Hi Jason. I bought Helixa Floor just a few days ago. thanks to your films I was able to understand its operation quickly and without any problems. Thank you very much, you are doing a lot of good work. Greetings from Poland - Robert.
whats great about your tutorials is at the end you realize that people might want to tweak it and your tonesd setup makes it easy to change things because most of the hard work is done thanks again!!!!
Another nice job Jason. I too am working on getting better at EQ. I will have to revisit your video on that subject. To me, the sections on EQing are the most valuable. Little tweaks make a big difference! Thank you for posting these.
Brilliant as always. Very educational especially how you show all the options and thinking behind adjusting the tone, as opposed to dropping in a third party IR.
JCM800 was my first amp back in the 80s. So happy to have this tone! Thanks!! This is worth the $$$ i'm sending to your PayPal account right this second!!! Love it. And the Rush shirt is really working for me :)
Nice Jason. You have tapped in on one of the main reasons that I bought the Helix, however have not, to date, been able to capture what have done with it. Nice!
Thanks again Jason, interesting stuff with the 2x12 for cleans. After only a couple of months with the helix I'm still only scratching the surface but your vids are helping get to grips with it.
2203/2204 came out in the mid 70s originally as part of the JMP line. Same circuit in the JCM800 package, but PCB mounted Jack's and pots. The JMP could be converted to a 1959/1987 circuit with a few mods due to the circuit board design.
Enjoyed watching this a lot. Can’t wait to test it later during the weekend. I think it sounds fantastic, and sooooo fascinated with all the eq tweaking you do and the effect it has. One thing that struck me while watching, is that it would be interesting to, as part of future videos, and towards the end, mention something on how you , in general terms, would approach tweaking your finished patch and snapshots in order to make them sound great on a single coil guitar, like, where would you start, more gain, more mids, less treble, adjustment of you filter and EQ settings etc. I mean, obviously you have to use your ears, but what would your general strategy be. Anyway, this was a great video, extremely inspiring, so many thanks Jason.
Very powerful and simple tip how to make this amp model sound more close to the original one is: putting volume/gain block before the amp and reducing it to -9 dB. It will have less gain, but that's how real 2204 sounds like.
Your videos is always my go-to videos when I need to learn something about the Helix. Your playing is awesome :) How about trying to make a Buckethead'ish tone? I know he has many different tones but I have a hard time getting his deep crunch and the lead. Maybe it's in his guitar? :)
Really looking forward to an eventual video! Would be cool to see you play some of his licks and riffs :) If you would like to know what kind of tones I'm talking about you could listen to "Brewer in the air" or "Lebrontron" for distortion/crunch and "Soothsayer" for cleans and more crunch/dist. Some of the older songs like "Welcome to bucketheadland" have a little different type of tone. I really like Bucketheads diversity in music styles but that also makes it hard for me to dial in all variations of his tones. I mean, he has released over 300 albums... Edit: Just listened to "Aunt Suzie" by Buckethead and had left this video on in the background, and your tone and some of your playing sounded like it could be on the song :) Guess the 2204 is good for some of his tones.
Thank you so much and very glad you liked it :-) I have a video up a while back in my channel that dives deep into Parametric Eq use of you are interested...
Sounds great Jason. Sweet sustain. Keep it up. Since the Firehawk FX doesn't have access to a ribbon mic model like the Helix does (sadly) , what would you suggest us FHFX users use as a 2nd choice instead? the 57 model, the 421 model or the 67 model? Thanks
You mentioned getting your meters right ....what do you use to set the level of a patch especially if you're going to use that direct through a PA later and also to make sure your level to the soundboard doesn't change too much patch to patch or song to song
Hi, I have watched a couple of your "Dialing In" videos and I noticed that in order to raise the overall volume of the patch, you raise the level of the output, while the amp's Master Volume is still at 5, which means there is enough room to add overall volume there. Is there a specific reason why you don't set the Master to 10 and go from there, but instead increase the output level of the patch?
