Line 6 Helix Stadium Talk

[[Nathan]]

Pathetic. Why would I have to?

Trying something first hand can negate pictures and videos about it imo. My mind has changed (for better and for worse) on a bunch of stuff after I’ve had it in my hands.

I haven’t done a side by side in person but the new stadium screens/strips look sharper and better than the old ones

 

[Gary_W]

I know @Digital Igloo mentioned something about beat detection coming but not sure if that means it could automatically adapt to the track, but that would be awesome though.

Regarding the looper: the way I understand it is that it’s simply giving a command, like record here, play here, etc. so could you simply add a flag when the song stops to say “stop looper”? Or would that not work?

Thanks for the reply.

You can absolutely add a flag to stop the looper playing / clear it.

The issue is if you stop the transport for some reason….. if you have a recorded loop playing back *within showcase so you’ve recorded it as part of the current song* then hitting the pause button on the transport does not stop the loop playing back…. The loop just plays back independently forever until you stop it from the looper screen controls.

IMO, as you’re using showcase to play back a song, you don’t really want the loop continuing when the rest of the song components have stopped……. When you restart the song, it still keeps playing that loop. A (kind of) work around for practice purposes has been to put a ‘clear looper’ flag right at the start of the song but right now that appears to be the quickest way to get rid of it.

 

[EOengineer]

So, I went Friday to Sweetwater and played a Helix Stadium for a bit, dialed in a preset. Wasn't super jazzed with it, tbh. Even told the Turkey about it, and was just going to do an AM4.

Then my pal David brought his into the shop today, and we spent a few hours with it, but still all stock cabs. Wow. Seriously. Playing it through a single QSC K8, it's really, really good. For one thing, getting tones out of my stand-bys like the SLO100 and JCM800 was an absolute cinch. But I literally dialed in the new IIC+ with my eyes, and switched cabs (WTF Line 6; a 1960 with T75's is the matched cab?!) and bam. Perfect, right off the bat.

The IIC+ is going to end up being my main tone, for sure. I'm really, really digging it, and glad I didn't Timbuck my pre-order.

What do you think went wrong at SW, a monitoring issue?

Do you usually play modeling through FRFR? I typically find wedges to be my least favorite monitoring solution so it caught my attention that you found your path forward there.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Trying something first hand can negate pictures and videos about it imo.

Sure. But especially once it's about plain functional things, there's often no need.
I mean, there's no global blocks - why would I have to try out things?
There's no modifiers, either - why would I have to find out about that in front of the unit?
And kinda otoh: I have absolutely no doubt I'd like the Agoura amps, the touch screen and what not. So I don't need to try that out in person, either.

 

[paisleywookiee]

Pathetic. Why would I have to?

What’s pathetic?

Your input on UI doesn’t amount to much, unless you’ve actually used one.

And why would we discuss things it doesn’t have yet? That’s a bullet point.

 

[paisleywookiee]

What do you think went wrong at SW, a monitoring issue?

Do you usually play modeling through FRFR? I typically find wedges to be my least favorite monitoring solution so it caught my attention that you found your path forward there.

Yeah, monitoring. Unlike last time, when I tried the QC and Turdblaster Pro again, I wasn’t able to connect to an FRFR.

I usually play through at least studio monitors, and eventually a FRFR.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Your input on UI doesn’t amount to much, unless you’ve actually used one.

Nonsense. Global blocks would be great and it's completely irrelevant whether I've used any unit to say so.

 

[Sascha Franck]

And why would we discuss things it doesn’t have yet?

Why do you then discuss amps it doesn't have yet?

 

[paisleywookiee]

We discuss it. We don’t whine about it endlessly. You’re getting to pretty insufferable, dude. Saying shit like “pathetic”, and “nonsense” makes you come across as an absolute dickhead. Back on the ignore list.

 

[Sascha Franck]

We don’t whine about it endlessly.

Yes you do. Do you want me to compile a list of people complaining about amps, whishing for more amps and what not?
"Booohooohooo, I want my JP2C sooooooo baaaad!!!"

You’re getting to pretty insufferable, dude.

Use the ignore function or learn to act as a grown up and just don't answer. None of my business, it's all up to you.

Back on the ignore list.

Byebye, wimp.

 

[paisleywookiee]

Use the ignore function or learn to act as a grown up and just don't answer. None of my business, it's all up to you.

Learn not to act like an insufferable dickhead, and communicate like a human being.

Byebye, wimp.

Later, asshole.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Learn not to act like an insufferable dickhead,

Says the guy resorting to cheap ad hominem name calling (and not for the first time, either). Need proof?

Later, asshole.

I recommend looking into a mirror every now and then.

 

[Richard_G]

And as the glorious peace of Christmas settled softly around them, they sat there—thankful that Stadium XL had already made its grand entrance, and cheerfully awaiting the inevitable arrival of its smaller, non-XL sibling.

