I'm thinking about buying a modeling pedalboard.

[LeftyStrat]

No parallel effects is a deal breaker (Mooer). Looper not outside the patch change, deal breaker (Boss). No tail, deal breaker.

[LeftyStrat]

We have a new contender.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjOLPJSIiGo


This integrates with my existing pedalboard.

[LeftyStrat]

I ended up springing for the Fractal Audio Axe-Fx III and FC-12 foot switch. Life is short and I am old. Got to enjoy it while you can.

[LeftyStrat]

Another one if you want to test the modeling waters without spending too much money is the Hotone Binary Amp. You can find these used for under $100 and they are pretty impressive. I bought one and was so impressed that I said well if this is low end modeling, I want to see what the high can do.

[thetragichero]

had an hx effects (received in a trade) for a very brief while. sounded great, tons of opinions but I'm the kind of person that has to keep it super simple or i spend more time twiddling knobs than i do playing the geetar (on of my favorite projects i played on i plugged my guitar straight into the amp and it was so freeing!)
i play small pedalboards (4 or 5 pedals at most) because of this and *for me* i can concentrate on paying
for bass it's often my preamp/di box straight to FOH and that works great too

as long as you're not easily distracted like i am you should be fine though. there's a lot of great options available for this kind of thing!

[beasleybodyshop]

I have both the HX Stomp (Baby Helix) and the full size Helix floor. Have had both now for almost a year and have used them once a week since so here's my 2 cents:

The modeling direct out to a mixer is pretty good. The Helix stuff, depending on how you tweak the settings can get like 80% to feeling amp-like (dynamics, reacting to pick attack, etc). This seems like a pretty reasonable compromise considering the way you can arrange and layer effects in your signal path. I feel like the real advantage of the Helix stuff tone wise is you can nail super polished, studio like sounds. If you're playing in a cover band, Praise and Worship, or anything more demanding than a tubescreamer, delay, into a blues JR the Helix/HX stomp will do it.

That being said, I also think it boils down to what kind of player you are. Do you like to tweak knobs? Helix has all the knobs. And menus. And config. BUT its decently intuitive. If you don't like knob twiddling the Helix does make it pretty straightforward to build a signal chain and set up. Moreso than previous generations of Line6 amp modeling (looking at you XT Live, HD500). But if you detest fiddling with more than 4 knobs it's not gonna be your cuppa.

The HX Stomp is great if you don't want/need complexity. It's 3 stomp buttons. One of them is dedicated tuner. And you have 6 blocks of processing available so you can't get super crazy. But it has the same amp/pedal models of the big brother so it sounds the same. You can do a reasonably good emulation of an amp with a cab, delay, reverb(or two), a modulation and a OD pedal in one preset. And you can change the amp/pedal settings of your signal chain (similar to automation on a recording console or pro-tools) so that, within your signal chain you can simultaneously turn on the OD pedal, Delay, bump the gain up on the amp model, and trim the low end for your lead tone. And all within the a double sized stomp enclosure.

They aren't perfect, and certainly not for everyone but personally, I don't miss a tube amp for church gigs when I use them. Is it inspiring? Not really. Doesn't inspire me to write music like a real piece of hardware (about a dozen amp builds currently in my garage) but if you wanna go play along to your favorite songs and have it sound really close, or go to the open mic to play Mustang Sally you can just toss the HX stomp into your gig bag and not have to haul 50+ lbs of gear.

[Blindog]

I have both the HX Stomp (Baby Helix) and the full size Helix floor. Have had both now for almost a year and have used them once a week since so here's my 2 cents:

The modeling direct out to a mixer is pretty good. The Helix stuff, depending on how you tweak the settings can get like 80% to feeling amp-like (dynamics, reacting to pick attack, etc). This seems like a pretty reasonable compromise considering the way you can arrange and layer effects in your signal path. I feel like the real advantage of the Helix stuff tone wise is you can nail super polished, studio like sounds. If you're playing in a cover band, Praise and Worship, or anything more demanding than a tubescreamer, delay, into a blues JR the Helix/HX stomp will do it.

That being said, I also think it boils down to what kind of player you are. Do you like to tweak knobs? Helix has all the knobs. And menus. And config. BUT its decently intuitive. If you don't like knob twiddling the Helix does make it pretty straightforward to build a signal chain and set up. Moreso than previous generations of Line6 amp modeling (looking at you XT Live, HD500). But if you detest fiddling with more than 4 knobs it's not gonna be your cuppa.

