Helix users: do you hear SAG, hum, ripple, bias and Bias X?

[mercifulfuzziness]

/// out of curiosity ///

For those who have never seen it. It’s those weird parameters below

 

[Sleezy E]

No

 

[Karl Houseknecht]

I definitely hear and feel the effects of sag. If you remove all sag I hear and feel it in the low end.

 

[HomespunEffects]

Yes, I hear sag but the stock setting on the helix models seems excessive compared to a real amp. The other settings I can hear a difference but I don’t see a point to using Hum and Ripple and zero them out.

 

[DieSchmalle]

I hear:
Sag as compression i.e. transient hiding.
Bias as sweetness of power amp clipping and mid-forwardness.
BiasX as clarity / openness with overdriven power amps.
Hum and ripple as 60 cycle hum and ghost notes on some amps.

 

[dronerstone]

Sag and bias, yes.

The others, not sure. Haven't tried A/B listening, since I left them alone until just recently.

 

[0XI0]

I hear bias x when you turn it off, the distortion sounds like a pedal, it's really quick and fast and always the same. sometimes i like that, if the modeled squish is "not quite there" and maybe annoying, you can turn it off/down

 

[sashimi]

Sag - not really. Except in a very extreme example posted here recently

Hum - absolutely. Turn it up to 8-10, you’ll hear it. Interesting how it affects distorted tones just below the threshold where it becomes too loud to ignore.

Ripple - a little bit when turned all the way up. Not nearly as drastic as hum.

Bias/x - i can hear a ‘sweet spot’ when I sweep through these. It mostly just sounds a little louder in the sweet spots.

 

[the-trooper]

Yes, go from extreme to extreme, zero to 10. It's pretty noticeable that way.

 

[the swede]

I used sag and bias quite often with the Litigator (my favourite helix amp).
So for cleans I used sag at 8 and lowered bias (if I remember correctly) to give the cleans some heft and squish. Then I snapshot programmed the Litigator so when going dirty I reduced sag and bumped up the bias.
It’s very noticeable imo. Sag def adds a nice feel to cleans and when the amp is dirty reducing the sag helps to keep a tighter response.

The litigator has “hum” so reducing hum removes that hum tone.

Regarding ripple and hum it depends on amp models but I believe certain amps has a really obvious reacting to these controls as you sometimes can hear an additional ghost note and other phenomenons. Just pull those sliders from max to min and listen. Certain models have more or less of “stuff” there.

 

[dk_ace]

Sag and bias, yes. I didn’t mess much with the others. Sag could be used to dial in the compression and low end to varying degrees. I like some classic amps with the bias hot which reduces their gain some and changes how they feel a little.

D