Line 6 Helix Stadium Talk

[Karl Houseknecht]

Agoura Plexi. I think it sounds like absolute trash with most of the cabs I would pair with it. Any flavor of greenback. Blackbacks.

Should sound great with a 25 watt greenback cab, right? Wrong. But if you swap out that HX greenback cab with virtually any third party greenback IR? Sounds great. Heck, I can even get the old HX Plexi to sound good with the HX cabs.

Which leads me to ask: Is there something wrong with this amp when paired with an HX cab?

 

[Gary_W]

Are you placing the gate at the beginning of the chain?

Post the preset here. I’ll check it out on an hour or so when I get home from work.

Also, cats rule.

Thank you - appreciate it.

When I tried it a day or two back, I put it in front of a fairly busy patch I’d made from scratch. Amp was the Agoura Vox (which I really, really like).

Today, I put another Agoura amp with a cab (apologies, I don’t remember which one!) on a brand new preset, single line, simple as it gets. It was edge of breakup with the guitar I was using. Soon as I put the horizon gate on, I have a clean amp at a lower volume. Which is bizarre. Default noise gate in the input works for me as I’d expect a gate to behave as in ‘cuts the crap you don’t want when you’re not playing but leaves it alone when you are’.

If it’s not doing the same for you (and I’m guessing it’s not) then I’ll have to figure out how to export the preset I was using - I haven’t done that yet!

Reason I’m not moving is that I’m terrified. This is Albert (but not the Albert who often posts here)

 

[AlbertA]

JFC he’s gonna do one of these for every amp on the platform, isn’t he.

Probably but I did make me try the hi watt now.

I dropped it in my “halo emulation” patch and getting a gorgeous tone with my JS1200 bridge pickup, coil split, volume and tone backed a little bit.

 

[AlbertA]

This is Albert (but not the Albert who often posts here)

View attachment 56020

 

[ccc118]

Agoura Plexi. I think it sounds like absolute trash with most of the cabs I would pair with it. Any flavor of greenback. Blackbacks.

Should sound great with a 25 watt greenback cab, right? Wrong. But if you swap out that HX greenback cab with virtually any third party greenback IR? Sounds great. Heck, I can even get the old HX Plexi to sound good with the HX cabs.

Which leads me to ask: Is there something wrong with this amp when paired with an HX cab?

Hmm, have you gotten other amps to sound ok with the 25w greenback or is it just that amp? If I dial in the 2203 and the Plexi through the 25w cab and switch between them, nothing sounds weird to me. They both sound like I'd expect. What amp settings are you using?

 

[Karl Houseknecht]

have you gotten other amps to sound ok with the 25w greenback or is it just that amp?

Yep, I can get good sounds with other amps and that cab. Maybe I don’t like this amp? Seems odd when I can throw an Ownhammer or York IR at it and it sounds great but all of the HX cabs sound...off. I vastly prefer the HX Plexi at this point.

Typical plexi settings. Gain at 3:00 or so. Bass at 9:00 or lower. Treble and mid 2:00 or higher. This is just the bright channel.

 

[Gary_W]

Ok, with the Horizon Gate - I’ve found the issue I’m having.

If you select it, the sensitivity comes on at 6.0. Moving the focus view slider most of the places it will go makes this higher still. Bottom left (gentle setting) is at 2.5.

If you manually adjust the sensitivity down below 1 then it starts to become useable to me. Otherwise it just attenuates the heck out of the signal.

For those who love this thing, are you able to get any of the focus view settings to work for you? Most of my pickups are lowish output….. maybe if you’re hitting it with nailbombs?

 

[fiftyshadesofslay]

Ok, with the Horizon Gate - I’ve found the issue I’m having.

If you select it, the sensitivity comes on at 6.0. Moving the focus view slider most of the places it will go makes this higher still. Bottom left (gentle setting) is at 2.5.

If you manually adjust the sensitivity down below 1 then it starts to become useable to me. Otherwise it just attenuates the heck out of the signal.

