Line 6 Helix Stadium Talk

[CorrosiveMatter]

Well my poor FedEx driver delivered it at about 8pm.

Plugged it in with headphones and got it updated and played with a few of the Factory Presets. Created a new simple preset, copied a factory preset with a bunch of down tuning snapshots to a user preset so I could save changes, uploaded a handful of IR's and needed to get off it. Shut it down and left it for the night.

This AM I got up to an empty house so I could plug it into my PXM-12's and turned it back on. The screen was stuck on the boot logo but you could use the foot switches and play but none of the knobs work including the volume, I thought maybe it was rebuilding presets or something in the background so I left it while I had my first meeting about a meeting later..... 45 minutes later it's still stuck on the boot screen. Power off and back on and go make coffee. Still stuck.

Factory Reset 1

It feels great, sound and the touch screen.

It sounds great as well but I have not really had much time with it yet, as I type this I am in the meeting that I had the earlier meeting about.

 

[AlbertA]

That's why I'm curious why you care about the USB RTL. The typical way to use it as an audio interface would be to monitor direct, in which case the USB RTL doesn't matter.

Or are you using it as an input audio interface to play amp sim plugins in your DAW? If so, no guitar processor will ever have latency as low as a dedicated audio interface.

Think other virtual instruments (in my case Piano plugins).

Also, since reported latency is different than measured by quite a bit, you have to adjust the latency compensation number in the DAW so it matches up between takes.

 

[banned]

We ARE your vacation!

Wrong. NDSP are your vacation. See latest travel package from them -

 

[Orvillain]

Other thoughts as I sit here watching gingerbread cunts dancing on TV to the delight of my son, as he runs around the living room with the monster truck car that he CLEARLY used to smash the living shit out of my Mesa Mark V amp as it was sat near the back door; and only sat there because I couldn't move amps yesterday after being too tired from sedation and being throat "entered" by a doctor of very suspicious heritage. Ahem.

But yes... other thoughts....

- The touchscreen is beautiful. Very slick, easy to use, and VERY responsive. More responsive than the Quad Cortex for sure.
- I'm gonna need to get used to this unit. A few times I tried to joystick one of the knobs. Oops.
- The startup sequence was quite speedy, installing the firmware and all that jazz. Very easy to just connect to my WIFI and grab the update. Way less twat hoops to jump through than NDSP put in your way.
- The unit is a lot less uglier in real life than in product images. In product images there's so much studio lighting washing out the expression pedal, I was kind of worried about it looking cheap and nasty. But it doesn't.
- Downloading and installing the software editor was easy as pie too.

 

[JiveTurkey]

HX0 with a new controller with tiered footswitches just like the XL would be pretty darn enticing

 

[Karl Houseknecht]

How's the brightness on the 2203? ... the Fractal one is too bright.

Where you setting the treble on the Fractal model? I find myself putting at 9:00 or lower. And of course, depends on cab and mic.

 

[EOengineer]

How's the brightness on the 2203? That amp model is hit or miss for me depending on modelers. I loved the QC version but the Fractal one is too bright.

I can’t answer authoritatively until I sit down with a Les Paul and run with it for a minute. My sense is that it’s not quite as bright as the HX but it still has that 800 crushed glass harmonic thing I love.

 

[EOengineer]

Were you setting the treble on the Fractal model? I find myself putting at 9:00 or lower. And of course, depends on cab and mic.

This is pretty much how I set up my real 2204 when using the bright cap. Some folks just DONT like those aggressive bright caps. I love it, it’s part of the thing for me, but a way to bypass the bright caps would help those who prefer the darker vibe. I think there are better amps for that tone.

 

[laxu]

HX0 with a new controller with tiered footswitches just like the XL would be pretty darn enticing

You could even call it....a HX Turkey Sandwich!

 

[Digital Igloo]

On the non-XL Stadium, can you also hold the touchscreen buttons to access e.g more mode?

From the manual:

Is there any way to see what exactly each footswitch with multiple assignments does, like the above example as some sort of list?

Nope, because a single stomp switch can have up to 16 assignments. You can custom label (and color) it whatever you want—just tap-hold the switch and tap "Label/Color"—but it's limited to ~16 characters or so.

- Find some IR's you love, and load them on the unit.

Note that the first time you turn on the unit after loading new IRs, it'll take roughly 300ms longer per IR to boot. This only happens the first time, however; once the IRs are indexed, boot time is normal. Both database indexing and overall boot time will improve.

 

[Orvillain]

Speaking of which @Digital Igloo - feature request for the future... IR creator on the unit. Export as WAV file please. Not a proprietary format.

Have a nice holibobs!

 

[AlbertA]

First impressions - not wowed by the presets I quickly checked out - to be expected I suppose.

Went to an empty preset - went to the EVH Panama red, Cali v30, 57 mic - ok that's bit better. I can now hear what @GuitarJon was saying in his video, like I want more "ooomph" - still early but not "wowed" yet. Yeah I think the master was too high.

However that was probably 30 minutes of playing at volume since I wanted to go to the Taylor guitar show at the Guitar Sanctuary and then when I got back - couldn't play at volume 'cause you know... family :) so latency testing it was.

I tried the criss-cross delay to get in the area of a Keeley halo - it was decent - I wished for a bit more control on the cross feedback paths though.

UI is very intuitive - I didn't even read the cheat sheets (fun fact, the Spanish version says it's a "chuleta" )