 

[paisleywookiee]

And as the glorious peace of Christmas settled softly around them, they sat there—thankful that Stadium XL had already made its grand entrance, and cheerfully awaiting the inevitable arrival of its smaller, non-XL sibling.

I’m wondering if I should just get the XL. It’s not that big, and the expression pedal is a lot nicer than I thought it was going to be. A big improvement over the Floor/LT.

 

[MIJLOVER]

Thanks for the reply.

You can absolutely add a flag to stop the looper playing / clear it.

The issue is if you stop the transport for some reason….. if you have a recorded loop playing back *within showcase so you’ve recorded it as part of the current song* then hitting the pause button on the transport does not stop the loop playing back…. The loop just plays back independently forever until you stop it from the looper screen controls.

IMO, as you’re using showcase to play back a song, you don’t really want the loop continuing when the rest of the song components have stopped……. When you restart the song, it still keeps playing that loop. A (kind of) work around for practice purposes has been to put a ‘clear looper’ flag right at the start of the song but right now that appears to be the quickest way to get rid of it.

Ah, now I didn’t get that it would continue when pausing playback of the looper. In that case, yeah, I totally agree that it should stop the loop as you stop the song. Hopefully a fix is coming.

I’m also patiently waiting for the mixer view of the tracks to be per song. I keep the same order but sometimes songs will have keys or strings and sometimes be quite bare bones, so global labeling doesn’t really work that well.

 

[Mooselake]

What do you think went wrong at SW, a monitoring issue?

Do you usually play modeling through FRFR? I typically find wedges to be my least favorite monitoring solution so it caught my attention that you found your path forward there.

One thing I recall DI mentioning somewhere is that it's not uncommon for the global settings of the floor demos to get wonky from streams of random people messing around with them. IIRC he mentioned at one time they were even considering special for-merchant firmware variants for such situations that has the unit do a factory reset every time it boots up so the next person to check it out isn't left with whatever state the last person to check it out left it in. Maybe it was just something like that.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Not the absolute best photo for judging this, but I think the Stadium LEDs do look brighter.

On that picture, yes. At least it seems so. Could you take a more 1:1 kinda pic?
Thing is, in pretty much all other outlets, they're looking just like the OG ones to me.

And as much as others may never run into issues, I'd defenitely have a hard time buying a unit without improved stage visibility.

Otoh, as I'm really only interested in the non XL version, the LT-alike display mode might come to the rescue (I always wished they'd add that to the Floor, but unfortunately it never happened).

 

[Mooselake]

I have 2 guitars that I consider my #1. Until last night I'd only been using one with Stadium. But I got out the other last night and it was the first time I'd run a guitar with a neck single coil into my Stadium. The one I'd been playing is my Ibanez AT100 which has those Bridge Cruisers in the middle and neck position. It sounded nice enough with the scratch preset I made with the SuperBlack that I never got around to trying out some other presets. I'm finding that especially with the "US" group of models (but seems to be true with the Agoura 2203 too) that I'm dialing less less grit/dirt/overdrive into patches than I was with OG helix. In part maybe that's because I'm getting old, but there's something about the blend of cleanish with just a little crispiness on top I've really been enjoying.

 

[Gary_W]

Ah, now I didn’t get that it would continue when pausing playback of the looper. In that case, yeah, I totally agree that it should stop the loop as you stop the song. Hopefully a fix is coming.

I’m also patiently waiting for the mixer view of the tracks to be per song. I keep the same order but sometimes songs will have keys or strings and sometimes be quite bare bones, so global labeling doesn’t really work that well.

Thanks for the reply - good to know it’s not just me thinking this is a somewhat strange way of working with looper playback.

Regarding the mixer, Eric (DI) replied to an earlier post of mine to say that the mixer being per song is coming. Which is good news - I’m getting on ok with it but it does require some careful housekeeping right now :)

 

[Gary_W]

Stadium XL is my first line 6 product since Pod XT back in the day. Although I love the Stadium so far, the manual page on snapshots really isn’t helpful imo. It helps me to understand what a snapshot is and also tells me how to recall them. It took me reading the cheat sheet and speaking to Chat GPT to know that the knobs under the touchscreen were pushable - I can now adjust gain etc per snapshot. Easy enough when you know how but I just didn’t….. Sorry if that sounds weird to the veterans here but I did not know and, if it is in the manual, it’d be lovely if it was there in terms that a rapidly aging idiot could understand. Sorry if I’m being dense but I can’t see it :)

Snapshots | Line 6 Manuals

What are Snapshots? Snapshots are basically presets within a preset. Okay, but what does that mean? Imagine you have an army of pet octopuses, all slithering a…

manuals.line6.com

With this in mind….. is there any way to use focus view with snapshots? In other words hit ‘save’ on snapshot one for your default sound. Then drag the focus view to adjust multiple parameters. Save that to snapshot number two….

If it’s not possible, is this ‘coming soon’? Focus is a fantastic tool and, if it’s not possible to use that with snapshots, it’d be great if it were implemented.