From pedals to modelling and back again

relic245 · September 2023

Been around this loop many times!

When I bought my most recent HX FX I carefully did an a/b test between my drives and the modelled ones. There was a difference but it didn't seem like much. The convenience won over and I started to use the drives in the HX FX.

Recently not been so happy with my sound so thought I'd try a drive again and this time the difference sounded massive. It was a marsahall govnor 2 so a respectable pedal but certainly not high end.

So much better that I've just bought a second GV-2 so I'll use one for low gain and one set to higher. Then all i need is a low gain to use as a boost and I'm set for drives again.

So interesting, when I was comparing the modelled drives to see if they were good enough they only sounded slightly less good. But when coming from the other direction, to see if the real drives were better the difference was huge.

I wonder how much is down to perception. I wanted the HX FX to be good enough for convenience. This time I wanted the drives to be better as I wasn't happy with my sound.

It does my head in. Is it real or all just in my head. I wonder what the result would have been if both were blind tests.

Cirrus · September 2023

I did the same journey.

At the end of the day, who cares if the difference is all in your head? You know what else is all in your head? Your hearing, your creativity and inspiration etc etc.

I'm much happier with two ODs and a Fuzz on my board vs a single HX stomp. The workflow/ decision making process is much quicker and clearer that way and that leads to better sounds.

Fiftyshadesofjay · September 2023

I prefer real drives to the HX Drives but there’s not that much in it

Nerine · September 2023

I think a lot/most of it is psychological.

I've A/B'd the "Klone Chiron" in my Fractal FM9 with a genuine Centaur, both running into a Two Rock Custom Reverb Sig.

(I was using the FM9 literally like a single stompbox, nothing else on the grid)

Myself and the several other people listening heard (nor felt) any difference between the two. The settings were easy to match, too.

Maybe that's the Fractal modelling process, which is known to be exceptional, or maybe it's just the way it is and modelling (when done well) is equal to the analogue counterparts.

I'm sure some will argue against this, but more fool them. I'm not blowing my cash on boutique pedals when I've got pretty much all of them in the FM9 already. I've done the A/Bs - I'm happy with it. I'm comfortable it does what it claims. I'm no longer skeptical. I just enjoy it.

I think it's easy to overthink, otherwise.

Chances are, a model, regardless of its originating unit, is probably going to be very close to the original hardware, in some cases indistinguishable, or at worst the difference is lost in a band mix or in environmental inconsistencies day to day.

People do tend to listen with their eyes, and I'm at the stage where I truly believe now that digital is truly there...

It's strange. In nearly every other field of technology, digital is embraced. Streaming, Televisions, smartphones, PA Mixers, Loudspeakers and ampifiers, DAWs, plugin modelling, etc and it seems widely accepted and widely used to great effect, except by certain guitarists with their £5k tweed copies and pedalboard of boutique Ibanez and Boss clones who can definitely hear and feel the difference between orange drop caps and generic ones.

I used to be a huge proponent of gear at the real high end of the market. I used to think it mattered and made a difference. It just doesn't. I no longer buy into it.

The high end is boring. It's cliched, it's obvious, it's unsurprising, dare I say it even uninspiring (depending on how you approach and view creativity), it's chock full of jargony buzzword waffle that means precisely jack shit and the insistence that it does matter only shows a lack of real world experience in my opinion.

I'm not saying there's not a minute audible difference in some of these cases. There probably is. But if there is, it definitely doesn't matter because everything else being equal there are a lot more factors at play even psycho-acoustically and environmentally that will have a greater impact on the sound (and CONSISTENCY of sound) than the completed negated minutiae of whether something was wired PTP or PCB.

Go to a jam night with a few amps and guitars etc. You put a good player through a mediocre rig and they play all of the right notes at the right time, it's inherently "better" and sounds "better" than the bedroom blueser with the £5k tweed clone and KTR on the board playing F#m pentatonic over a A Maj chord progression and continually landing on the F# as the home note...

Regardless of equipment, one is going to sound good, one is going to sound shit. The only people caring about the tonal minutiae in that moment are... errrr. nobody. Matey with the tweed is too busy thinking about what he's playing to notice, and nobody else cares.