Changing the master volume doesn’t just increase volume, it also changes the characteristics of the amp. Increasing output level fixes any volume issues without changing the sound.
For me at least, whenever I've tried Marshall Plexis, JCM 800s or whatever I've tried, I've always been left disappointed with the result. The same goes for Fender's Bassman, Twin, Deluxe, or any legendary historical amp. I think the reason why is that all of those amps I've mentioned are legendary amps and probably subconsciously, if my guitar doesn't sound the dog's bollocks, I probably don't rate any of those amp models much. I'd probably be the same if I had a Dumble amp model. I haven't really played around with much in the way of amp modelling and I'm still waiting for my HX Stomp to be replaced, and that will be the best of the ones I'll have tried out, so I'll be interested to see what I think of how Line 6 represent all those legendary amps in the Stomp.
Awesome as always Jason! Great tutorial! Hey, I was wondering if you'd consider doing a tutorial on what I think is one of the most complex effects on the Helix, the harmonizer blocks? I've been fiddling around trying to find a proper way to set up the guitar harmonies for one of the covers we perform with my (1 guitar) band, "Peace Of Mind", by Boston, but I'm not having any success. Any suggestions? Ideas? You are the Helix Jedi Master Supreme, so I appeal to your most excellent mastery of the most excellent device for guitar presently known to guitar-man kind. Lol. Peace, and keep it rockin'! Thanks!
Jason, love your videos. I recently purchased a Helix to run direct through our killer Bose PA F1 Model system (and to stop lugging around my head and 2x12 cabinet. The problem is that everything sounds great through headphones but sounds thin, brittle, harsh, and weak in the PA. Am I missing a global setting somewhere? Our other guitarist brought over a Boss $400 pedal to run direct and it sounded better than my $1300 Helix!!
Hey Chadwick, very hard to say exactly why, but I would say you really need to dial in the tones you are using through the monitoring system you will use live if at all possible. Some folks find it hard to get a preset dialed in on headphones to translate well to another system, at least until you are used to what to listen for. Hope that helps a little :-)
No doubt! I did the Metallica - Enter Sandman tone he did a video on and I had the killer sound dialed in PERFECTLY (thru my headphones)! Then when I went to the practice space and hooked everything up stereo thru my Samson SDX-3000 AMP to a Marshall 1960A cab & it sounded like total s^&*! Muffled, muddy and not ANYTHING like the tone I had out of my headphones. Glad I’m not going crazy and thinking I was the only one. I’ll have to experiment other ways of getting tone beside using the headphones. I have a powered monitor speaker. Maybe I’ll hook the Helix up to that.
Bryan Monk was that because you were using all of the helix modelling and then trying to essentially run it all again through another preamp stage and power stage by going through your amp? What was your signal chain and setup?
Hi Jason! Well done! Your videos are really helpful for understanding the helix and that's why I want to say thank you! As soon as possible I'll buy a helix lt at my local store for using it live with my band but I have a question.. Is it possible to use the bottom line with snapshots and the top line for effects? Sorry for my bad englisch btw..
Thank you so much and so glad you enjoy the videos :-) It most certainly possible to set it up with one row of snaphshots and one row of pedals, work great that way!
Do a Pretenders James Honeyman Scott tone live from late 1981. He used Boss pedals with Roland space echo and a Pete Cornish modded Marshall 200s? Plus a Pete Cornish pedalboard. Its a very thick unique tone that no one has ever been able to match due to the Cornish mods.
Hey Kevin, not sure what to say other than what I explained in the video. Have you tried the patch I put up on CustomTone? If so, does it sound alright on your system?
Hi Jason, a bit late for this comment. I've noticed that this amp-model is one of the quitest in the whole amp collection. Is that normal? I've seen that you push the output-block a lot to get equal loudness with other patches. Is this a bug and no one have noticed it yet?
Not really sure Musikus and wasn't something I noticed to be honest. It could very well be though, I will have to check it out when I have a moment :-)
He was using it as a high/low shelf EQ basically. One of the firmware updates has added an EQ block that does exactly the same thing without having to use the gain block work around he sets up here.
