FREE Line 6 Helix Patches for Praise & Worship!

Even though I've spent the last year with the Line 6 Helix, and more recently the HX Stomp, I've always felt that my ears were bad and my tweaking abilities were mediocre. Recent feedback from fellow Helix musicians have been encouraging, so I'm taking the leap of faith to release patches for your download and usage!

Get my patches for absolutely free!

I'll continually be updating the page with uploads as and when I come up with something that I feel will be absolutely useful.

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Adding Labels to the Line 6 Helix

I've been fumbling about wiring things up on my Helix as I usually play this on a dark stage. I usually need to lean over and peek at where I need to connect cables, and I've had enough of it! Fortunately, I have a label maker, and it doesn't look too bad from afar.

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Over the Top?

I moved my main pedalboard to clean that particular spot of the room (I do suppose my board is getting a little big if there's a substantial amount of floor that doesn't see the light of day). It happened to be in front of my practice rig consisting of my Line 6 gear: the PODX3 and the Spider III.

"Hey, since everything's together, how would it sound if I hooked it all up?"

Yeap. Pedalboard into PODX3 into Spider III. I set the POD like a rack, with the amp/speaker sim on minimal EQ, modulation and delay on post.

I'll be honest: it wasn't impressive. Maybe my signal chain was too long and caused signal degradation, or the digital tone of the PODX3 and the lack of tubes in the Spider III really don't blend well with analog pedals. After some (rather dissatisfying) tweaking, I gathered that the best tone was to turn the amp sim completely off, flatten the EQ on the amp, and rely on the pedalboard as the main preamp and EQ.

Maybe I could improve the tone by:

1. Using better cables (I'm notorious for using cheapo, lao-pok cables), and having a clean buffer in the front of the chain to push the signal through all that mess. Some of friends insist on Lava and Monster cables, which can cost nearly as much as the pedalboard when used liberally.
2. In the digital domain, ditch the Line 6 PODX3, which you have to admit is rather inexpensive compared to what the pros use, and go with a rack setup of the Axe FX by Fractal Audio (two of my favorite musicians, Dave Wallimann and Pete Thorn, use this setup almost exclusively). The modern digital has come a long way in a rather short space of time

I'll stick to my analog pedalboard, with my PODX3 as a backup and the "studio rack" for additional effects. You've got to admit, despite all the flak Line 6 receives for its inferior digital amp sim, when you apply its modulation and delay effects in the mix, no one can tell it's Line 6.

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Dialling PODX3 Tones

The little black corner of the room

I was a devout multi-fx user for a great bulk of my life as a guitarist. I figured that it was possible to get by with emulation

While the stock tones were usable in only certain situations, they were nowhere near as organic as what the PODX3 clips were suggesting through my guitars (I suppose that's the beauty of having access to expensive guitars and paying sound engineers to post-process your clips).

Alas, we must work-around the problem at hand. Here are three of my biggest tips for PODX3 users:

Patches for live should be different from patches used to record

You have 128 patch locations at your disposal. Surely you can spare some for various situations. For playing live, I'd get rid of the reverb, tweak the EQ in the midrange to get the guitar to cut through, and generally don't use too much high gain tones because it just gets muddy when mixed together with the rest of the band.

Different guitars need different patches
The problem with digital is that all the nuances accompanying your guitar get lost; every guitar starts to sound the same, just with differing levels of drive, spank and twang (I'm grossly generalizing the differences between a Les Paul, a Strat and a Tele, by the way). I've had to specifically dial in tones that accentuate the nuances, quite unlike my analog rig where most of my pedals are transparent, allowing the character of the guitars to shine through even on the same settings.

A 4x12" cab sim sounds great recorded, but it's going to be boomy and muddy live

The sound guys will be immensely happy if you helped them focus your sound to the mids where the guitar's voice predominantly is, instead of having the big, large and full-range tone that the 4x12" cab sims try to emulate.

And for those who asked:
My top 4 most used tones to date which work best for live situations straight into a PA using a humbucking guitar that has a coil split.

For further reading:
Benvesco's Blog (The person who taught me a lot about tweaking the POD)
089Ray's Blog (This person has spent many hours tweaking, and he's got a great ear. Check it out!)

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