I don't know how many thousands of gigs, jams, sessions, productions, recordings, mixes etc I've done - lots - and I can't remember a single instance of any of those occasions, other than about 2 where my guitar sound was the thing that was memorable about it (or the fact I remember swapping out my TS9 for an TS808 on any given night). Didn't matter whether I was using any of the high end stuff I've owned over the years or some beat up Blackstar at a jam night. The music and how I played was what made a difference.

The tone has never been something that really matters.

Anyway, I've digressed massively here. I'm sure many will disagree, too. That's fine. I've purposely exaggerated and generalised a bit for effect. I know there will be mitigating circumstances to some of what I have said.

TL;DR - modelling solutions (if implemented and used properly) can be as gratifying and as good as any other analogue gear. If not better due to the added flexibility and freedom of the signal chain.

stickyfiddle · September 2023

I don't like the HX drives, and prefer "real" ones by quite some margin. Love the amps and just about eveything else in there though.

relic245 · September 2023

Nerine said:

TL;DR - modelling solutions (if implemented and used properly) can be as gratifying and as good as any other analogue gear. If not better due to the added flexibility and freedom of the signal chain.

Purposefully didn't quote your whole message

I agree with everything you've said. Certainly in a band mix it would be indistinguishable. I can't comment on the fractal stuff as I haven't tried it since the axe-fx 1 was brand new.

The line6 stuff is good, no doubt about it.

When I'm playing at home on my own I detect a bit more harmonic complexity in the pedals. I know that sounds a bit cork sniffery and I'm pretty sure I'm not of that persuasion but I can definitely hear there is 'something just a little bit extra' in there that I can't quite define.

Absolutely no chance I could hear that in a mix, but the other day I found myself playing a riff over and over again, just because it sounded so good. (the sonic sound rather than the notes) as a result I enjoyed it more and therefore played better.

Anyway as you say you can spend your whole life going up your own arse with this. For now I'll go back to the pedals, until next time I fancy a change.

JohnCordy · September 2023

The Marshall guvnor circuit is (unfortunately) not covered in the Helix drives, I think it's actually a bit of an underrated pedal, and has ended up being quite heavily borrowed from in the "Marshall in a box" segment of pedals.

I've been using a Boss Angry Driver live and the angry Charlie side (guvnor based) really works beautifully for chunky rhythm guitar stuff

AntonHunter · September 2023

Nerine said:

I think a lot/most of it is psychological.

...

The high end is boring. It's cliched, it's obvious, it's unsurprising, dare I say it even uninspiring (depending on how you approach and view creativity), it's chock full of jargony buzzword waffle that means precisely jack shit and the insistence that it does matter only shows a lack of real world experience in my opinion.

...

Agreed. For me, though, that high end is all the digital stuff. I can't afford a Fractal thingy, so haven't even tried, and I'll stick with my pedals :-)

Cirrus · September 2023

It's interesting how price comes into it. It does feel like a different mental exercise comparing, say, a King of Tone to the Helix model vs comparing the real and modelled version of an SD-1. You might well say the difference isn't worth worrying about for the £500 pedal...

My experience of trying to tone match the models is that you can often get them sounding the same for the same riff, but then if you try to play something different, softer or harder, they don't react the same to that dynamic change. Does that matter? That's up to you. For me it matters - because how the signal chain reacts to my dynamics affects my choice of dynamics.

Plus, it's just easier to grab the knobs and make adjustments in seconds vs using a mouse or an interface. The Helix is the worst by far. Want to go from low to high gain on that pedal? no problem, just turn this small, slippy rotary encoder fully round 5 times! By the time you've done it you're in left brain mode - a technician, not an artist. Workflow is everything.

relic245 · September 2023

Cirrus said:

Plus, it's just easier to grab the knobs and make adjustments in seconds vs using a mouse or an interface. The Helix is the worst by far. Want to go from low to high gain on that pedal? no problem, just turn this small, slippy rotary encoder fully round 5 times! By the time you've done it you're in left brain mode - a technician, not an artist. Workflow is everything.

100% . I can convince myself all day long that it's as easy to change a drive sound on the helix as it is on a pedal. In my head it is, in reality it's not (at least not for me)

But then again I'm a very tactile person so maybe that make a difference.

noisepolluter · September 2023

I use a GX100 via 4CM into a DSL40 - the amp does all the crunch sounds but the multi fx does everything else (including boosts). I used to use a pedalboard into a clean amp.

