Helix Talk

[banned]

I tell ya, two musicians who sound the same no matter what they play through are John Cordy and Shawn Tubbs.

Shawn is a killer musician but he makes everything sound exactly the same in his gear videos. JNC adds too much delay and reverb for my taste - when he actually tweaks without all those FX, the model differences really come through.

 

[mercifulfuzziness]

I tell ya, two musicians who sound the same no matter what they play through are John Cordy and Shawn Tubbs.

Shawn is a killer musician but he makes everything sound exactly the same in his gear videos. JNC adds too much delay and reverb for my taste - when he actually tweaks without all those FX, the model differences really come through.

I have the JNC presets and some of them have so much delay that I wonder how to play with it. I always dial it down to barely noticeable and then it’s fine,

 

[mercifulfuzziness]

It's real. Many don't notice it at first, I sure didn't, but if you're sculpting sounds whether it be modeler presets, mixing tracks, or listening for your own enjoyment, the reflections off of flat surfaces around you will influence what you're hearing.

At first it'll just be a feeling of "hey why does it sound wildly different in my car/other room/stage?"

You can choose to try to do something about it, or just simply dial in presets and mix tracks only meant to be heard in your space.

Will probably buy it. It also looks better :)

 

[sashimi]

I tell ya, two musicians who sound the same no matter what they play through are John Cordy and Shawn Tubbs.

Shawn is a killer musician but he makes everything sound exactly the same in his gear videos. JNC adds too much delay and reverb for my taste - when he actually tweaks without all those FX, the model differences really come through.

Agreed on JNC, such a great player but it doesn’t matter what amp/model he uses when it’s so drenched in delay and reverb. Way too wet. It also is a dead giveaway for amp modeler tone. It just doesn’t sound real. I gravitate towards dryer tone with room reverb and maybe a little slapback delay.

 

[spawnofthesith]

Have practice tomorrow and still slightly determined to attempt to go direct with the Stomp, but I’m still not happy with direct tones I’m dialing in for high gain :/

What’s the over/under that the Midas preamps on our XR-18 might save the day and make me happy?

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Short question: Do monitor stand make a huge difference compared to having them on a desk?

I just play at home, don't do any mixing.

And if it;'s worth it, any suggestions for the JBL 305s?

I’d go for stands every time, speakers on the desk sounds like ass.

Try and go for the sturdiest ones you can. Ideally you can fill them with sand or weights to lower their resonant frequency. If you’re on a budget, go to a HW store and buy concrete blocks. You can always drape something ever them if you don’t like brutalism.

 

[ian_dissonance]

What’s the over/under that the Midas preamps on our XR-18 might save the day and make me happy?

0/0. Get there 20 minutes early with some presets you’re mostly close to happy with, set your channel flat, crank it up, then dial it in. If you’re doing heavy stuff and just want a “hot live guitar monitor” tone pick a dual cab and do two 57s with one off axis and dial to that.

 

[spawnofthesith]

0/0. Get there 20 minutes early with some presets you’re mostly close to happy with, set your channel flat, crank it up, then dial it in. If you’re doing heavy stuff and just want a “hot live guitar monitor” tone pick a dual cab and do two 57s with one off axis and dial to that.

I have yet to try any dual cabs, thanks for the tip!

 

[ian_dissonance]

I have yet to try any dual cabs, thanks for the tip!

For recording I’ll try all kinds of IRs/cabs. For live tones it’s pretty much either an IR of an off-axis 57 1.5” off the cap edge of a V30 Mesa OS or the Helix version of said cab in dual with dual 57s. For me that’s the live metal guitar sound I expect to hear out of a PA. I’ll put pretty much any high-gain model ahead of that and be able to dial in a tone I like a lot at gig volume. Helps to remember the high cut on the cabs is a gradual slope so you can cut down to 5-6khz and not completely lose everything above it, either.

