Al Krow

I can appreciate that - but seriously you could have an instant "best seller" on your hands and immediately wipe the floor with a lot of existing combos.

Given they already have experience of powered FRFR cabs, I'm surprised they didn't go for the more obvious development of the BF SC or SM combo? Alex could have had, at a stroke, a market leading lightweight product on his hands.

What do I think? Briefly excited when I see a sine, square and saw tooth symbols and get excited about a brand new synth pedal... ...only to find it's yet another dirt 😂

Finally unpacked and tried out the Levy 4.5" and the Minotaur 4.3". The Levy was first out the packing and took a little getting used to after using my Steph 2.75" straps with added JFT shoulder pad a combo I've been using for a couple of years, and improved on the Steph by itself - the JFT both increases the width and made the strap a fair bit more comfortable. I found the Levy to be a little too firm / unyielding and given that I don't have the largest frame actually a little too large - and I get the point about straps potentially being too wide and digging into your neck made by a couple of folk on this thread: The Minotaur is a less "firm" leather than the Levy, and felt more comfortable from the off. I think the Levy will, as with any quality leather become more comfortable with time and probably outlast the Minotaur, but my preference is to get something that works straight away particularly if it's half the price. The Minotaur made my heaviest bass (a Yamaha BBNE2) feel very comfortable to wear and I suspect will be just fine for a 2x1 hour sets with that strap - so I'll definitely be holding onto it. The Levy will be heading back to Thomann. Oh and as a final thought - I did give the Gruv Gear Duo a try out last year and absolutely couldn't get comfortable with it! Very limited adjustability - so you if you don't have the perfect shaped frame for it, I'd say it's one to avoid! Obligatory pics: Levy Minotaur Steph + JFT pad

That's a shame - if you fancy sharing his basic settings / which effects he's using on that patch, perhaps a few of us can have a go at tweaking to see if we can come up with something a bit more usable.

Sold Jake a filter pedal. Very straightforward transaction, good clear comms and swift payment. As mentioned by several others, Jake is a pleasure to deal with and I'd be very happy to transact with him again in the future. Cheers, Bas

Unless a patch has been specifically saved in the right format to download for a particular model I'm not sure that it is possible to use e.g. Dr Tone's Stomp patches can't be uploaded to HX Effects etc Don't know if there is a workaround on Native which allows you to upload any patch and then save in the relevant format for your own model? If so, that would definitely make investing in Native that much more attractive! But even that obviously won't solve the issue that HX Effects doesn't have amp and cab sims if these feature in Chad's patches.

Having now had a listen +1 for Chad's presets - they're the best synth patches I've heard on Helix! Particularly liked his "Dirty" patch at 5.06 of the YT clip - tracking is excellent and for me that would be a very usable synth sound. Cheers @PatrickJ for sharing. If you want any hints or tips on dialling in synth sounds then @Quatschmacher is our resident guru and super helpful - he's got a couple of links to some basic intros to synths which you might find useful. He mostly works with "proper" synths (C4, FI) - I've not been able to persuade him to go Helix...yet.

Look forward to checking out the other clips. With you on Dr Tone's synth patches - never felt it was his best stuff or particularly usable. But hats off to the guy for taking the time to share his creativity.

Ah, just get it! And if you find you don't need it you'll be able to shift it sooner than you can say "solo'd-minus-one-octave-volume-loss" and "at least this is still cheaper than pedal renting" 😁 The other thing Helix is absolutely pants at is as a looper. My little Lekato Looper does a pretty good job, but I've been GASing for a Boss RC-500 for a little while since they came out a couple of months ago, and now that I've just sold a very decent filter pedal that I wasn't planning to and also shifted your old BF Cab to Norway, if one comes up for a decent price on Black Friday I suspect I'm not going to be able to resist.

Well the only multifx that would get you there with capable filter and synth would cost a whole bunch more e.g. Boss SY-1000. It does look super cool though and it would be great to have everything under one hood - can't say I've not been tempted! But maybe a Helix HX Effects and a Source Audio C4 in one of its loops (based on the rep of that particular pedal - I've not had the pleasure yet, but plenty have and rave about it) would seem to me to be a really good pairing and I suspect where I may well end up too (particularly if / when SA sort out the lack of display UI on their pedals). Oh and treat yourself to an OC-5, while you're at it: it very affordably nails the OC-2 sound, as you'll have gathered from the OC-5 thread! You can put that in your HX Effects' other loop 😊