Initially I did miss having instant tweaking access to all the effect controls, but when I recently rigged up an actual pedalboard via 4CM I found I spent the next couple of hours tweaking rather than practicing, so I swapped back. I’ve just assigned the 4 control knobs to the parameters I need to tweak most on each patch, and that seems like a decent compromise. With a pedalboard, one of the pedals does need to be a noise gate, which makes routing a bit more fiddly and uses up power and space, whereas that side of it is an absolute doddle with the GX100 touch screen.

There’s also Bluetooth editing via the iPad app which I’ve not even looked at yet!

jellybelly · September 2023

relic245 said:

Cirrus said:

Plus, it's just easier to grab the knobs and make adjustments in seconds vs using a mouse or an interface. The Helix is the worst by far. Want to go from low to high gain on that pedal? no problem, just turn this small, slippy rotary encoder fully round 5 times! By the time you've done it you're in left brain mode - a technician, not an artist. Workflow is everything.

100% . I can convince myself all day long that it's as easy to change a drive sound on the helix as it is on a pedal. In my head it is, in reality it's not (at least not for me)

But then again I'm a very tactile person so maybe that make a difference.

I think, for me at least this was the big hurdle.

The drives on the HX are fantastic, and you can dial almost any tone in, provided you take your time.

With a stompbox, you remember where the good settings are for each control, it's sort of part of how you think about it. Reach down and tweak the treble or turn the volume up a smidge. The HX doesn't allow for that (beyond setting up a couple of expressions perhaps).

I fully believe the HX could cop those Guvnor sounds the OP mentioned - it might be a different model or need an EQ, but it'll be in there and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

The interaction is the tough thing to replicate.

Personally, I've kept 3 key pedals on a mini board, including a Timmy and El Capitan, both of which I can perfectly replicate in the HX.

But.

I will be persevering with the HX. It's all in there. And I won't be spending £££s on individual pedals ever again.

maharg101 · September 2023

Nerine said:

It's strange. In nearly every other field of technology, digital is embraced. Streaming, Televisions, smartphones, PA Mixers, Loudspeakers and ampifiers, DAWs, plugin modelling, etc and it seems widely accepted and widely used to great effect, except by certain guitarists with their £5k tweed copies and pedalboard of boutique Ibanez and Boss clones who can definitely hear and feel the difference between orange drop caps and generic ones.

Well... I agree with most, but not all of your post.

Streaming, televisions (capable of receiving a broadcast in 2023), smartphones, DAWs, plugin modelling are all inherently digital. There's no analogue, er..., analogue. So there's not any choice to make.

Guitars (excepting synth abominations) are analogue in nature. To imply that analogue effects, preamps, amps, and speakers (can you get digital speakers?) are not widely accepted, and not widely used to great effect would be incorrect.

I do think your comment was insightful in identifying electric guitar equipment as an outlier from the increasingly digital-only world.

It's great to have the choice, and to have so much vintage and contemporary technology available. Truly a golden age.

willo · September 2023

jellybelly said:

relic245 said:

Cirrus said:

Plus, it's just easier to grab the knobs and make adjustments in seconds vs using a mouse or an interface. The Helix is the worst by far. Want to go from low to high gain on that pedal? no problem, just turn this small, slippy rotary encoder fully round 5 times! By the time you've done it you're in left brain mode - a technician, not an artist. Workflow is everything.

100% . I can convince myself all day long that it's as easy to change a drive sound on the helix as it is on a pedal. In my head it is, in reality it's not (at least not for me)

But then again I'm a very tactile person so maybe that make a difference.

I think, for me at least this was the big hurdle.

The drives on the HX are fantastic, and you can dial almost any tone in, provided you take your time.

With a stompbox, you remember where the good settings are for each control, it's sort of part of how you think about it. Reach down and tweak the treble or turn the volume up a smidge. The HX doesn't allow for that (beyond setting up a couple of expressions perhaps).

I fully believe the HX could cop those Guvnor sounds the OP mentioned - it might be a different model or need an EQ, but it'll be in there and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

The interaction is the tough thing to replicate.

Personally, I've kept 3 key pedals on a mini board, including a Timmy and El Capitan, both of which I can perfectly replicate in the HX.

But.

I will be persevering with the HX. It's all in there. And I won't be spending £££s on individual pedals ever again.