I had one of these back in the day and I'd say you did a great job with it -- with respect to the Helix itself, you've shown that if you fool around (intelligently) with a model long enough you can get something decent out of it ... but to my mind you spent a long time to basically get a 'decent' set of tones, whereas there are other models that dial in a lot quicker and you can move onto making an great patch rather than a decent one. Of course I acknowledge my bias, as I've gotten older and my aural preferences have changes there are just other amps I'd play with before this one. Nice job, but I'd say your initial instincts on this one were spot on!
Thanks Hank :-) Yeah this is not my favorite or first model to choose either, but I am trying to cover as many different models as I can to give so many folks a lot of options. Glad you liked it!
Hi Jason. I bought Helixa Floor just a few days ago. thanks to your films I was able to understand its operation quickly and without any problems. Thank you very much, you are doing a lot of good work. Greetings from Poland - Robert.
whats great about your tutorials is at the end you realize that people might want to tweak it and your tonesd setup makes it easy to change things because most of the hard work is done thanks again!!!!
My pleasure Carlos :-) So glad you like what I do with them!
Another nice job Jason. I too am working on getting better at EQ. I will have to revisit your video on that subject. To me, the sections on EQing are the most valuable. Little tweaks make a big difference! Thank you for posting these.
Thank you and my pleasure :-) A little EQ sure can help things out!
Brilliant as always. Very educational especially how you show all the options and thinking behind adjusting the tone, as opposed to dropping in a third party IR.
save your money and give some $ to Jason and learn his way of dialing in tones with stock gear instead of chasing after tones with IRs
JCM800 was my first amp back in the 80s. So happy to have this tone! Thanks!! This is worth the $$$ i'm sending to your PayPal account right this second!!! Love it. And the Rush shirt is really working for me :)
Big thank you for the support Nate :-) Always appreciated and so glad you enjoy the tone!!
Nice Jason. You have tapped in on one of the main reasons that I bought the Helix, however have not, to date, been able to capture what have done with it. Nice!
That is awesome to hear Jerry...thank you and so glad you enjoyed it :-)
Great video walk through as always. Really like your approach to these Dialing in Videos.
Thank you so much SS :-) Really appreciate the kind words and so glad you liked it!
Great sound! I like what you got out of this amp. Nice Video as always! Thanks
Thanks so much Kevin and my pleasure :-) Glad you liked it!
Thanks again Jason, interesting stuff with the 2x12 for cleans. After only a couple of months with the helix I'm still only scratching the surface but your vids are helping get to grips with it.
My pleasure :-) So glad you enjoyed it and the other videos!
2203/2204 came out in the mid 70s originally as part of the JMP line. Same circuit in the JCM800 package, but PCB mounted Jack's and pots. The JMP could be converted to a 1959/1987 circuit with a few mods due to the circuit board design.
Enjoyed watching this a lot. Can’t wait to test it later during the weekend. I think it sounds fantastic, and sooooo fascinated with all the eq tweaking you do and the effect it has. One thing that struck me while watching, is that it would be interesting to, as part of future videos, and towards the end, mention something on how you , in general terms, would approach tweaking your finished patch and snapshots in order to make them sound great on a single coil guitar, like, where would you start, more gain, more mids, less treble, adjustment of you filter and EQ settings etc. I mean, obviously you have to use your ears, but what would your general strategy be.
Anyway, this was a great video, extremely inspiring, so many thanks Jason.
So glad you enjoyed and thank you :-) Hope you enjoy playing with the patch! Good idea about the single coil suggestion...will do that for sure :-)
Nice call on the Greenbacks! That just improved my go-to rock patch (based on the Cartographer) which used the stock JCM 800 cab.
That is awesome! Glad you like the Greenbacks and that it helped your other patch :-)
Sounds awesome mate .. 😎
Thanks so much Jonny :-)
Hi Jason, I have a model on the UAD of a Plexi and it sounds very boxxy and nice, would you know the best way to gets this with the helix?