For those who love this thing, are you able to get any of the focus view settings to work for you? Most of my pickups are lowish output….. maybe if you’re hitting it with nailbombs?

Haven’t tried focus view, but a gate is surely something you need to calibrate with your own gear? I certainly wouldn’t use focus view on it.

Mine works fine with low output PAF’s, either in the effects loop of a real amp or between a virtual amp and speaker. I barely have it in though, 1 or less sensitivity cleans the noise up just fine.

 

[Dimiguitar]

I am having a ton of fun with the 2203. I discovered that I could crank the master way up to 7 and it sounds like its going to explode out of the speakers.

That's cool. Power amp modelling is super important to me.

 

[MTB1973]

Thank you - appreciate it.

When I tried it a day or two back, I put it in front of a fairly busy patch I’d made from scratch. Amp was the Agoura Vox (which I really, really like).

Today, I put another Agoura amp with a cab (apologies, I don’t remember which one!) on a brand new preset, single line, simple as it gets. It was edge of breakup with the guitar I was using. Soon as I put the horizon gate on, I have a clean amp at a lower volume. Which is bizarre. Default noise gate in the input works for me as I’d expect a gate to behave as in ‘cuts the crap you don’t want when you’re not playing but leaves it alone when you are’.

If it’s not doing the same for you (and I’m guessing it’s not) then I’ll have to figure out how to export the preset I was using - I haven’t done that yet!

Reason I’m not moving is that I’m terrified. This is Albert (but not the Albert who often posts here)

View attachment 56020

 

[Gary_W]

Haven’t tried focus view, but a gate is surely something you need to calibrate with your own gear? I certainly wouldn’t use focus view on it.

Mine works fine with low output PAF’s, either in the effects loop of a real amp or between a virtual amp and speaker. I barely have it in though, 1 or less sensitivity cleans the noise up just fine.

Thanks for the reply - as a lot of the ethos of stadium is that it’s easy to use and the idea of focus view is ‘useful places to go within the effect’….. I’m wondering why it defaults to a 6 and many of the settings go higher? Are there situations where such high settings are useful? Everything else within the unit (so far!) that I’ve selected has been useable in its default settings but, with a default of 6, is that the case if the first thing you have to do is dial one of the settings way down?

 

[Dimiguitar]

Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

Here's another one. Revv Red 3 on Fractal, dialled to taste. Versus Stadium Revv Red, dialled similarly. Aggression is turned to 2 on Stadium, which should accurately represent the Red 3 selection on Fractal.

I tell you what I noticed:
- Dialling in Stadium was a doddle, and having the switches built directly into the amp channel for all the various modes ... excellent. Far prefer it to having them broken out as individual models on the Axe3.
- Axe3 has this kind of fuzziness that I cannot dial out. The pick attack gets clouded by this kind of noisy fuzz that sits within the texture.

In this one, I really prefer the Stadium.

Do you have speaker drive on the fractal on 0?

 

[Gary_W]

I

I can't run that gate over 1.0 or it clamps down on the signal so hard that it reduces gain going into whatever is after it. 0.7 seems to be the max I can run it without it affecting anything.

I missed your reply earlier- this is the answer for me - thank you :)

 

[ian_dissonance]

Thanks for the reply - as a lot of the ethos of stadium is that it’s easy to use and the idea of focus view is ‘useful places to go within the effect’….. I’m wondering why it defaults to a 6 and many of the settings go higher? Are there situations where such high settings are useful? Everything else within the unit (so far!) that I’ve selected has been useable in its default settings but, with a default of 6, is that the case if the first thing you have to do is dial one of the settings way down?

I’m pretty sure that gate is a combination high frequency noise reduction and a gate, you can hear the top end roll back first if you sustain a note with the sensitivity up high enough. The higher a might come in handy if you’re doing the 2012 djent thing with an noise suppressor->eq->comp-> Boost-> Gate->High Gain amp thing where the signal ahead of it is already void of dynamics.

 

[EOengineer]

Yep, I can get good sounds with other amps and that cab. Maybe I don’t like this amp? Seems odd when I can throw an Ownhammer or York IR at it and it sounds great but all of the HX cabs sound...off. I vastly prefer the HX Plexi at this point.