Yeah. There are times when I really like the configuring of settings through a laptop, but others when I just want everything in front of me at once. I'd love to see some sort of HX Control that plugs into the floor unit and has just 24 or so knobs, 3 for each pedal.

LionAquaLooper · September 2023

I love my HX FX, but also love my pedal drives. When it comes to dirt I'll switch between digital and stompbox. I won't spend stupid money on dirt pedals so it's nice to have the HX models of boutique drives.
But my modulations are all multi fx.

ICBM · September 2023

relic245 said:

Been around this loop many times!

When I bought my most recent HX FX I carefully did an a/b test between my drives and the modelled ones. There was a difference but it didn't seem like much. The convenience won over and I started to use the drives in the HX FX.

Recently not been so happy with my sound so thought I'd try a drive again and this time the difference sounded massive. It was a marsahall govnor 2 so a respectable pedal but certainly not high end.

So much better that I've just bought a second GV-2 so I'll use one for low gain and one set to higher. Then all i need is a low gain to use as a boost and I'm set for drives again.

So interesting, when I was comparing the modelled drives to see if they were good enough they only sounded slightly less good. But when coming from the other direction, to see if the real drives were better the difference was huge.

I wonder how much is down to perception. I wanted the HX FX to be good enough for convenience. This time I wanted the drives to be better as I wasn't happy with my sound.

It does my head in. Is it real or all just in my head. I wonder what the result would have been if both were blind tests.

I spent quite a lot of time very carefully A/B'ing my analogue pedals with my Boss ME-50 - I really expected, and probably wanted, the analogues to sound better... but they didn't. Most of the effects could be duplicated exactly by the ME - even things like my much-loved Boss PH-1R - but with lower noise, and the biggest shock of all was that the overdrives and distortions on the ME sounded *better* than the analogue pedals... the real pedals always have a slightly 'separated' characteristic as the dirty sound decays back to clean, where the last bit of the dirt seems to sit on top of, but distinct from, the underlying clean sound - something that's always annoyed me - the ME-50 drives don't do that.

Not all of them are great, but then neither are all analogue dirt pedals. OK, it doesn't sound as good for things like the octave fuzz (but I don't really use those), and if anything the 'analog' delay and octaver settings are *too* good and lack the grittiness and character of the individual pedals - but it's a very small price to pay, for effects I don't use that often. So I sold my analogue pedals and haven't really missed them.

maharg101 said:

Guitars (excepting synth abominations) are analogue in nature.

Interestingly, one of the few individual pedals I've still got is a Boss SY-1 Synthesizer - it is completely digital, but it actually works in very much an 'analogue' way - instead of triggering a separately synthesised note from the guitar signal like traditional guitar synths, it actually radically processes the guitar signal itself... the result is that there is no 'tracking', and it's completely responsive to all playing nuances as well as fully polyphonic despite using only a mono guitar cable and no special pickup. It's really remarkable.

relic245 · September 2023

willo said
Yeah. There are times when I really like the configuring of settings through a laptop, but others when I just want everything in front of me at once. I'd love to see some sort of HX Control that plugs into the floor unit and has just 24 or so knobs, 3 for each pedal.

I have seriously considered building own of those. I built quite a sophisticated midi pedal using an Arduino.

Something that does what you describe would be pretty simple. I just can't be arsed at the moment hence buying a couple of guv'nor pedals.

LionAquaLooper · September 2023

Agreed. I was so impressed by the SY1 that I upgraded to the SY200.

chrisj1602 · September 2023

I’ve been between a few HX Effects, Stomps and a Helix LT and back to pedals a few times.

Now I’ve got back into and rehearsing and gigging it’s become more clear that I prefer the simplicity of a few pedals and that I don’t use that many effects.

When I had the HX units I was filling up blocks for the sake of it and constantly tweaking them. That said, they are awesome bits of kit, and I did love having the Stomp or LT set up at home for headphone practice and recording..

NickB · September 2023

I have been down this route myself. I have found that the drives in the HX Stomp a little one dimensional compared to real world drive pedals. I have also found that the tremolos in the Stomp are either on or off. They are not subtle enough for me.