Very powerful and simple tip how to make this amp model sound more close to the original one is: putting volume/gain block before the amp and reducing it to -9 dB.
It will have less gain, but that's how real 2204 sounds like.
Your videos is always my go-to videos when I need to learn something about the Helix. Your playing is awesome :)
How about trying to make a Buckethead'ish tone? I know he has many different tones but I have a hard time getting his deep crunch and the lead. Maybe it's in his guitar? :)
Thank you so much and so glad you enjoy the videos :-) I will have to listen to more Buckethead before I try to dial that in, will see what I can do!
Really looking forward to an eventual video! Would be cool to see you play some of his licks and riffs :)
If you would like to know what kind of tones I'm talking about you could listen to "Brewer in the air" or "Lebrontron" for distortion/crunch and "Soothsayer" for cleans and more crunch/dist. Some of the older songs like "Welcome to bucketheadland" have a little different type of tone. I really like Bucketheads diversity in music styles but that also makes it hard for me to dial in all variations of his tones. I mean, he has released over 300 albums...
Edit: Just listened to "Aunt Suzie" by Buckethead and had left this video on in the background, and your tone and some of your playing sounded like it could be on the song :) Guess the 2204 is good for some of his tones.
Great sound as usual Jason. Equalization still being my weakness. I need understand better how Parametric EQ works. Congrats!!
Thank you so much and very glad you liked it :-) I have a video up a while back in my channel that dives deep into Parametric Eq use of you are interested...
Sounds great Jason. Sweet sustain. Keep it up. Since the Firehawk FX doesn't have access to a ribbon mic model like the Helix does (sadly) , what would you suggest us FHFX users use as a 2nd choice instead? the 57 model, the 421 model or the 67 model? Thanks
Thanks so much Stephen :-) None of those mics will sound like a ribbon unfortunately, ribbon mics have their own sonic signature.
You mentioned getting your meters right ....what do you use to set the level of a patch especially if you're going to use that direct through a PA later and also to make sure your level to the soundboard doesn't change too much patch to patch or song to song
I am just using my meters in my DAW for the videos but for any live playing I do it by ear. Although you could do it via meters also.
Just got mine, but so clueless. So thank you :D
My pleasure and good luck with your new Helix :-)
Hi, I have watched a couple of your "Dialing In" videos and I noticed that in order to raise the overall volume of the patch, you raise the level of the output, while the amp's Master Volume is still at 5, which means there is enough room to add overall volume there. Is there a specific reason why you don't set the Master to 10 and go from there, but instead increase the output level of the patch?
Changing the master volume doesn’t just increase volume, it also changes the characteristics of the amp. Increasing output level fixes any volume issues without changing the sound.
For me at least, whenever I've tried Marshall Plexis, JCM 800s or whatever I've tried, I've always been left disappointed with the result. The same goes for Fender's Bassman, Twin, Deluxe, or any legendary historical amp.
I think the reason why is that all of those amps I've mentioned are legendary amps and probably subconsciously, if my guitar doesn't sound the dog's bollocks, I probably don't rate any of those amp models much. I'd probably be the same if I had a Dumble amp model.
I haven't really played around with much in the way of amp modelling and I'm still waiting for my HX Stomp to be replaced, and that will be the best of the ones I'll have tried out, so I'll be interested to see what I think of how Line 6 represent all those legendary amps in the Stomp.
Awesome as always Jason! Great tutorial! Hey, I was wondering if you'd consider doing a tutorial on what I think is one of the most complex effects on the Helix, the harmonizer blocks? I've been fiddling around trying to find a proper way to set up the guitar harmonies for one of the covers we perform with my (1 guitar) band, "Peace Of Mind", by Boston, but I'm not having any success. Any suggestions? Ideas? You are the Helix Jedi Master Supreme, so I appeal to your most excellent mastery of the most excellent device for guitar presently known to guitar-man kind. Lol. Peace, and keep it rockin'! Thanks!