 

[EOengineer]

If you guys really want to get wild with the Super Reverb pull the bass all the way down, crank the master and treble, add the Mesa 5 band GEQ between the amp and a sealed 4x12 cab.

 

[spawnofthesith]

Have practice in an hour. Been busy getting presets ready for my experimental test going direct tonight

Settled on us princess for cleans and Revv red for high gain, and using an ownhammer IR. Also made sure to give myself a 24hr pallet cleans of not plugging into any of my real amps

I guess I didn’t realize how quickly DSP starts disappearing once you start adding amp modeling. I have 4 presets I use, I was hoping to to be able to drop both amps into duplicates of each and have a button to just alternate them but yeah not happening lol. So basically just doubled them up with one clean and one distorted of each. In several cases I had to trim down the fx though especially with the Revv

anyway this should be interesting, will report back

 

[Orvillain]

Agreed on JNC, such a great player but it doesn’t matter what amp/model he uses when it’s so drenched in delay and reverb. Way too wet. It also is a dead giveaway for amp modeler tone. It just doesn’t sound real. I gravitate towards dryer tone with room reverb and maybe a little slapback delay.

Hilariously, I find his tones really quite dry and plain Jane, in comparison to the sort of thing I go for. Tone is subjective I suppose.

 

[sashimi]

Hilariously, I find his tones really quite dry and plain Jane, in comparison to the sort of thing I go for. Tone is subjective I suppose.

You must not mean dry as in the meaning of wet and dry with regards to effects then? Because there is so much delay and reverb on his tone that it’s drowning in it.

Or do you mean dry like his sense of humor?

I agree there is a bland quality to his tone absolutely. Not my style at all. Sounds very p&w-y. Now if he took off all that extra crap and played those licks through a dry amp with a hint of room reverb, it could sound pretty tasty.

 

[Byrdman]

Hilariously, I find his tones really quite dry and plain Jane, in comparison to the sort of thing I go for. Tone is subjective I suppose.

Not my taste in tones, but it does sound good for what it is and he is a monster player, IMO.

Every new video he posts up I tell myself "this is the day he cuts all that delay and reverb off and just cranks the shit out of a old school Marshall"

Sadly, every day I'm disappointed...

 

[spawnofthesith]

So… I didn’t love that at all. I might just have to accept that this path isn’t for me

It wasn’t unusable, but it wasn’t enjoyable at all. Cleans and low to mid gain tones were actually great but high gain seems to be the bottleneck for me. I’m still fairly certain a lot of the problem might be me, as I’ve heard plenty of great sounding stuff all the time on the web from y’all and elsewhere, and have heard Stomps going direct sounding great live in others hands as well. But at a certain point I do feel like I need to stop investing energy lol.

I may or may not try this again, I guess it depends on how lazy I’m feeling about moving additional gear next week, and also if I can make any progress dialing stuff

I do want to remake some of these presets with the Panama red because as far as high gain that has been the best sounding. I called an audible at the last minute between work and practice tonight because I stopped using the red under the impression that it was too much DSP, but after realizing that I couldn’t go the route of my original plan and still had to rework how I was doing presets I had already committed to the Revv model.

On top of this I also feel like I should dive in more to messing with the global EQ or else other EQ blocks or all of the above


Aside from just not liking the tones that much, some other issues I encountered:


As I’ve mentioned we use IEMs. I also wanted some in room volume so I had my guitars going through a PA speaker. It sounded quite different through there than my IEMs, and truthfully even worse

There seemed to be a model to model volume discrepancy between the IEMs and the PA. I thought I had my levels dialed in pretty well at home, but when I got there I was just listening to the PA at first. I went and completely changed all my different amp level settings do to to match through the PA, but then once I had the IEMs in it was all fuckered up

Second major issue…. NOISE. Wtf? I’m so lost. I have masters set pretty low and I’m not doing anything -that- crazy with gain. Once at practice I literally maxed out the input gate and I was still running into issues. Interestingly, my bass player recently switched to a QC and ever since he’s also had lots of feedback issues. Granted it has started to improve as he’s gotten more familiar and committed to it