Where the HX Stomp wins for me is the Rotary, Cosmos Echo, Vibe, the tape emulation

Danny1969 · September 2023

The thing for me is analog drive pedals are so cheap to buy it seems almost pointless to use a digital modelled one. Same with amps. A decent amp is like £300 ish, I paid less for my pedals, Hot Rod, Marshall combo and Matchless combo combined than a new Helix cost so there's no cost advantage to using modelling in my case.
People seem to go round in circles with gear. I know quite a few people who switched to modellers, then switched back to amps and pedals. Some looping 2 or 3 times between the two formats. I get this, for some people the fucking around with gear is as enjoyable to them as the playing. We see it on here all the time, they buy it it, they sell it. they buy more or less the same thing again then sell it again. It's like a little cycle that has to be gone through time and time again.

I'm lazy when it comes to gear. The pedals I have work and sound great and were cheap to buy so the modelling thing to me is a solution looking for a problem.

LionAquaLooper · September 2023

Danny1969 said:

The thing for me is analog drive pedals are so cheap to buy it seems almost pointless to use a digital modelled one. Same with amps. A decent amp is like £300 ish, I paid less for my pedals, Hot Rod, Marshall combo and Matchless combo combined than a new Helix cost so there's no cost advantage to using modelling in my case.
People seem to go round in circles with gear. I know quite a few people who switched to modellers, then switched back to amps and pedals. Some looping 2 or 3 times between the two formats. I get this, for some people the fucking around with gear is as enjoyable to them as the playing. We see it on here all the time, they buy it it, they sell it. they buy more or less the same thing again then sell it again. It's like a little cycle that has to be gone through time and time again.

I'm lazy when it comes to gear. The pedals I have work and sound great and were cheap to buy so the modelling thing to me is a solution looking for a problem.

Yes but you're only talking about dirt pedals and amps in your cost comparison. Modellers offer MUCH more than just that. People buy modellers/multi fx for the other fx as well. Plus convenience, connectivity and portability namely being the intangibles that you can't put a price on.

roberty · September 2023

LionAquaLooper said:

Danny1969 said:

The thing for me is analog drive pedals are so cheap to buy it seems almost pointless to use a digital modelled one. Same with amps. A decent amp is like £300 ish, I paid less for my pedals, Hot Rod, Marshall combo and Matchless combo combined than a new Helix cost so there's no cost advantage to using modelling in my case.
People seem to go round in circles with gear. I know quite a few people who switched to modellers, then switched back to amps and pedals. Some looping 2 or 3 times between the two formats. I get this, for some people the fucking around with gear is as enjoyable to them as the playing. We see it on here all the time, they buy it it, they sell it. they buy more or less the same thing again then sell it again. It's like a little cycle that has to be gone through time and time again.

I'm lazy when it comes to gear. The pedals I have work and sound great and were cheap to buy so the modelling thing to me is a solution looking for a problem.

Yes but you're only talking about dirt pedals and amps in your cost comparison. Modellers offer MUCH more than just that. People buy modellers/multi fx for the other fx as well. Plus convenience, connectivity and portability namely being the intangibles that you can't put a price on.

My switcher, board and power supply cost the same as a decent modeller. That's before the effects are on it, and I still need an amp and cab

Nerine · September 2023

maharg101 said:

Nerine said:

It's strange. In nearly every other field of technology, digital is embraced. Streaming, Televisions, smartphones, PA Mixers, Loudspeakers and ampifiers, DAWs, plugin modelling, etc and it seems widely accepted and widely used to great effect, except by certain guitarists with their £5k tweed copies and pedalboard of boutique Ibanez and Boss clones who can definitely hear and feel the difference between orange drop caps and generic ones.

Well... I agree with most, but not all of your post.

Streaming, televisions (capable of receiving a broadcast in 2023), smartphones, DAWs, plugin modelling are all inherently digital. There's no analogue, er..., analogue. So there's not any choice to make.

Guitars (excepting synth abominations) are analogue in nature. To imply that analogue effects, preamps, amps, and speakers (can you get digital speakers?) are not widely accepted, and not widely used to great effect would be incorrect.

I do think your comment was insightful in identifying electric guitar equipment as an outlier from the increasingly digital-only world.

It's great to have the choice, and to have so much vintage and contemporary technology available. Truly a golden age.

But it’s still possible to use old televisions and CRT screens, analogue mixing desks, analogue tape to record, analogue recording hardware (that the plugins are modelled on) etc. it’s still a choice that’s possible to make.

A lot of active loudspeakers have digital signal processing in them nowadays too. And the amplifiers that run passive speakers.

