welp... its been a good run but back to pedals lol!! edit: back to helix lololololol

There is no going back. Just going round and round. :LOL:
ami duin et rite?

aint they hot george harrison GIF
 
That's still digital. Unless I am missing something.
Your missing something

You're probably thinking of the super champ-X2, which was a cheapo hybrid amp that had a valve preamp and poweramp, but it also had a digital front end before the preamp that was notorious for taking a dive. They're throw away amps from around decade ago that mostly can't be repaired. They're actually decent sounding amps for certain tones, but trash for other tones.

I'm talking about a real superchamp, which sounds like a Princeton on steroids. It's probably the best Fender combo amp of the Rivera era and maybe the loudest 18 watts you'll ever hear.

 
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dude in one of my fav bands around here plays a katana head. he makes it sound amazing, really good musician too.

check em out if you like death metal:

The playing is solid, but that tone is awful to my ears.
Just being honest.
My opinion is meaningless though because I don't listen to that type of music.
 
I wonder how many rotations of "back to ___" it takes until a guitarist understands that everything has its place.
My last few rotations were very quick, now I play whatever inspires me that weekend.

I think it took me two complete rotations between all-analog to all-digital to realize you should have both.

Amp
Cab
Pedalboard
Modeler
Monitors

“Done”
 
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Actually I think the handful of PODs I’ve owned disqualifies me from saying I haven’t owned a modeller

I’ve successfully avoided all the GOOD ones though :LOL:

I’ve got a GSP21 Legend (circa 1994) that makes the original Pods seem like the bestest things evah. The effects are alright, but the “amp simulators” have not aged well at all. But…. It still worked when I last fired it up (a couple of years ago).
 
I bounce back and forth as the mood strikes me as well.
It’s the sane path. There isn’t gear that makes every sound, there’s gear that makes a sound, and tone is the product of how that gear is combined.

Find something that inspires you and run with it.
 
If I get back to playing live regularly it's going to be an amp and pedals at minimal. I'm not against doing a 4cm with the Helix XL though.
 
update time....

ok so i got a few pedals (tuner, third man triplegraph). hooked up a simple board with those 2 and my TS9DX and EQD afterneath. sounded pretty good.

but then i was just like... what about using the helix with no amp sims straight into the front of the amp with only a few effects? I had only been using amp sims into the fx return. not sure why i never tried this before but its AMAZING. the amp sounds great which is ultimately what i wanted. its like its more raw and organic, hits a little quicker, sits better in a band mix. removing the amp sims freed up some DSP and let me switch from the simple pitches to the poly pitches for my octaves which is nice.

i have my 4 snaps setup with boost, boost and gate, boost and chainsaw fuzz in parallel, boost and fuzz w gate so it gives a few different options. then with my 5153 i have the blue and red gain channels so i setup the blue as my main gain sound and the red is set a little louder. its sweet to have so many options even though i dont use them all since our music is pretty dumb and straight forward. for effects i just use octave up and down on momentary switches. chorus and reverb on the 3rd button. and then a chaos setting with an infinite delay and reverb where the exp pedal controls delay time for noise sections.

the extra space on the floor for the 5153 footswitch and hooking up another thing is kinda annoying but it sounds so good i'm willing to do it. maybe ill look at something smaller than the LT since i only need it for effects now. ive played 2 really good shows this way now and a guitar player from another band whose seen us a few times asked me what i changed. he said it sounded better so i guess thats good, unless it means i sounded like shit before hahaha. i got a long speaker cable and am running a 4x12 on both side of drums.



TL;DR so yea... round and round (again lol) back home to the helix but no amp sims into the front of the amp is my live setup right now and it fucks.
 
If you have a spare switch on the Helix; set it up for channel switching via MIDI on the EVH :chef


good idea. ill have to spend some more time on this. i tried it a couple years ago and couldn't figure it out.
 
update time....

ok so i got a few pedals (tuner, third man triplegraph). hooked up a simple board with those 2 and my TS9DX and EQD afterneath. sounded pretty good.

but then i was just like... what about using the helix with no amp sims straight into the front of the amp with only a few effects? I had only been using amp sims into the fx return. not sure why i never tried this before but its AMAZING. the amp sounds great which is ultimately what i wanted. its like its more raw and organic, hits a little quicker, sits better in a band mix. removing the amp sims freed up some DSP and let me switch from the simple pitches to the poly pitches for my octaves which is nice.

i have my 4 snaps setup with boost, boost and gate, boost and chainsaw fuzz in parallel, boost and fuzz w gate so it gives a few different options. then with my 5153 i have the blue and red gain channels so i setup the blue as my main gain sound and the red is set a little louder. its sweet to have so many options even though i dont use them all since our music is pretty dumb and straight forward. for effects i just use octave up and down on momentary switches. chorus and reverb on the 3rd button. and then a chaos setting with an infinite delay and reverb where the exp pedal controls delay time for noise sections.

the extra space on the floor for the 5153 footswitch and hooking up another thing is kinda annoying but it sounds so good i'm willing to do it. maybe ill look at something smaller than the LT since i only need it for effects now. ive played 2 really good shows this way now and a guitar player from another band whose seen us a few times asked me what i changed. he said it sounded better so i guess thats good, unless it means i sounded like shit before hahaha. i got a long speaker cable and am running a 4x12 on both side of drums.



TL;DR so yea... round and round (again lol) back home to the helix but no amp sims into the front of the amp is my live setup right now and it fucks.


Yeah I'm just using my stomp for FX in 4cm, love it. No amp simming for me... yet lol
 
update time....

ok so i got a few pedals (tuner, third man triplegraph). hooked up a simple board with those 2 and my TS9DX and EQD afterneath. sounded pretty good.

but then i was just like... what about using the helix with no amp sims straight into the front of the amp with only a few effects? I had only been using amp sims into the fx return. not sure why i never tried this before but its AMAZING. the amp sounds great which is ultimately what i wanted. its like its more raw and organic, hits a little quicker, sits better in a band mix. removing the amp sims freed up some DSP and let me switch from the simple pitches to the poly pitches for my octaves which is nice.

i have my 4 snaps setup with boost, boost and gate, boost and chainsaw fuzz in parallel, boost and fuzz w gate so it gives a few different options. then with my 5153 i have the blue and red gain channels so i setup the blue as my main gain sound and the red is set a little louder. its sweet to have so many options even though i dont use them all since our music is pretty dumb and straight forward. for effects i just use octave up and down on momentary switches. chorus and reverb on the 3rd button. and then a chaos setting with an infinite delay and reverb where the exp pedal controls delay time for noise sections.

the extra space on the floor for the 5153 footswitch and hooking up another thing is kinda annoying but it sounds so good i'm willing to do it. maybe ill look at something smaller than the LT since i only need it for effects now. ive played 2 really good shows this way now and a guitar player from another band whose seen us a few times asked me what i changed. he said it sounded better so i guess thats good, unless it means i sounded like shit before hahaha. i got a long speaker cable and am running a 4x12 on both side of drums.



TL;DR so yea... round and round (again lol) back home to the helix but no amp sims into the front of the amp is my live setup right now and it fucks.
My presets are built with split paths so I feed my stomp fx into my 2204 on stage and then the other side of the split goes through amp sims (hx2203 usually) to FOH.

The Helix brings so much flexibility to the table, yet also provides so much simplification.

Snapshots are your friend, and once you get amp switching set up, you can record that state as part of your snapshots.
 
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