Thanks so much for the kind words Rick :-) I may try to get to a video about the Harmonizer blocks in the near future. Thanks for the suggestion!
Looks like you finally got your wish: th-cam.com/video/oH5MlWizPFQ/w-d-xo.html
how is the line 6 modded version compared to this one? would love to see a follow up vid with that amp
Coming up in the very near future egregion :-)
Jason, love your videos. I recently purchased a Helix to run direct through our killer Bose PA F1 Model system (and to stop lugging around my head and 2x12 cabinet. The problem is that everything sounds great through headphones but sounds thin, brittle, harsh, and weak in the PA. Am I missing a global setting somewhere? Our other guitarist brought over a Boss $400 pedal to run direct and it sounded better than my $1300 Helix!!
Hey Chadwick, very hard to say exactly why, but I would say you really need to dial in the tones you are using through the monitoring system you will use live if at all possible. Some folks find it hard to get a preset dialed in on headphones to translate well to another system, at least until you are used to what to listen for. Hope that helps a little :-)
No doubt! I did the Metallica - Enter Sandman tone he did a video on and I had the killer sound dialed in PERFECTLY (thru my headphones)! Then when I went to the practice space and hooked everything up stereo thru my Samson SDX-3000 AMP to a Marshall 1960A cab & it sounded like total s^&*! Muffled, muddy and not ANYTHING like the tone I had out of my headphones. Glad I’m not going crazy and thinking I was the only one. I’ll have to experiment other ways of getting tone beside using the headphones. I have a powered monitor speaker. Maybe I’ll hook the Helix up to that.
Bryan Monk was that because you were using all of the helix modelling and then trying to essentially run it all again through another preamp stage and power stage by going through your amp? What was your signal chain and setup?
Hi Jason! Well done! Your videos are really helpful for understanding the helix and that's why I want to say thank you! As soon as possible I'll buy a helix lt at my local store for using it live with my band but I have a question.. Is it possible to use the bottom line with snapshots and the top line for effects? Sorry for my bad englisch btw..
Thank you so much and so glad you enjoy the videos :-) It most certainly possible to set it up with one row of snaphshots and one row of pedals, work great that way!
Do a Pretenders James Honeyman Scott tone live from late 1981. He used Boss pedals with Roland space echo and a Pete Cornish modded Marshall 200s? Plus a Pete Cornish pedalboard. Its a very thick unique tone that no one has ever been able to match due to the Cornish mods.
I have to turn the bass to zero on this model or it’s unbearable. How do you get this work.
Hey Kevin, not sure what to say other than what I explained in the video. Have you tried the patch I put up on CustomTone? If so, does it sound alright on your system?
Hi Jason, a bit late for this comment. I've noticed that this amp-model is one of the quitest in the whole amp collection. Is that normal?
I've seen that you push the output-block a lot to get equal loudness with other patches.
Is this a bug and no one have noticed it yet?
Not really sure Musikus and wasn't something I noticed to be honest. It could very well be though, I will have to check it out when I have a moment :-)
anyone know a vid where split crossover technique is detailed? I searched but no luck...
He was using it as a high/low shelf EQ basically. One of the firmware updates has added an EQ block that does exactly the same thing without having to use the gain block work around he sets up here.
I had one of these back in the day and I'd say you did a great job with it -- with respect to the Helix itself, you've shown that if you fool around (intelligently) with a model long enough you can get something decent out of it ... but to my mind you spent a long time to basically get a 'decent' set of tones, whereas there are other models that dial in a lot quicker and you can move onto making an great patch rather than a decent one. Of course I acknowledge my bias, as I've gotten older and my aural preferences have changes there are just other amps I'd play with before this one. Nice job, but I'd say your initial instincts on this one were spot on!
Thanks Hank :-) Yeah this is not my favorite or first model to choose either, but I am trying to cover as many different models as I can to give so many folks a lot of options. Glad you liked it!
I wish I had a translation of each name to tell me what each amp really is.
Try helixhelp.com/models/
SO MUCH VERB