I think the general consensus is that Helix's weak spot is how it stacks up against dedicated synth pedals and to not quite the same extent dedicated filter pedals. As mentioned previously in relation to synth, that is in significant part due to not having a synth waveform generator on board which dedicated synth pedals such as the FI and C4 have, or indeed the Boss SY-1000 and Mooer GE300 Multifx's have - but both the latter are a fair bit more pricey than the HX Effects and rarely come up used. Helix is a synth simulator like many of the cheaper "synth" pedals e.g. the EHX Bass Mono Synth and whilst the Boss SY-1 is also synth sim, it has outrageously good polyphonic tracking and twin filters on board that give it a very good range of sounds. But you're obviously paying an extra £175 to £300 for one of the three higher end dedicated synth pedals (SY-1, C4 and FI) so you'd hope they might bring something extra to the party! Drive, modulation (including phase, chorus, flange and delay), limiting / compression (with the advent of the Rochester comp), pitch shifting (including octave up and down), EQ, tuner are all things Helix does very well IMO. That's a big chunk of many pedal boards.

😂😂😂

Great post - and I think @dave_bass5 does the same with his band in terms of technical rehearsals. It's definitely a nice thing to do if your bands are up for it and can make the time. Given the busy lives (young families and busy jobs) some of the band members have in my two bands we tend to focus our limited rehearsal time on getting our sets tight musically in terms of song structures, vocal harmonies, and vibe and feel of the songs but you're right there is absolutely no reason in a 3 hour rehearsal not to ask bandmates to have a listen to some of the tonal aspects - however with ear plugs in and a very capable drummer in a not vast rehearsal space, nuances tend to be lost.

So circa 200 flawless gigs (well maybe not all of the playing all of the time 😁) from just two of you with the TC RH 450 - good to hear!

Glad to hear. I think the points have been well and clearly made on both sides of the argument now. Interested in who's had a look at update 3.0 in any detail and are there any other patches to recommend checking out, other than the polyphonic pitch shifting?

Yup, thanks. It was just in their very first articles where they missed it and were more downbeat as mentioned by a couple of others. I'll go back and update my earlier post as it is clearly now out of date. The reason why the world will be particularly excited about the Oxford AZ vaccine and more so than the German and US ones is twofold: 1. PRICE - the Oxford one is a fraction of the cost and is being made available at cost, whereas the others are looking to make substantial profits on theirs. The Oxford vaccine can therefore be much more easily afforded by developing nations. 2. STORAGE TEMP - is much higher for the Oxford vaccine. Distribution will be much easier to all parts of the globe.

+1 ^^ And if you ever can't find Luke's post down the line, I put that Dr Tone link on the OP a while back. He's pretty well rated by Helix users. (Although I have no idea whether he uses any of his patches in a band context 😁)

Well if you are in awe then please stop trying to put down other folks' expression of praise as jingoism at every opportunity. What the Oxford / AZ team have just done is amazing.

Yup, as I said, some of us clearly find it hard to say "well done" when it's thoroughly deserved!

It is amazing work. Not only are they making it available on a not for profit basis to developing nations forever, but also to ALL nations (obviously including our own) on a not for profit basis until the pandemic is over. £3 / dose and normal fridge temperatures as we've mentioned above. This is actually the vaccine that the whole world has been waiting for. I really do hope the key members of the Oxford / AZ team are jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for their research: it would be entirely fitting. I know we all too often hate blowing our own trumpet: but bloody well done team GB!!!

Paul, out of interest, how many gigs would you say you did with no issues (and in fact a great result!) from your TC RH450?

Lol - "Isn't that the point of effects?" There you go again - that same mindset. Nope it absolutely isn't necessarily the point of effects. There are LOADS of effects users who enjoy just using them at home for creative sonic fun. And there are loads of bass players who are happy to play live without using any effects. I probably play 5 to 8 times as much at home as I do live with my bands (in a normal year, of course) - that's just me. My home gear context is equally, if not more important, to me as when playing with my two bands. Others will play entirely at home. Whilst plenty folk will be primarily focussed on how they sound with their bands. It's all valid bass playing and how and where we use our gear is up to us and frankly should be no one else's business. As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm just challenging the thinking that says band use is somehow superior to a "bedroom bassist"'s use of their gear at home and the band is the only valid place where gear should be evaluated. We see it all the time when folk say "yeah, yeah...BUT you haven't tried it in mix" as if to imply that their fellow BC'ers opinion is not valid until that hurdle has been jumped.