Plus loads of people seem happy to use Strymon stuff on their high end boards which is all DSP, but will say modelling doesn’t sound as good, when it’s the same basic technology.

Should mention I’m certainly not implying that analogue stuff can’t be used to great effect and isn’t widely accepted. Not sure where I said that, unless I am misunderstanding the angle.

normula1 · September 2023

NickB said:

I have been down this route myself. I have found that the drives in the HX Stomp a little one dimensional compared to real world drive pedals. I have also found that the tremolos in the Stomp are either on or off. They are not subtle enough for me.

Where the HX Stomp wins for me is the Rotary, Cosmos Echo, Vibe, the tape emulation

I don't mind the HX drives at all, but the only pedal I definitely keep in all my presets is a Neo Ventilator 2. It's streaks ahead of any of the Helix rotaries but given the processing power dedicated to the one function it has, it's likely always going to be better.

Funnily enough though, I found the old POD2 rotary to be fine, probably expectations of the unit.

maharg101 · September 2023

Nerine said:

maharg101 said:

Nerine said:

It's strange. In nearly every other field of technology, digital is embraced. Streaming, Televisions, smartphones, PA Mixers, Loudspeakers and ampifiers, DAWs, plugin modelling, etc and it seems widely accepted and widely used to great effect, except by certain guitarists with their £5k tweed copies and pedalboard of boutique Ibanez and Boss clones who can definitely hear and feel the difference between orange drop caps and generic ones.

Well... I agree with most, but not all of your post.

Streaming, televisions (capable of receiving a broadcast in 2023), smartphones, DAWs, plugin modelling are all inherently digital. There's no analogue, er..., analogue. So there's not any choice to make.

Guitars (excepting synth abominations) are analogue in nature. To imply that analogue effects, preamps, amps, and speakers (can you get digital speakers?) are not widely accepted, and not widely used to great effect would be incorrect.

I do think your comment was insightful in identifying electric guitar equipment as an outlier from the increasingly digital-only world.

It's great to have the choice, and to have so much vintage and contemporary technology available. Truly a golden age.

But it’s still possible to use old televisions and CRT screens, analogue mixing desks, analogue tape to record, analogue recording hardware (that the plugins are modelled on) etc. it’s still a choice that’s possible to make.

A lot of active loudspeakers have digital signal processing in them nowadays too. And the amplifiers that run passive speakers.

Plus loads of people seem happy to use Strymon stuff on their high end boards which is all DSP, but will say modelling doesn’t sound as good, when it’s the same basic technology.

Should mention I’m certainly not implying that analogue stuff can’t be used to great effect and isn’t widely accepted. Not sure where I said that, unless I am misunderstanding the angle.

It's the part where you said "it seems widely accepted and widely used to great effect, *except by certain guitarists with their £5k tweed copies and pedalboard of boutique Ibanez and Boss clones who can definitely hear and feel the difference between orange drop caps and generic ones.*".

I'm probably being overly analytical.

It's not really possible to use an analogue television to receive a television broadcast, is it. Display a signal from a digital receiver, yes. That's not the same thing

NickB · September 2023

normula1 said:

NickB said:

I have been down this route myself. I have found that the drives in the HX Stomp a little one dimensional compared to real world drive pedals. I have also found that the tremolos in the Stomp are either on or off. They are not subtle enough for me.

Where the HX Stomp wins for me is the Rotary, Cosmos Echo, Vibe, the tape emulation

I don't mind the HX drives at all, but the only pedal I definitely keep in all my presets is a Neo Ventilator 2. It's streaks ahead of any of the Helix rotaries but given the processing power dedicated to the one function it has, it's likely always going to be better.

Funnily enough though, I found the old POD2 rotary to be fine, probably expectations of the unit.

I have tried all manner of modulation pedals to get the rotary sound but not the Neo Vent. I can’t justify the price for one effect thats going to be switched on maybe 2 or 3 times in a show. I have heard only good things about the Neo.

TheBigDipper · September 2023

I'm a classic example of someone going from one to the other several times over the past 15+ years. Always looking for the magic bullet. I'm fairly convinced the problems I face with modellers isn't them, it's me. I can play other peoples presets and they sound good. I find it really time-consuming and counter-intuitive to create sounds of my own that make me happy and want to play through. I envy people who have cracked it! :-)

Never tried a Fractal or Kemper, but owned a few Line 6 products, a Headrush and a GT-1000 (my favourite of them all). I owned an HX FX for a couple of years and found that just modelling effects worked best for me. I like the Rat and OCD models just as much as the real pedals. As a performance tool, it was great. Small, light and comprehensive. As a device for sitting down and twiddling knobs to try out new sounds, not so good (for me).

