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Helix Floor/LT/HX/Stomp/PodGo owners' Club - Tips, Ideas & Patches


Al Krow

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@Osiris Thanks for your response buddy, 

It turns out a guy I know has the helix floor, so I'm gonna go have a play with that at some point and make a decision from there. 

I imagine the stomp will be "enough" but I'll probably spend the money on the LT because in my experience enough is never actually enough. 

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37 minutes ago, cocco said:

@Osiris Thanks for your response buddy, 

It turns out a guy I know has the helix floor, so I'm gonna go have a play with that at some point and make a decision from there. 

I imagine the stomp will be "enough" but I'll probably spend the money on the LT because in my experience enough is never actually enough. 

Main major difference is size - the full fat stuff looks great in every way ... till I saw the size of it! The stomp is brill and wee.

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If it helps anyone, a Strymon power supply (in my case an Ojai R30) will power an HXFX unit with the right cable (current doubling, two 2.1mm outputs to one 2.5mm input, centre negative polarity). Basschatter obbm can make you one of these.


This is a relatively long thread, so apologies if this sort of thing has been covered before.

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On 17/09/2019 at 10:32, Osiris said:

At the risk of sounding patronising, (and I'm not meaning to be) are you familiar with compressors? Do you understand what the various controls do and how they impact your sound? If not, then it's definitely worth taking the time time get an appreciation of what the various parameters do as this will enable you to dial in exactly what you want. 

Could I swap that coffee for a compression lesson? (That doesn’t sound right...)

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8 hours ago, Frank Blank said:

Could I swap that coffee for a compression lesson? (That doesn’t sound right...)

I can try!

As I said in the above quote it's essential that you sink some time into getting at least an appreciation of what the various controls do, that way you'll know what to adjust and when. Compression isn't usually obvious and that's one of the biggest complaints from certain members of the anti-compressionist league. If you read any of the compression topics on here you'll see there a degree of misunderstanding and a few often repeated misconceptions about the whole subject. My advice is to ignore those and approach the subject with an open mind. And think as a sound engineer, not as a bassist! 

As you know a compressor reduces the dynamic range of your bass signal. The most obvious benefit of bass compression is to stop the lows swamping the higher frequencies. This allows the bass to sit better with other instruments by controlling its dynamic range. 

As to how to set it up, this is where you need an understanding of what the various controls do and how they impact the signal. Disclaimer, although I'm an advocate of compression on bass I am in no way an expert the subject, I can usually get the type of compression that I want from most units that I've used, including the Stomp, but a clued up sound engineer may well shudder at my ham fisted approach!

Set the ratio (the amount of gain reduction aka squash) to around 4:1 which is a good generic setting for bass. Next adjust the threshold (the point where the reduction kicks in) until you can hear the squash working, then pull it back so it's not so obvious. You'll get better results listening to the effect on your sound by playing along with some other musicians (if they're patient) or a backing track. As for things like attack and release, they're personal preferences. I've never compressed an acoustic bass so there could well be some additional considerations that I'm unaware of. 

@51m0n did a superb overview of compression basics here.

There's also the Ovnilab FAQ section.

The above links may well be a bit of a cop out but they'll be more comprehensive and more informed than my limited understanding. 

I guess I still owe you a coffee 😀

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1 hour ago, Osiris said:

@51m0n did a superb overview of compression basics here.

There's also the Ovnilab FAQ section.

The above links may well be a bit of a cop out but they'll be more comprehensive and more informed than my limited understanding. 

I guess I still owe you a coffee 😀

Sorry! I didn’t mean for you to write all that out, thanks though...

As you know a compressor reduces the dynamic range of your bass signal. The most obvious benefit of bass compression is to stop the lows swamping the higher frequencies. This allows the bass to sit better with other instruments by controlling its dynamic range

...this is all I really do with compression and I’m lucky that the woman who constitutes the better half of musical duo is a sound engineer, has been for decades, I just moan about certain aspects of my tone (compression wise) and she sorts it. I just feel a bit stupid because with every other aspect of my tone I deal with it, I ask her what something is when I’m stumped but, compression...

Im going to read the two items you referred me to and ask my comrade for an explanation. In summary, yes, you still owe me a coffee  😁

Edited by Frank Blank
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1 minute ago, krispn said:

Frank get her to have a look at the stomp with you and maybe she can help you set it up while explaining what the controls are doing too. That way you should have a good grasp of your specific settings and parameters. 

Yes, I have done this a couple of times. What I needed/need is a quite basic lesson in all things audio. The Stomp has kind of forced me to do this because it’s all very well achieving a tone simply by moving sliders up and down but having an understanding of the controls makes it all so much easier. In this vein every term I now stumble across on the stomp that I have no knowledge of I look up and read about, for instance take plate reverb, I know what reverb is but had no idea about the  huge plates of steel used in the original units, very interesting and informative it was. But I just zone out with compression for some reason, she teaches music production and sound engineering at University so I really should just listen to her!

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3 minutes ago, krispn said:

Good company to be keeping 😀

Indeed so, I am extremely fortunate to be in a duo with someone who is not only a great singer and quite unique guitarist but also knows the fvck out of the tech side too, in fact, what the hell am I doing on here!