Typical plexi settings. Gain at 3:00 or so. Bass at 9:00 or lower. Treble and mid 2:00 or higher. This is just the bright channel.

It’s not just you. There are a couple of us that aren’t finding what we’re looking for with that amp model. As an alternative you might want to try the 2203 low channel with the drive and master cranked.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Ok, with the Horizon Gate - I’ve found the issue I’m having.

Why are you using it anyway? IMO the Horizon Gate is really only good for certain metal things, possibly when you want it to enhance some mutes and what not. For anything else, I think the bog standard gate is a way better choice.

 

[Gary_W]

I’m pretty sure that gate is a combination high frequency noise reduction and a gate, you can hear the top end roll back first if you sustain a note with the sensitivity up high enough. The higher a might come in handy if you’re doing the 2012 djent thing with an noise suppressor->eq->comp-> Boost-> Gate->High Gain amp thing where the signal ahead of it is already void of dynamics.

Thank you - that makes sense. That’s not really my thing so I’m guessing that’s why it’s not making sense for me.

Why are you using it anyway? IMO the Horizon Gate is really only good for certain metal things, possibly when you want it to enhance some mutes and what not. For anything else, I think the bog standard gate is a way better choice.

Thanks for this - it would seem, for the kind of things I do, this makes sense. The reason I tried it was simply a couple of high-praise comments for it earlier in the thread….. there’s so much I haven’t touched within Stadium as yet simply because I’m finding enjoyable things easily and having fun playing. For sure I explore and try things but, if someone here is saying ‘xyz is amazing’ then I’ll give it a go to see what I’m missing :).

 

[ian_dissonance]

Thank you - that makes sense. That’s not really my thing so I’m guessing that’s why it’s not making sense for me.



Thanks for this - it would seem, for the kind of things I do, this makes sense. The reason I tried it was simply a couple of high-praise comments for it earlier in the thread….. there’s so much I haven’t touched within Stadium as yet simply because I’m finding enjoyable things easily and having fun playing. For sure I explore and try things but, if someone here is saying ‘xyz is amazing’ then I’ll give it a go to see what I’m missing :).

I think it’s an excellent gate with the settings low enough for your guitar/playing.

 

[ccc118]

Yep, I can get good sounds with other amps and that cab. Maybe I don’t like this amp? Seems odd when I can throw an Ownhammer or York IR at it and it sounds great but all of the HX cabs sound...off. I vastly prefer the HX Plexi at this point.

Typical plexi settings. Gain at 3:00 or so. Bass at 9:00 or lower. Treble and mid 2:00 or higher. This is just the bright channel.

One thing to keep in mind is that this plexi does not have a bright cap, so it needs bright settings. Most people seem to be setting it to be kind of dark, form what I've seen.

I'm setting the 2203 like this (rounding the numbers off): Gain 7.5 B 5 M 7 T 6 P4 MV 6

On the plexi, I'm diming everything except have the normal channel on 5 and presence on 8. I'm going into the bright channel only. I don't normally do that on all plexis, but this one seems to be able to handle those settings because it doesn't seem to have a lot of gain to me. If anything is too much dimed, you can then start rolling things back. If I have them set like this and switch back and forth between the amps going into the 25w greenback cab, they have their own characteristics but overall sound quite similar to me , or atleast in the same ballpark. If I dime the presence, I do get that splatty kind of distortion that was mentioned in the thread, but pulling that back a bit makes it go away for the most part. It could be pulled back even further or the gain could be lowered and that would help also. I have all lower output pickups (PAFS and single coils), so it might not necessarily sound good with hotter pickups.

This is what I'm using as a reference tone:

 

[Dom Mcsweeney]

@Gary_W

Yeah, as it's a Misha Mansoor noise gate pedal, I would recommend you have a listen into it's "intended use case" i.e. all the djents, and then you'll get a better idea of why it's like that. I think it does have a filter to it too, as others mentioned, if I recall correctly.