Issues with the HX Stomp

[kevinplarson]

I've had an HX Stomp for sometime. I got it with the thought of having flexibility with both electric and acoustic, but I so rarely use the electric, that it's not really relevant there. But I keep having trouble with the acoustic and the Stomp.

One of my friends in my church is a big electric guy and geeks out over the effects. He's used Kemper systems and now is using ones from Fractal. I think he has an above average knowledge of how to work the things.

He's convinced, from trying to use the Stomp himself with acoustic, that it just doesn't play well with acoustic guitars. We keep having trouble with feedback. He thinks there's excessive low-end that causes problems. He got this using a Martin sc13e (and the LR Baggs Voiceprint).

But my main rig is the Stomp with the Voiceprint. I am using the K&K mini in my guitars (Martin 000-28MD, 0015sm, and Atkin J43). I know the Mini has some feedback issues. He was blaming my pickups. He's not a fan. But then he had the same issues with his Martin.

He and I both were using wedge floor monitors. That's our situation - at least for now.

Here is my question. I know a lot of you have used the Stomp. What's our problem?! Have you had the same issues? What would you recommend?

Thanks in advance!

[jonfields45]

Floor monitors are a big problem with acoustic guitar amplification. Put something up on a stand pointed directly at you, not through your guitar.

If you EQ the guitar to try to reduce the feedback, you will degrade the FoH tone. Much simpler to move the monitor behind you, ear height.

[calvanesebob]

Are you saying that you are using the HX Stomp and an LR Baggs Voiceprint?

[Foss38]

Make some good IR's of your guitar, load them onto your Stomp, and ditch the Voiceprint.

[kevinplarson]

Originally Posted by calvanesebob

Are you saying that you are using the HX Stomp and an LR Baggs Voiceprint?

Yes. Am running it into the stomp.

[Peter Z]

I have and use a HX Stomp for acoustics without any problems.
First check the input impedance on the input block.
Then set the EQ to what you want.
Then add your FXs one by one.

There is no reason why the Stomp causes more feedback than any other piece of gear. In fact it's a nice tool to reduce feedback because you have more EQ options that other preamps. No feedback killer though but that would be the ladt thing I'd use on an acoustic.

[calvanesebob]

Originally Posted by kevinplarson

Yes. Am running it into the stomp.

I would run my guitar into the voiceprint, and use it's feedback features, then run that into the stomp to add some effects. Also, try using the stomp in the effects loop of the voiceprint instead.

Make sure your gain stages are set right, and when you create the voiceprint make sure you set the level so the meter is as high as you can get without clipping. Also use the phase switch on the voiceprint, an out of phase signal also causes feedback.

Hope this helps.

[jonfields45]

My experience with SBTs, floor monitors, and top of the line feedback control pedals was not great. Putting the monitor behind me was better (your body shields the guitar). Up on a stand behind me not pointing it's tweeter through my head at my mic has proven bullet proof.

[dnf777]

for someone who is adept with the stomp, I'm sure you can do just about anything, but for me, I much prefer an acoustic box that is designed with acoustic guitars in mind. just much more intuitive. Don't get me wrong, I like my stomp, but use it more for electric guitars, where it really shines. plus, I never found the need for 1/100th of the features the stomp has when playing acoustic. That's just my opinion and style of play, of course.

[AcouStickistNS]

I’ve made my own feedback killer in both the Stomp I used to have as well as my Helix for my acoustic guitar. The parametric eq does a great job of this. Find the offending frequencies, lower just a bit and narrow the Q at that point to avoid tone suck. In my case I once had an amp where two frequencies caused feedback. Helix took care of it.

[rockabilly69]

The stomp is just as good as an acoustic box as it is an electric box. Period.
I own some of the best analog preamps made and the HX Stomp can hang with an of them.

The problem here is most likely user inexperience. Why I do I say that? Because there is NO reason the HX Stomp causes feedback without user error. For example, If you're using any preset with compression that can be causing the feedback, and that's one of many things!!!

This box can be daunting to use on the fly! This is not something you can run factory presets for, for your situation you need to learn to build a preset from scratch, one, to setup input impedance, two, set the proper gain structure for your guitar's pickup, and three, to design a parametric EQ made specifically for that pickup.

You really must know how to use the EQ sections in the Stomp to get the best out of it. You need to...

1) learn how to use the high pass filter to remove all unnecessary low end from your starting signal (this will help greatly with feedback issues)
2) know how to sweep the bands to find the problem frequency(s),
3) learn how to use the Q to cut just what is needed to get the job done. As said above, excessive cuts will leave you with a bad thin sound (ie tone suck).

What would you say your experience level is at running fully parametric EQ? If it's low, hit the books!!!

After you tackle the EQ part, the next phase is designing a nice reverb to go with your particular guitar. And to be clear, you need to learn how to do this at home away from the gig, this is not on the job training material

After that you can learn to use other FX for variety.

In a typical three hour gig, I go through about 10 presets. But all of them are designed around the EQ that I designed specifically for each guitar that I use, their unique pickup systems, and the acoustic amps and PA speakers that I use with them. So I have presets for 4 different guitars, although, I only use one or two guitars for most gigs. Unfortunately for me, I just changed the pickups in most of my gigging guitars, so I am in the same boat as you, so back to work for me

For the record, I've been using an HX Stomp for about a year successfully for acoustic gigs. I spent a few days learning to navigate the HX Stomp by watching Groove 3 videos, mostly, to know how to navigate the stomp on the fly, and to build presets from scratch.

https://www.groove3.com/tutorials/Li...tomp-Explained

Don't write off that HX stomp yet, it's a great box!!!

[AcouStickistNS]

Also check out this thread:
https://line6.com/support/topic/5504...tedoverlooked/

The only time I’ve had an issue with the Stomp was plugging into someone else’s rig where his interface into his PA was auto sensing for line/instrument level. My issue was not getting enough signal as my volume on the Stomp was turned up all the way. If you are running what appears to me as two modelers, you might have to manually override the auto inputs on the Stomp. Also you might have to evaluate line vs instrument level going out of the Stomp. In a nutshell chaining multiple devices with auto impedance sensing sometimes becomes a crapshoot as to what results you will get. When the Stomp first came out, many tech savy pedal users I know love the control you get with the Stomp. I own a lot of stereo output instruments, and the benefit the Stomp has over the Helix was the dual guitar inputs; Helix only has one. I’m not at all familiar with the Toneprint, but if you are getting an odd bass boost out of the Stomp (try using it with no effects) I’d suspect you need to dig into getting all of the levels set up correctly. What I briefly read about the Toneprint was the word “auto” used to describe how it works. That flagged me as two auto sensing devices in your signal chain, which the Stomp has the ability to solve.

[Peter Z]

^^^ exactly! This is what I meant to check the input impedance on the input block. It’s not too scientific. For acoustics 1MOhm is correct in most cases. Some internal preamps might sound better with a lower setting.
We might criticize that there is no 5 or 10MOhm setting for pickups with a very high output impedance but that applies to most preamps. Only very few preamps offer any choices.

A few years ago I had a gig where I played my electric in a rock’n’roll band first and acoustic in a country band later on. It was amazing with just the Stomp directly into the pa. I just took my Tele and switched to another preset.

[kevinplarson]

Thank you. Can you explain how to do this?

[AcouStickistNS]

Might not be obvious when reading the manual, which is online if you don’t have one. For the input block, impedance goes by the letter Z, a standard notation used in electronics.

For output I recall line/instrument being the option.

Look at pages 18 and 41 for blocks and global settings depending on how you are connecting the Stomp:

https://line6.com/data/6/0a020a4010c...English%20.pdf