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I was in a band and the guitarist was a classically trained muso, had a degree in music and had studied further as a sound designer. Pretty much learned all I know from that woman. She was such a trove of knowledge and a great resource. 

Edited by krispn
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6 minutes ago, Frank Blank said:

Yes, I have done this a couple of times. What I needed/need is a quite basic lesson in all things audio. The Stomp has kind of forced me to do this because it’s all very well achieving a tone simply by moving sliders up and down but having an understanding of the controls makes it all so much easier. In this vein every term I now stumble across on the stomp that I have no knowledge of I look up and read about, for instance take plate reverb, I know what reverb is but had no idea about the  huge plates of steel used in the original units, very interesting and informative it was. But I just zone out with compression for some reason, she teaches music production and sound engineering at University so I really should just listen to her!

Compression is widely misunderstood, it's not an effect in the sense of something like a delay or synth. It's more of a tool to knock the sharp edges off your signal than an obvious sonic gimmick. It's an area where a little understanding can go a long way. Of course, there are different types of compressor and different types of compression. Once you grasp the basics have a play with the different compressor models in the Stomp and see if there's a particular flavour of compression you like, for example an optical compressor feels different to a VCA circuit. Then you can choose the model you like best or flatters the acoustic tone. There's some basic compressor models in the Stomp that only have a couple of tweakable parameters, they're a good place to start even if they usually don't meet the approval of more expert users. But you can still get some usable sounds from them. When you're comfortable with all that, have a play with putting a crossover in and experiment with compressing highs and lows separately or having a blend of compressed and uncompressed signals. There's some real geeky stuff to try before you get your first compression anorak 😃

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1 minute ago, krispn said:

I was in a band and the guitarist was a classically trainee muso and had a degree in music and had studied further as a sound designer. Pretty much learned all I know from that woman. She was such a trove of knowledge and a great resource. 

Yes, same here, classically trained violinist who also then did further studies in sound design. I am learning tons from her, it’s a symbiotic relationship though because I’m teaching her how to play the bassline from Peaches whilst chewing gum and wearing Ray Bans, all important stuff, there.

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  • 3 weeks later...
20 minutes ago, GisserD said:

Warning. Be carefull sending midi cc128 to the stomp!!!!

I just found this in the manual. It could ruin your gig! 

Well, the HX effects is different. CC128 has these values:

  1. 0-63: Guilt;  64-127: Regret

The HX Effects hardware calls your family and informs them of every single poor life decision you've ever made

Edited by Woodinblack
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14 hours ago, dave_bass5 said:

 Love how painting it red warrants an extra £50... 

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Pretty sure im going to change my Stomp for the Effects soon. I have a core set of blocks, with a different effect at the end fo each patch. Live its fine, but re programming each patch (4) every time i want to change, say the drive or boost,  is quite time consuming. For me it would be better to have everything in one patch, all laid out.

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30 minutes ago, dave_bass5 said:

Pretty sure im going to change my Stomp for the Effects soon. I have a core set of blocks, with a different effect at the end fo each patch. Live its fine, but re programming each patch (4) every time i want to change, say the drive or boost,  is quite time consuming. For me it would be better to have everything in one patch, all laid out.

Are you doing your patch creation on the pedal itself Dave? Dunno if you have downloaded HX Edit software and connected your Stomp up to your PC? Defo makes editing and saving patches a whole lot easier!

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14 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Are you doing your patch creation on the pedal itself Dave? Dunno if you have downloaded HX Edit software and connected your Stomp up to your PC? Defo makes editing and saving patches a whole lot easier!

I was going to echo this @dave_bass5 - it’s a simple copy block  and paste block
I’ve a set of patches with all the amps saved at Jon Willis’ flat settings, I can then copy and paste them into new patches as I make them. Simple! 

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Im doing it on the fly at rehearsals at the moment. No point in tweaking at home as it never translates to how it sounds with the band playing.  I know how to copy and past blocks, its easy to do, but i have a couple of blocks set up so one goes on, one goes off from one foot switch. Im pretty quick with the Stomp, ive made a point of not relying on the software as i know ill never have it with me, but its still a bit of a pain copying things between patches.

If i decide i want to change, say the OD pedal to another variation, it takes longer to transfer this to the other patches. Its really just a time thing. I dont like to keep fiddling with things and holding the band up.

Not the end of the world, but i cant help feel the Effects will be easier for me. Im not using any amp sims live anyway, im using the Stomp pretty much as a pedal board anyway.

Edited by dave_bass5
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45 minutes ago, GisserD said:

does anybody have a solution to insert an effect, lets say chorus, with previously set parameters? effectively changing the initial preset paramaters?

thanks

No, ive asked about that as well. When you drop a new effect in it always seems to default to the stock settings. I ended up having one patch with 6 of the effects im most likely to use, all tweaked, and i can just copy and paste these in to the relevant Patches if and when i need to. Its probably easier to use  HX Edit if you are just doing it at home.

 

EDIT: Just noticed this is what LukeFRC was talking about doing.

Edited by dave_bass5
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  • Al Krow changed the title to Helix Floor/LT/HX/Stomp/PodGo owners' Club - Tips, Ideas & Patches

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