Help Designing a truly “clean” sound with my Line 6 Helix.

[Vancebo]

I am trying to design my clean sound on my Helix board that will be my home base that I will use to build all my my other sounds around.

I sometimes play electric in a church worship band. I primarily am an acoustic player and this effort is secondary to that so I am a complete novice when it comes to electric effects processors. I have been downloading free patches and inexpensive patches designed for praise and worship music. They all seem to fall short of what I am looking for. The clean sound comes out thin and decays too quickly or often is too distorted. The distortions quickly get too harsh for my taste. I have been spending a lot of time adjusting those to make them more palatable.

When I watch various videos of the sound I am looking for, I often can match the delay and reverb that will help sustain. But I am having trouble finding the combination of amps, cabinets, compression that gets me the sustained, fat warmth that I am looking for without excessive breakup of distortion. What am I missing? Can somebody help me with this?

I have a Mike Kelley guitar with humbucking pickups. I simply go into my Helix and listen through headphones. I understand that the pickups could be the problem but they sounded great at the shop through their small Vox cabinet. At church, we go direct and the sound comes back to me in our personal monitoring unit. I have no idea how things sound in the house, but I do know that I am not satisfied with what I hear in my headphones.

Any suggestions?

[Bob Womack]

Here is my home base on my Helix Floor.

Guitar --> Mono Red Compressor --> --> Mono Heir Apparent Drive --> US Deluxe NRM (Blackface Deluxe Normal Channel) --> Parametric EQ --> 2x12 Ceramic C12N (Fender Twin 2x12 cab) --> Stereo Simple Delay --> Stereo Reverb Glitz

I spec'd stereo effects to widen the sound because I record stereo AND play through a stereo amp rig. If you are running mono there is no need to use stereo.

Use the compressor to lengthen the notes. The Mono Red Squeeze has a mix control to allow you preserve the attack while adding compression. The Mono Legacy Red Compressor does not. You choose which works for you. You'd be amazed how often the sounds we love use a compressor but no-one mentions it.

Heir Apparent Drive (AnalogMan Prince of Tone) I use this to goose the drive when needed. It is so smooth and so controllable that I love it. I typically use it in Normal Gain Mode rather than High but I change it based upon guitar and desired effect.

The Parametric EQ functions as a post-amp console EQ to allow you to shape the overall EQ of the amp. I've just found that Line 6 amps tend to have a carved-out midrange and I restore it with the EQ.

The 2x12 Ceramic C12N is cleaner and a little more balanced than the Deluxe's 1x12 cab.

Stereo Simple Delay is to widen the sound and fill up the dead spaces on lead. I run it very low - right about where you can't hear it unless you are listening.

I use the Stereo Reverb Glitz to give the sound depth.

Each of the effects is assigned to a foot switch to make it easy to go from clean to effected.

I have two versions of this preset, a cleaner one and a higher gain one, so that I can go from one to the other with all the necessary tweaks with the punch of one button. I could also do it with a snapshot but I haven't yet.

My favorite way to get driven sounds is to push the amp, so I use the extra gain available in the compressor to do so.

I have other presets with a driven Marshall 1987 Plexi sound (Trem model) for leads as well.

And one final note: I have two complete banks of these presets as well, one with the cab sims switched on and another with them switched off. That allows me to have my total basic array of presets in front of me to switch freely, whether I am running through amps (not needing cabs) or in the studio (where I need the entire sim chain).

All the best,

Bob

[Vancebo]

Thank you Bob. There is a lot to dig through. I think I understand enough to get me started though.

[Shades of Blue]

Originally Posted by Vancebo

Thank you Bob. There is a lot to dig through. I think I understand enough to get me started though.

That's why I ditched Helix for the last time. I went through 3 Helices before determining that it just takes WAY too much work to get a good clean sound. I can plug into a tube amp and get what I want in 5 seconds or less.

[Vancebo]

You are probably right. We are running a silent stage and we are not set up to have an amp offstage somewhere in a room. It’s direct for us. The Helix has to be as good as they come for effects processors. I have to be missing something.