Reverb & delay - Helix vs Fractal
- Thread starter sashimi
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DLC86
Roadie
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I don't know what else you've used but there are a lot of delay and reverb pedals out there that call "mix" what is actually a wet level knob... And my approach to have that with fractal is to leave mix at 50% and use the input gain instead, that also has the additional benefit that when you change that setting mid-song trails are not altered abruptly.
Reverb pedals that have a proper mix knob instead usually have pretty much the same mix law as fractal delay block, i.e. the dry level is reduced only for values greater than 50%.
No. The pedals I’ve used generally have a typical mix knob where the dry signal is left unchanged until above 50% where it is reduced until it is 100% wet. Even then, fractal is much different in the amount of wet signal for a given position below 50%.
Nothing I can’t work with, but it’s decidedly different from all other reverb pedals I’ve used. TC, source audio, L6, etc, all work pretty similar in this regard, my FM9 is the outlier.
D
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hahahaha, fucksake. Just found this again.
Bumping this thread because I was about to start another and saw we already had one…
Spent some time revisiting some things in Helix, I expected to test a lot of things but never made it past delays and a quick jaunt down the reverb trail. Some asked last week that I post what I found.
Long time Helix and fractal user. Started with Axe standard, went to big pedalboard rig, went to Helix, went to FM9 over a period of years. Fm9 has been the main squeeze for over a year now.
My recollection was that the delays on Helix were a little more to my liking than the Fractal ones. After comparing that this weekend, I have to take it back. My favorite helix models were vintage digital, cosmos echo, and elephant man. I was able to get all the things I loved about those sounds and more from the FM9.
It’s still more straightforward in Helix. If you want cosmos echo, pull up cosmos echo. In Fractal, you need to go to worn tape and change the eq and modulation and add a modulation to the motor speed. But the sound was in there. Vintage digital, I needed to add the compander in Fractal and change the threshold value, but that sound was in there too. Elephant man was more straightforward but I still needed to tweak the eq, modulation (wrong default waveform and speed), and compander settings.
No surprise here, it’s more work in Fractal. But I was surprised that I could actually recreate my favorite sounds. Previously I didn’t think I could quite get there.
The things I learned along the way helped me streamline what I was doing in my delay blocks and ultimately come up with a delay sound that was more to my liking than anything I had pulled from either unit, so the time spent on this was a win. That’s saying a lot when I was perfectly happy with the delays I had going in each box already.
D
Spent some time revisiting some things in Helix, I expected to test a lot of things but never made it past delays and a quick jaunt down the reverb trail. Some asked last week that I post what I found.
Long time Helix and fractal user. Started with Axe standard, went to big pedalboard rig, went to Helix, went to FM9 over a period of years. Fm9 has been the main squeeze for over a year now.
My recollection was that the delays on Helix were a little more to my liking than the Fractal ones. After comparing that this weekend, I have to take it back. My favorite helix models were vintage digital, cosmos echo, and elephant man. I was able to get all the things I loved about those sounds and more from the FM9.
It’s still more straightforward in Helix. If you want cosmos echo, pull up cosmos echo. In Fractal, you need to go to worn tape and change the eq and modulation and add a modulation to the motor speed. But the sound was in there. Vintage digital, I needed to add the compander in Fractal and change the threshold value, but that sound was in there too. Elephant man was more straightforward but I still needed to tweak the eq, modulation (wrong default waveform and speed), and compander settings.
No surprise here, it’s more work in Fractal. But I was surprised that I could actually recreate my favorite sounds. Previously I didn’t think I could quite get there.
The things I learned along the way helped me streamline what I was doing in my delay blocks and ultimately come up with a delay sound that was more to my liking than anything I had pulled from either unit, so the time spent on this was a win. That’s saying a lot when I was perfectly happy with the delays I had going in each box already.
D
sashimi
Roadie
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- 318
Elephant man, cosmos and transistor tape are my go-tos in Helix. I’m also a big fan of ADT. I use it in stereo and set the expression pedal to change the delay time on one side, a narrow range just to get a stereo flange/chorus effect I can sweep through. Sounds really cool on a fuzzed out solo.
I was a big fan of criss cross too. It’s kinda more of an enhanced version of vintage digital with a cool modulation option and two delay lines. You can get what it does (or at least what I used it for) from fractal pretty easily just applying the vintage digital concepts to the fractal dual delay. Like many things fractal, you have to know how to roll your own to get there though.
D
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