Helix Preamp vs power amp

[pipelineaudio]

Trying to incorporate the Poly Capo into kitchen sink type of presets means trying preamps instead of power amps...Watching Jim Lil's videos and seeing the similarity between preamp and poweramp distortion really has me scratching my head. Some helix models have parameters in the preamp that you'd expect to be missing without the power amp, but many if not all do not have the presence control, though with an RTA I can get the frequencies very close...Am i giving up something super important without power amps?

 

[sleewell]

i didnt really like the preamps in a live situation. the amp blocks sound and feel more real to me for some reason but to be honest i didn't devote a lot of time there is def a chance i missed something.

its pretty easy to try them both. just put each into a preset with a looper and go back and forth between the preamp and power amp as a loop is going to hear the differences.

 

[pipelineaudio]

That's what I've done and after frequency matching, as I'm not using sag or any of the power amp specific stuff, I'm really not getting a difference in sound or feel, but if I do add more of the power amp effects, you can hear them

 

[ragingplatypi]

If it’s working for you I think you’re just lucky. I’ve tried some stuff like that before and it sounded fine, but never did quite what I wanted. I walked away from that experiment with a much greater respect for amp designers.