones.

 

[dk_ace]

Not sure if this was a reply to me, but I mentioned the Brit Trem, not the Brit Plexi. The Brit Plexi is another model we’re in agreement on…useful for some things but does NOT sound like I expect a Superlead to sound.

FWIW, I’d recommend giving the Brit Trem Bright a fresh shot. When first loaded up it sounds pretty dark and mushy…but pull the bass back and push the mids, treble, and presence to find the good stuff. This is mostly where I get my Marshall kicks in the HX world. If Marshall was the only sound I use I’d have to switch over to Tonex, who is KILLING it with the Marshall tones.

Brit trem bright used to be my favorite. I use my volume knob and dynamics to clean things up a lot of time when playing live though, and that model got a ragged top end spiky thing when I tried to clean it up. It got old and I moved on. I use the Brit plexi for that now. A stronger bright cap would give it a little more upper mid juice which would be nice but I get along with it well.

D

 

[EOengineer]

Brit trem bright used to be my favorite. I use my volume knob and dynamics to clean things up a lot of time when playing live though, and that model got a ragged top end spiky thing when I tried to clean it up. It got old and I moved on. I use the Brit plexi for that now. A stronger bright cap would give it a little more upper mid juice which would be nice but I get along with it well.

D

The Brit Plexi sounds good. At one point I had my 1959 set up with a pull on the bright volume that would kill the bright cap. As a frequent tele player, sometimes I would want that bright cap bypassed - often for lower-than-crazy volumes using drive pedals. That bypassed bright cap always left higher gain sounds feeling flat and took all the life out of the strings when using a Les Paul for bigger 70s-90s rock sounds. The Brit Plexi reminds of that sound. It's a good sound, just not usually what I'm looking for.

The Brit Trem works similarly to my 1959. It can get really spikey if I push the treble and presence too high. It's a balancing act to push the mids and highs enough to tighten up the response and excite the circuit while not taking your face off with top end. I have to be VERY careful with single coils, but my Les Pauls love the brightness. I tend to keep the drive in the 5-7.5 range as things start getting tubby beyond that point, and you lose the volume knob cleanup. I haven't noticed any spiky stuff outside the normal spikyness I'm used to managing with Superleands.

All this bright cap talk probably seems so pedantic to folks, but it makes such a dramatic difference in the feel, response, and sound of Marshall circuits that both my 1959 AND 2204 have 3 way bright cap mods that allow me to bypass or swap in different cap values.

 

[dk_ace]

The Brit Plexi sounds good. At one point I had my 1959 set up with a pull on the bright volume that would kill the bright cap. As a frequent tele player, sometimes I would want that bright cap bypassed - often for lower-than-crazy volumes using drive pedals. That bypassed bright cap always left higher gain sounds feeling flat and took all the life out of the strings when using a Les Paul for bigger 70s-90s rock sounds. The Brit Plexi reminds of that sound. It's a good sound, just not usually what I'm looking for.

The Brit Plexi works similarly to my 1959. It can get really spikey if I push the treble and presence too high. It's a balancing act to push the mids and highs enough to tighten up the response and excite the circuit while not taking your face off with top end. I have to be VERY careful with single coils, but my Les Pauls love the brightness. I tend to keep the drive in the 5-7.5 range as things start getting tubby beyond that point, and you lose the volume knob cleanup. I haven't noticed any spiky stuff outside the normal spikyness I'm used to managing with Superleands.

All this bright cap talk probably seems so pedantic to folks, but it makes such a dramatic difference in the feel, response, and sound of Marshall circuits that both my 1959 AND 2204 have 3 way bright cap mods that allow me to bypass or swap in different cap values.

The spiky sound I was talking about is with the Brit trem when cleaning it up with the volume knob. The Brit Plexi does not have that problem.

D

 

[ragingplatypi]

Vertical Herizon should have been the tip-off

It’s so sad. Vertical Horizon *was* a great guitar/musician oriented band that built a huge following on their own, and then the record company destroyed them. It actually wouldn’t surprise me if Line 6 was excited to work with them if it was before they got signed because they had the promise of having catchy pop tunes and serious guitar work. And we all know where it went from there.