I'm back in the world of real pedals with knobs I can twiddle. Analogue pedals with digital controls and MIDI presets are interesting. I've got a Kernom Ridge, and that's working well for me. I'm totally OK about digital effects that sound good, too. I like my Mobius. I'm doing live performance control using an ES-5 and MIDI. It's all three times heavier than a GT-1000 and a bit bigger, but I'm getting nice sounds and dialling in new ones quite quickly, and that's what matters to me. Direct amp sounds have been a journey and I'm settled (for now!) on a Simplifier Mk II. Otherwise it's into the front of a clean pedal platform amp.

willo · September 2023

I'm not sure the criticism with modelling stems from it being digital, but more that it's digital replication of the analogue originals. So the analogy to Netflix etc isn't exactly correct - a better comparison would be comparing your favourite TV programmes with real, human actors, to a new episode of the same programme created by AI and/or acted out by CGI.

In any case, I think they match close enough but the real win for me is in workflow - plug into the laptop via USB and immediately able to jam or record direct into a DAW. That's massive for me and more helpful to me in recording than anything else.

jellybelly · September 2023

willo said:

I'm not sure the criticism with modelling stems from it being digital, but more that it's digital replication of the analogue originals. So the analogy to Netflix etc isn't exactly correct - a better comparison would be comparing your favourite TV programmes with real, human actors, to a new episode of the same programme created by AI and/or acted out by CGI.

In any case, I think they match close enough but the real win for me is in workflow - plug into the laptop via USB and immediately able to jam or record direct into a DAW. That's massive for me and more helpful to me in recording than anything else.

I sort of get what you mean with the CGI, but with the caveat that the CGI was so good it would be difficult to differentiate it from real life.

The line is well and truly blurred, in terms of what a recording sounds like or what an audience hears. How this particular set of knowledgeable, experienced and interested guitarists feel and interact with this stuff is the only part that's really in contention.

Half the guitarists I share practice spaces or stages with give exactly zero f***s about any of this so long as it sounds good, ditto for producers/engineers/sound guys. Even fewer members of the audience.

stratman3142 · September 2023

I can't see myself going back to individual pedals. My Helix LT is such a neat package. It's flexible, reconfigurable and sounds good to my ear.

For live use, I use my Helix LT in stompbox mode as a virtual pedal board (a sort of HX Effects on steriods) going into the front of an HRD IV. I visualise it as a pedalboard instead of a multifx.

Most of the time it just stays on one pedalboard set up (preset), unless I want to use a different pedalboard setup (preset). The settings are easily tweakable on the fly, if I just touch the assigned footswitch to access the fx settings.

The main two drives I use live are the Teemah! (for crunch/OD) and the Compulsive Drive (for a Marshall in a box type sound). I used to have a real OCD, but prefer the Compulsive Drive in the Helix.

I don't use an ampsim and cabsim block in the 1/4 inch jack path to my amp. But I've included an ampsim and cabsim block within the same preset, in the XLR path. So I can use the same pedalboard preset direct to my audio interface at home, or for plugging into a PA or FRFR.

I've got numerous different virtual pedalboard set ups (presets) that follow a consistent pattern. My main pedalboard preset has a chorus, but for other pedalboard presets, I use that footswitch for phase, flange, tremolo, auto wah, octaver, harmoniser etc. In most cases my foot pedal switches to wah, but I've also got it set to switch to whammy pedal in other pedalboard presets.

One bank of my Helix LT is completely dedicated to different pedalboard set ups (presets). If I step on the mode switch, I've immediately got 8 pedalboard options visible, without even changing bank.

For VST recording, it's all duplicated in Helix Native.

It would cost a fortune and require a massive pedalboard of individual effects to replicate all the options.

I just wish there was a 'FX Bank Global' option such that, if I change an FX block setting for one pedalboard preset, it would map across to all of my other pedalboard presets within that Bank. At the moment, if I tweak an effects block on the fly, then I have to repeat the same tweak again for all of my different pedalboard presets.

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