I actually ended up turning off the PA speaker eventually because it sounded bad and wasn’t adding anything


I’m also willing to accept that this may all be user error and I’m just too stupid for this shit

However, I’m not too stupid for a tube amp and a microphone and I’ve never had to fight any of that this much


Regardless, I still love the stomp and I couldn’t live without it at this point. One of the best pieces of gear I’ve purchased


Interesting side note, while I don’t love the amp models thus far, what I do love is all the dirt pedal models. Either through a real amp or in a modelled chain

 

[ian_dissonance]

So… I didn’t love that at all. I might just have to accept that this path isn’t for me

It wasn’t unusable, but it wasn’t enjoyable at all. Cleans and low to mid gain tones were actually great but high gain seems to be the bottleneck for me. I’m still fairly certain a lot of the problem might be me, as I’ve heard plenty of great sounding stuff all the time on the web from y’all and elsewhere, and have heard Stomps going direct sounding great live in others hands as well. But at a certain point I do feel like I need to stop investing energy lol.

I may or may not try this again, I guess it depends on how lazy I’m feeling about moving additional gear next week, and also if I can make any progress dialing stuff

I do want to remake some of these presets with the Panama red because as far as high gain that has been the best sounding. I called an audible at the last minute between work and practice tonight because I stopped using the red under the impression that it was too much DSP, but after realizing that I couldn’t go the route of my original plan and still had to rework how I was doing presets I had already committed to the Revv model.

On top of this I also feel like I should dive in more to messing with the global EQ or else other EQ blocks or all of the above


Aside from just not liking the tones that much, some other issues I encountered:


As I’ve mentioned we use IEMs. I also wanted some in room volume so I had my guitars going through a PA speaker. It sounded quite different through there than my IEMs, and truthfully even worse

There seemed to be a model to model volume discrepancy between the IEMs and the PA. I thought I had my levels dialed in pretty well at home, but when I got there I was just listening to the PA at first. I went and completely changed all my different amp level settings do to to match through the PA, but then once I had the IEMs in it was all fuckered up

Second major issue…. NOISE. Wtf? I’m so lost. I have masters set pretty low and I’m not doing anything -that- crazy with gain. Once at practice I literally maxed out the input gate and I was still running into issues. Interestingly, my bass player recently switched to a QC and ever since he’s also had lots of feedback issues. Granted it has started to improve as he’s gotten more familiar and committed to it

I actually ended up turning off the PA speaker eventually because it sounded bad and wasn’t adding anything


I’m also willing to accept that this may all be user error and I’m just too stupid for this shit

However, I’m not too stupid for a tube amp and a microphone and I’ve never had to fight any of that this much


Regardless, I still love the stomp and I couldn’t live without it at this point. One of the best pieces of gear I’ve purchased


Interesting side note, while I don’t love the amp models thus far, what I do love is all the dirt pedal models. Either through a real amp or in a modelled chain

That sucks. I’m always curious to hear how other people hear stuff. Gotta use what works at the end of the day.

 

[spawnofthesith]

On a more positive note, the US Princess was actually pretty fantastic and very dynamic feeling/sounding. Could go from clean-clean to light dirt with picking dynamics and pickup selection

 

[sashimi]

Helix LT is on sale for 849 right now

 

[mercifulfuzziness]

Hilariously, I find his tones really quite dry and plain Jane, in comparison to the sort of thing I go for. Tone is subjective I suppose.

His Super Reverb patch is good. And funny enough, he keeps it really simple with that one.

Even I am capable of getting a decent tone with the super reverb. Haven’t played anything else in days.

 

[Orvillain]

You must not mean dry as in the meaning of wet and dry with regards to effects then? Because there is so much delay and reverb on his tone that it’s drowning in it.

No. I mean dry as in meaning of wet and dry. His tone is too dry for me.