 

[TSJMajesty]

… and special guest, Stiletto Deuce.

Haha
That's true. They do have names that could double as..., other names.

 

[James Freeman]

All this bright cap talk probably seems so pedantic to folks, but it makes such a dramatic difference in the feel, response, and sound of Marshall circuits

+1
The Helix 2204 sounds like it has more than the Gain cap removed, it is mushy and fizzy with zero crunch.
--

From the other place:

I no longer own a Helix. I sold it because of the ****** tones of their 800...
I prefer an amp model to sound as close to a standard of that real amp as possible. Having to start stacking EQ pedals and a boost or a drive to get something maybe kind of similar is a pain in the ass. When I want the tone of an amp I don’t own I’ll play through my FM3.

Many new amp-to-modeler 'converts' try this model first, and people who have been using modelers for years absolutely do compare the JCM800, every modeler has one.
The JCM800 is a benchmark, it's the one model you don't screw up.
--

I am a sucker for the jcm800 Kerrang. ToneX nailed it

If Marshall was the only sound I use I’d have to switch over to ToneX, who is KILLING it with the Marshall tones.

This is another reason not to screw up models in this day and age.
People have excellent reference now, accessible and even free NN based captures that sound like the real amp, albeit on one setting but still enough to do a comparison yourself, and without the agenda of paid youtubers that make everything sound the same.
--

Alright, I hope our posts given enough reasons for Line 6 to stop ignoring the crunchy Marshalls and make the Helix a relevant competitor for great Marshall tones.
Forget the "interesting and fun" nonsense, model a few proper crunchy Marshalls and make people happy.

 

[kartikg3]

Many new amp-to-modeler 'converts' try this model first, and people who have been using modelers for years absolutely do compare the JCM800, every modeler has one.
The JCM800 is a benchmark, it's the one model you don't screw up.

It's the first model I fire up on any modeler/plugin I try or own or buy... Ever. One of the reasons I flat out sold the Pod Go for an MX5. Headrush nailed Marshalls IMO. NUX MG300, and a Valeton GP100 as well (those are < 200 modelers).

Alas, I love everything else about HX so everything got sold for a Stomp. But nonetheless, Marshall JCM800 is my bread and butter tone. And I miss it badly.

 

[EOengineer]

The spiky sound I was talking about is with the Brit trem when cleaning it up with the volume knob. The Brit Plexi does not have that problem.

D

Yeah that’s my fault. I picked up what you were putting down and then mistyped in my reply.

The TLDR: I’ve found the Brit Trem to sound close to my 1959 when I have one of the bright caps switched in. There are some differences that I’ve always attributed to that HX model being a 50 watter and IIRC slightly different from the 1987/1959…but I do get the brash thing in the upper mids you mention. I usually tame that like I do in the real world, greenbacks or similar speakers - usually low wattage vintage spec ones seem to round it off but it depends on the what you are doing with it. Sometimes it’s just too spiky.

 

[James Freeman]

Brit Trem (Marshall JTM-50) is the only Marshall in the Helix that has a bright cap that I can measure.
It's an older Plexi spec with shared cathode and 270pF 56k tonestack.
It's osunds great in my opinion too and more versatile than the Brit Plexi due to that bright cap.

There is no 70's 1959 Super Lead spec in Helix with split cathode, 0.0022nF coupling cap and 5nF bright cap on Volume 1.
The Brit Plexi Brt is nowhere near bright enough for a 0.0022nF and it's missing the Volume 1 bright cap.

 

[EOengineer]

There is no 70's 1959 Super Lead spec in Helix with split cathode, 0.0022nF coupling cap and 5nF bright cap on Volume 1.

Yup. This is the good stuff. I know there are folks that go nuts for the late 60s Superleads, but 70s spec is where it’s at for me.

 

[kartikg3]

Use Case: Quick bend-down access to certain parameters to be assigned to the 3 control knobs on the HX Stomp. Real world use case: EQ during a gig. I map low to knob1, mid to knob2 and high to knob3. During the gig, if I want to quickly adjust the mids, I bend down and tweak knob2.