The HX Stomp is great if you don't want/need complexity. It's 3 stomp buttons. One of them is dedicated tuner. And you have 6 blocks of processing available so you can't get super crazy. But it has the same amp/pedal models of the big brother so it sounds the same. You can do a reasonably good emulation of an amp with a cab, delay, reverb(or two), a modulation and a OD pedal in one preset. And you can change the amp/pedal settings of your signal chain (similar to automation on a recording console or pro-tools) so that, within your signal chain you can simultaneously turn on the OD pedal, Delay, bump the gain up on the amp model, and trim the low end for your lead tone. And all within the a double sized stomp enclosure.

They aren't perfect, and certainly not for everyone but personally, I don't miss a tube amp for church gigs when I use them. Is it inspiring? Not really. Doesn't inspire me to write music like a real piece of hardware (about a dozen amp builds currently in my garage) but if you wanna go play along to your favorite songs and have it sound really close, or go to the open mic to play Mustang Sally you can just toss the HX stomp into your gig bag and not have to haul 50+ lbs of gear.

HX Stomp user, about 2 months in. I agree with your review. i don't regret the purchase one bit, it's super usefull and the quality of the effects are freaking amazing!

[pompeiisneaks]

I'm still super happy with my kemper. I've modelled my amps and feel it sounds just like them at high volume but in my headphones at low volume, I can record direct to my audio software and it sounds great...

Love it.

~Phil

[xtian]

I've been using Helix Floor for almost two years. Love it. I use it mostly for FX pedals, running into the front of my tube amps. Though I've tried all the combinations of emulated amp and cap into PA, emulated amp only into powered cab, and 4CM. All good, but I've gravitated back to where I started: FX only on the Helix, into a good tube amp.

Beas, I agree with your review. Except,

Doesn't inspire me to write music like a real piece of hardware

I found many of the amp and FX models of hardware I've never owned or never played before to be very inspiring!

[beasleybodyshop]

I've been using Helix Floor for almost two years. Love it. I use it mostly for FX pedals, running into the front of my tube amps. Though I've tried all the combinations of emulated amp and cap into PA, emulated amp only into powered cab, and 4CM. All good, but I've gravitated back to where I started: FX only on the Helix, into a good tube amp.

Beas, I agree with your review. Except,

Doesn't inspire me to write music like a real piece of hardware

I found many of the amp and FX models of hardware I've never owned or never played before to be very inspiring!

That's great Xtian wish I could feel the same way. I'm way too sentimental about hardware I guess lol!

I've bought a couple of bundles of other people's presets just to see how those who are more experienced with configuring the DSP do it, and man let me tell you I would not have come to the same conclusions as those who make some of my favorite presets.

The one I use all the time for P&W has a really odd signal chain:

[COMP] + [OD1] + [OD2] + [OD3] +[Matchless & Twin Reverb in parallel] + [crossover for Matchless and Twin] + [Opto Trem] + [Echoplex] + [Chorus'd Delay] + [digital reverb] + [large Plate reverb] + [5 band Mesa Boogie EQ] + [LA Studio Comp] .....whew! I think thats all there is. Probably missing something.

Now, in real hardware world, this would be crazy and not make a whole lot of sense. But in Studio plugin world, it does. Based on this signal chain I have 6 presets, meaning 6 different ways I can turn any combination of these things on and off. Never are all of them on at the same time. Also, when changing between presets, not only does it turn ON some effects and turn OFF some others, but also changes parameters within the effects. For instance, I use two lead presets: LEAD and AMBIENT LEAD. Whenever im going to LEAD,the preset turns down the low end on the Matchless and Fender emulations, and changes the ratio on the COMP at the input. Also the 5 band EQ at the end slightly boosts the midrange (i forget which specific frequency band) just a little bit. Also turns on the delay and the digital reverb. Also turns on OD2 and OD3.

When i go the the AMBIENT LEAD setting, it takes the LEAD settings and it turns on both delays. And changes the wet/dry mix on one of those delays that's always on. It also trims the lows even more than the LEAD setting (to keep the two delays that are running from getting too muddy).

So to look at this setup without hearing it, you're probably thinking it sounds like it would be too complicated to sound decent but straight through FOH it literally sounds like the guitar sound is ripped straight from a U2 record (cue jokes about P&W guitar sounds like The Edge) and super polished. I'll use at least 3 presets during each song. Usually the AMBIENT LEAD is for the intro signature, I'll use another preset thats really clean with lots of ambient verb/delay (again basically turning on/off certain effects in that chain), and another preset for the chorus of the song with overdrive to build the energy.

Overly complex? Yeah you bet. But not really. All i do is step on one of 3 buttons to get 3 different polished sounds. Someone else figured out the backbone of the presets. Well worth the 20 bucks I paid and I would have never figured that signal chain would make a whole lot of sense on my own.

Technology gets you home quicker