Am I losing the plot?!

Teetonetal

I am about to hit 30 days with my Helix. Valves do sound better. No question. But not at bedroom levels or through headphones.

I think the cab / IR area is where things need improving. Cab models still sound meh and IRs don't react like a speaker. It's a snapshot of one reaction.

I'm still much happier playing through an amp. But helix is good enough for practice.

simonbeckwith

Agreed. Ive bought some Redwirez cab IR's and theyve made a massive difference, but a snap shot is never going to be as good as the real thing, close though

Bridgehouse

I've had a Mesa 5:25+ for quite a while, and I got a helix on a bit of a whim and with low expectations to be honest.

I've found the helix perfectly good to my ear for the low volume headphone late at night thing.. I've also enjoyed using it for trying out different styles of amps and can combos to get a vague idea of what it might sound like.

4cm with the mesa is brilliant and unusually has justified the ticket price for me. I do find myself fiddling and tweaking with the helix, but I've tried to develop some self discipline - set up a patch in one session, then in the next one just play it and adjust my playing to try and get the most from it. After a session if I don't like it then it gets deleted and I rinse and repeat - I reckon I've kept about 6 so far.

I've found that with a modelling amp you need a different approach and type of discipline to your playing. Set up a patch and then use the "if this was a pedal I'd just brought then I'd be limited in what I could actually change, so I'm going to stick to those limits and see what I can get out of it"

normula1

The problem I've had with modelers in general is that there's far too much to tweak and therefore you spend way more time twiddling virtual knobs on a PC screen than playing,

The original POD wasn't too bad as it's fairly limited but I never really got to grips with the XT Live I had. The H&K Grandmeister has the same issue: massive flexibility but to my ears at least once the brief honeymoon was over I really regretted the purchase as I struggled to get a consistent good tone.

I really want to try the THR100 though as it seems to have a simple interface, small. light and crucially sound good.