Would be cool if we could do multiple pages as well. This way we can potentially have more parameters assigned to the 3 knobs spread across multiple pages, for quick access. The Hotone Ampero has something of this sort I believe.

No matter which play mode we are on (any mode apart from the edit mode), ex. Snapshot mode or preset mode or stomp mode, turning any of these knobs quickly shows you the params and lets you tweak for a few secs before reverting to the normal screen. Currently in these modes the knobs don't do anything.

What do folks think of this idea. Ideascale link coming soon..

Please vote on ideascale: https://line6.ideascale.com/c/idea/87388

 

[SwirlyMaple]

The spiky sound I was talking about is with the Brit trem when cleaning it up with the volume knob. The Brit Plexi does not have that problem.

D

That treble spiky sound is precisely because of the bright cap in the Brit Trem :) That's why so many of them got snipped back in the day!

 

[pipelineaudio]

I'm still going with "ALL of the helix amps have a weird fuzzy distortion thing"

 

[James Freeman]

I've watched a lot of videos on Headfirst Amps on youtube, he's a well known Marshall tech in Australia.
Almost all vintage Marshalls that people send him to work on are modified, he says you're lucky to come across 1 in 20 that is completely stock.

Ben Adrian is also an experienced tech and will undoubtedly notice if a simple circuit like a classic Marshall has been modified, so anything that becomes a Helix models was by design, including the lack of bright caps on almost all Helix Marshalls and the omission of bright switches on other launch models.

The importance of stock amps, bright caps, and voicing switches was underestimated with the launch models which they started working on like 2013?, but that changed after a few years and the models gradually became less compromised, more accurate and sounding better than ever.
Yes, the launch models are closing on 10 years and I have zero doubt that if they redo any of the launch models they will sound very different.
--

Personally speaking, I think 3.60 was on the small side being mainly a Dumble update, I hope 3.70 delivers more tone shaping tools, I would be happy to see a 6 band parametric EQ and separate poweramps.
And of course the Silver Jubilee is easily one of the most requested models on ideascale since forever and the 2204 is in a dire need of a refresh.

 

[the swede]

I've watched a lot of videos on Headfirst Amps on youtube, he's a well known Marshall tech in Australia.
Almost all vintage Marshalls that people send him to work on are modified, he says you're lucky to come across 1 in 20 that is completely stock.

Ben Adrian is also an experienced tech and will undoubtedly notice if a simple circuit like a classic Marshall has been modified, so anything that becomes a Helix models was by design, including the lack of bright caps on almost all Helix Marshalls and the omission of bright switches on other launch models.

The importance of stock amps, bright caps, and voicing switches was underestimated with the launch models which they started working on like 2013?, but that changed after a few years and the models gradually became less compromised, more accurate and sounding better than ever.
Yes, the launch models are closing on 10 years and I have zero doubt that if they redo any of the launch models they will sound very different.
--

Personally speaking, I think 3.60 was on the small side being mainly a Dumble update, I hope 3.70 delivers more tone shaping tools, I would be happy to see a 6 band parametric EQ and separate poweramps.
And of course the Silver Jubilee is easily one of the most requested models on ideascale since forever and the 2204 is in a dire need of a refresh.

Maybe in the “next” series of hardware modelers Line6 will offer a stock un-modified 800 with mod settings both real and “dreamed up”. A page full of mods….

otoh that may be perfectly fine on current gen to as many people have no problems at all with things like preset spillover and poly stuff taking up one path dsp.

It is interesting though, the dsp usage of amp models has gone up (generally). In-house models less so. Also interesting.

No one was talking about that in this conversation though… just my thoughts wandering at breakfast

 

[James Freeman]

Helix JCM800 2203 Request Thread

I thought I should clean the Helix threads form my repetitive JCM800 requests, to keep things cleaner and so people know what thread NOT to read. I will slowly moving all my JCM800 posts and memes here. Sorry for being annoying AF, this should mitigate it a little. Also, my old JCM800 thread...

thegearforum.com

 

[Elf]

All this bright cap talk probably seems so pedantic to folks,

 

[Elf]

I have no recent experience with old Marshall amps, more or less how far does the potentiometer has to be open for the cap between Vcc and Output to have no perceptible effect?