Helix Talk

[avanzzzi]

It's not 'swirl' because it is in the preamp models too.
Swirl is caused by bias excursion and rc time of the pi coupling caps and the bias pull resistors, the helix "zwing" noise in the distortion decay tails is not it.

Do you have any theories about the "zwingou"?

Has Digital Igloo weighted in on that artefact Mirror profiles was showing?

Would be amazing.

 

[Digital Igloo]

Apologies—hijacked this comment from the Fractal thread:

Mid tier 7” touch screens cost like $25-40 and I’m sure would come down in price with volume orders. Can’t imagine the actual screen cost adding more than $50-$75 but the dev UI/UX cost is a whole other thing for a redesign.

They're quite a bit more if you get one with enough brightness to see on summer festival stages or with anti-glare coating, higher heat specs, protective scratch-resistance film, etc.

But the notion that if a part is $40, the company adds only $75 to the street price... that's a 1.9x multiplier, which is suuuuuper lean, at least for the MI industry. One very large company operates with a 3x multiplier (perhaps because much of their R&D/design is outsourced to China), some smaller boutique pedal companies operate with an 8-10x multiplier, but my understanding is that most medium to large MI companies target somewhere between 4x and 6x, depending on the product, street price, run rate, R&D costs, project costs, country of origin, and other factors. Helps if no dealers, distributors, or 3rd-party sales companies get a cut.

So let's say a modeler company (not Line 6) operates with a 5x multiplier. That means a $40 touchscreen would add $200 to the product's street price. Yeah.

 

[Sascha Franck]

They're quite a bit more if you get one with enough brightness to see on summer festival stages

Fortunately these aren't used on HX devices.

Terribly S but defenitely CNR...

 

[timbuck3]

lol

 

[pipelineaudio]

How about a pass to the studio guys? Bradshaw CAE+ and Bogner Fish.

 

[HomespunEffects]

I found a major bug in the Dual Rectifier model. It doesn't sound like shit when you turn down your guitar volume.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Fwiw, how comes you can do close to nothing with the keyboard in HX Edit? for instance I'd absolutely love arrow up/down to select, arrow L/R to adjust parameters (in whatever suitable increments, heck, add CTL as a modifier key for smaller/larger increments). I pretty much always have a pick in my hand while adjusting sounds, operating a mouse is getting quite tedious that way.

Or hey, I have a revolutionary alternate idea: What about a mobile editor? I'm sure this has never been asked for, yet...

 

[spawnofthesith]

Has anyone experienced issues with overheating to the point of being completely dead/non responsive with any helix/HX units?

I played a gig yesterday and my HX one took a shit. Just completely died. I was concerned it was bricked. This happened during the first song of the set to so it really sucked.. obvious first assumption was that it was a patch cable so I’m frantically checking all that. Took me a while to realize that it was the HX one itself (sucks that it can’t pass a signal still if it’s not powered on). The display leaves a lot to be desired for outdoor gigs and is basically invisible in sunlight so I couldn’t tell that the screen was dead for a while.

Took a look again this morning and it seems to be fine now so I’m at a loss. Temps were about 86 degrees and my board was in direct sunlight. No issues with any other pedals though…

I can’t think of a good explanation besides overheating. Maybe the power was a bit questionable but it was powering the mixer pa everyone’s amps pedals etc seems like the HX would have to be awfully needy for it to be the ONE piece of gear on stage that decided it wasn’t going to play nice with the power





Perhaps the tube gods are punishing me because literally yesterday morning when packing up I was thinking to myself “Maybe I should get an HX stomp as backup if things ever go south with an amp live”. That idea vacated my head reaaalll quick

 

[Digital Igloo]

Has anyone experienced issues with overheating to the point of being completely dead/non responsive with any helix/HX units?

I played a gig yesterday and my HX one took a shit. Just completely died. I was concerned it was bricked. This happened during the first song of the set to so it really sucked.. obvious first assumption was that it was a patch cable so I’m frantically checking all that. Took me a while to realize that it was the HX one itself (sucks that it can’t pass a signal still if it’s not powered on). The display leaves a lot to be desired for outdoor gigs and is basically invisible in sunlight so I couldn’t tell that the screen was dead for a while.

