A few notes about the Helix, so far:
- after years of working on the HXFX or Stomp (plus all the others I've tried), the Floor is an absolute JOY to work on, so much fun and so easy/fluid to be creative with; I can see why the UI is often considered the gold standard (in my opinion it's actually still better than the QC)
- I've stopped wondering "are HX effects as good as real pedals and/or Fractal?"; for some reason getting the HX One really hammered this home: I can easily use only Helix effects and be happy with all my sounds; the drives are insanely good, delays are my favourite among all the companies, the modulations are great, etc.; the whole pedals-with-character/giant virtual pedalboard/stompbox thing works well for me, as opposed to the more rack-unit-like approach of others
- it is very nice to have soooo many switches, much less preset changing during a gig, lots of options available at any given time on each preset
- even though the Helix seems large, it's actually only 4" wider than my PT Jr board (and 0.5" less deep, even), when used on its own
- it is a HEAVY mother though, holy cow; it would give the FM9 a run for its money in my long-planned YT series, "Watch As The FM9 Smashes Other Modelers To Bits"; I think the Helix could even be a sister series where it's the star smasher
- it sounds and feels great in 4cm! This is HUGE for me. I don't know why, but the HXFX and Stomp always had this disconnected, blanket on the speakers thing happening, whereas the Helix is great, I'd even say it's on par with the FM9 in this area
- it does still have a huge ground loop hum when I try and use the amp switching feature; the HXFX did this, too; I got around it by snipping the ground on the HXFX-end of the trs cable, however I don't feel like bothering with that and am going to try using an HX clean preamp, instead
- it also has a large hum in general when used in 4cm in my basement, as did the FM9, however the Morley Hum Exterminator I got for the FM9 also works to stop it, thankfully (the FM9 didn't do it elsewhere though, so it's probably something funky in my house wiring)
- I'm getting a pretty good facsimile of my Electra Dyne with the Mark IV Lead model, increasing the sag and raising the bias
).
