3 HIDDEN Reasons Your Helix Tone Sucks That EVERY Helix Owner Should Know

Excellent advice and demo of how those settings can significantly affect tone in the Line 6 Helix world. Thickening up the Highs in particular has always been a challenge. Setting the Impedance to "Enabled" has a significant and beneficial effect. Some of my were fine/better with a change in this setting, and some needed me to about ".4" to the Treble Parameter in the Amp Block to get them back to where I liked. The added benefit is that the tones are thicker sounding. There is also something about how our ears/hearing responds to different frequencies when the sound is at a different loudness. It is called the "Fletcher Munson" curve, and explains how/why louder often sounds better. Thanks

Great video, thank you! There's a channel called "Hey Worship Leader" who also has a great video from about 2 years ago about what Sag, Hum, Ripple, and Bias all are which goes into a little more depth about those things. I was always annoyed by the impedance thing you mentioned, so that was a great callout. I had no idea what was causing what I was seeing with some pedals being in the line, but disabled and still changing the tone. I also had no idea what the headroom thing was, so loved that you explained it.

I max the Headroom for post-amp effects, but it can sound vibey with lower headroom when used BEFORE the amp or cab block - on the tape delays in particular, it gets that saturated/old-tape sound. The clipping introduced just needs an amp or cabinet to smooth out the rough edges; that's why it sounds bad with low headroom towards the END of the chain Also, another way around the input impedance issue that isn't a global change like Auto Enabled is to set up a FS controller or Snapshot (whatever is engaging the effect in question) to toggle the input impedance selection to "1meg" (or your desired bypassed impedance) when the effect is bypassed and "auto" when it's engaged

Very helpful and timely. I was just going through all of my presets last night and was messing around with hum and was wondering about the headroom setting.

Time to clean those pots big boy.

Thx for the suggestions! I've been going down a Buffer rabbit hole on my regular pedalboard (non-Helix) and feel like your impedance settings is similar to controlling the drop off in signal as it goes thru the efx chain before it gets to the amp. Super helpful (and timely for me!)

I just discovered the input impedance parameter when building a preset for a very low output acoustic piezo pickup. It didn't occur to me how much it would affect my electric sound as well. This is great content!

Thanks for this, Jonathan. I’m going to get into that impedance solution ASAP.

extremely info here! thank you sooo much! I didn't expect the "true bypass" discussion to be relevant in the modeller world, but it seems it is! the "real world" equivalents of fuzz pedals and treble boosters typically are true bypass and that's what I expect a modeller to model as well!

If you don't like the default settings, simply change them and resave as your user defaults for that model.

Hey man, love the stuff and everything is always really informative! I had a question, could you demo using your helix floor going to an actual amp for what would be a live bar gig? I have a deluxe reverb so I only use the line 6 for drives, effects, etc w/o amp modeling but I rarely can get a good tone. Even with nothing on, I’ve noticed that my signal sounds different than direct to amp. Typically louder, and maybe high end roll off.

Great video. I’ve had hum at my last two gigs. Did not know about the “hum” control!

Wow, I'd never know that the Red Squeeze messes with the impedance that much!

I learned a lot from such a short video. The Stomp is easy to understand on the surface but there's so much complexity buried inside. On the other hand, Boss multi effects require an engineering degree to get a usable tone.

Very informative video... but really AWESOME playing! (It's the fingers; here, there & everywhere.)

Very helpful! Thanks John.

I revisited my helix native this evening and was blown away how good the tones I got were. Sometimes you gotta take a bit of an ear break to realize how good your old gear can be plus I hadn’t really exploring helix since some of the big updates

Are you using AI generated titles?

I typically leave Hum at 5, but you are right. There should be a global parameter to just eliminate amp hum. I always like the headroom all the way down on delays. In fact I wish it could go a bit lower when I'm using a lower-output guitar. The saturation on the delay helps create space between your dry signal and the repeats. I hope they add a dynamic spring reverb in the future and that includes a headroom parameter. Distorting spring reverb is one of my favorite sounds. For impedance, I typically keep it set to 1M ohm so that my effect choices don't mess with it at all.

Thanks for pointing these out. Completely agree. I have noticed these previously and avoid them.