Took a look again this morning and it seems to be fine now so I’m at a loss. Temps were about 86 degrees and my board was in direct sunlight. No issues with any other pedals though…

I can’t think of a good explanation besides overheating. Maybe the power was a bit questionable but it was powering the mixer pa everyone’s amps pedals etc seems like the HX would have to be awfully needy for it to be the ONE piece of gear on stage that decided it wasn’t going to play nice with the power





Perhaps the tube gods are punishing me because literally yesterday morning when packing up I was thinking to myself “Maybe I should get an HX stomp as backup if things ever go south with an amp live”. That idea vacated my head reaaalll quick

Something's amiss. I forget the temp spec for HX One but IIRC, it's closer to 120°F. On summer festival stages, maybe direct sunlight over several hours can get it to that, but 85° shouldn't get anywhere close to that.

 

[spawnofthesith]

Something's amiss. I forget the temp spec for HX One but IIRC, it's closer to 120°F. On summer festival stages, maybe direct sunlight over several hours can get it to that, but 85° shouldn't get anywhere close to that.

Any chance it would be the combination of heat and a potentially less than stellar electricity source? It was just straight up dead tried a different power supply and everything and all things equal it booted up and operated just fine this moening



On a side note I know I was supposed to update to the 3.7 firmware when I got it but I never did. Went ahead and did that afywr it was back on again this morning. On a more positive note really digging the feedbacker

I guess Maybe the old firmware could’ve decided to briefly crap out for whatever reason? Still wouldn’t make much sense as it’s operated flawlessly on a nearly constant daily use basis for the last 10 months for me

 

[Sascha Franck]

I remember reading about heat issues with the Floor when I was looking for one. Didn't seem much more than anecdotal evidence, yet not exactly reassuring. I do however remember mine to get almost scaringly hot on one particular gig when the sun sail for the stage arrived late and we had to check sound without. But knowing that "hot" for electronic items isn't the same hot as for human skin, I didn't worry too much.
And let's not talk about visibility for now.

 

[spawnofthesith]

Ha it’s been manageable enough at other outdoor gigs this summer just was not very obvious that the screen was dead when trying to identify the sudden loss of signal in fluster

 

[spawnofthesith]

We were also playing in famously haunted park so maybe it was just ghosts

https://denverterrors.com/cheesman-park/

 

[dbagchee]

You can set the HX One to true bypass and it would still pass signal unplugged (but hopefully it doesn’t happen again)

 

[spawnofthesith]

You can set the HX One to true bypass and it would still pass signal unplugged (but hopefully it doesn’t happen again)

Hmm trying to use true bypass mode seems unusable. Volume drop to the point of almost being mute and tonally what little signal you can hear sounds like a cocked wah ?

 

[SillyOctpuss]

Hmm trying to use true bypass mode seems unusable. Volume drop to the point of almost being mute and tonally what little signal you can hear sounds like a cocked wah ?

That really doesn't sound right. Could your unit be faulty?

 

[dbagchee]

Yeah that’s weird - it’s a hardware bypass so it shouldn’t effect the signal at all.

 

[spawnofthesith]

That really doesn't sound right. Could your unit be faulty?

Yeah that’s weird - it’s a hardware bypass so it shouldn’t effect the signal at all.

Here’s a quick voice memo demonstration. Also note the high pitch squeal in true bypass

 

[SillyOctpuss]

The level difference between the two definitely doesn't seem right. My hx stomp seems a bit duller in true bypass than dsp but that's just because dsp bypass is buffering the signal. The volume is about the same.

 

[spawnofthesith]

The level difference between the two definitely doesn't seem right. My hx stomp seems a bit duller in true bypass than dsp but that's just because dsp bypass is buffering the signal. The volume is about the same.

If I pull the HX one completely out of the chain my signal still sounds pretty much the same as it does when it’s in there with the DSP buffering