In the neverending battle between full-featured and compact ... Helix vs HX Stomp question

[HomespunEffects]

Ok, next question: has anyone used a Helix rack in a live situation?

 

[Jarick]

About twice the horsepower. But in reality this does not translate quite so straightforward. You can build for example a 4 amp block preset, but you will have a hard time fitting much else in there.

Realistically your presets will most likely look pretty similar to full Helix.

Practically I did find the QC likely has 50% more DSP than the Helix, which is more than I'd ever need. Enough to make a preset that's too big to deal with anyways. Cool thing with captures is that they are lower DSP so you can run even more of them. Again, not sure how practical that is, but I have run presets with dual amp captures and 3-4 drive pedal captures out front, with lots of DSP for other effects.

 

[laxu]

Practically I did find the QC likely has 50% more DSP than the Helix, which is more than I'd ever need. Enough to make a preset that's too big to deal with anyways. Cool thing with captures is that they are lower DSP so you can run even more of them. Again, not sure how practical that is, but I have run presets with dual amp captures and 3-4 drive pedal captures out front, with lots of DSP for other effects.

Yeah I think it's in a good DSP sweetspot. The Helix style processor management is not a nice thing though, but understandable.

Captures are a lot less demanding than the amp models. I think to make an actually functional 4 amp preset (just to try what 4 amps played at the same time sounds like!) I had to make one amp a capture to fit the fx I wanted in. This is not a very realistic scenario for anybody except tool fans that might want to do a 3 amp rig.

 

[Jarick]

Yeah I think it's in a good DSP sweetspot. The Helix style processor management is not a nice thing though, but understandable.

Captures are a lot less demanding than the amp models. I think to make an actually functional 4 amp preset (just to try what 4 amps played at the same time sounds like!) I had to make one amp a capture to fit the fx I wanted in. This is not a very realistic scenario for anybody except tool fans that might want to do a 3 amp rig.

I barely like two amps at the same time lol

Honestly for those situations where you want a kitchen sink but to swap out all kinds of effects, I like Fractal a bit more. But then scene management gets kind of hairy. Really cool for if you very specifically want that type of complexity, but not as much if you like to just build a pedalboard and turn things on and off.

 

[laxu]

I barely like two amps at the same time lol

Honestly for those situations where you want a kitchen sink but to swap out all kinds of effects, I like Fractal a bit more. But then scene management gets kind of hairy. Really cool for if you very specifically want that type of complexity, but not as much if you like to just build a pedalboard and turn things on and off.

Yeah multiple amp management is just painful on most modelers. I really liked using it on the Yamaha THR100HD because I had both amp controls right there next to each other instead of having to swap between blocks on a screen.

I like Fractal's approach with the channels because most of the time you want to swap between settings or models, not so much run several of them at once. Less clutter with that approach.