I really love and hate this thing.
I was noodling around and found a few progressions I liked last night, still trying to put at least one song together or find my new groove, and ran downstairs to setup the Helix and get a sound going. With my Pod HD500 this would take 10 minutes, if that, and I'd be onto recording. 2 and a half hours later I was done writing my patch and was too tired to lay tracks... that and my ears turned to mush.
I have come up with with what I believe to be a very versatile patch. I should be able to do a lot on this and there is still some tweaking to be done. I need to adjust some EQ stages to just tweak the sound a bit to get it where I want it. But I'm pretty happy overall... and it's the power of the Helix which really showed up in these 2 hours of tinkering...
This thing is powerful, and once I made the mental disconnection with the POD HD I was really able to dig in and figure that out myself. I've done some reading of other sites but never really took notes, luckily my brain somehow retained some of this info and I was able to use it in my patch creation process... So like everything, lets start at the foundation. I plugged in my Telecaster and went to work.
I grabbed a clean amp, normally I go straight for an AC30, but today I decided to grab the Archon clean channel. For a cab I went with the Orange 412 box, because well... I need some citrus in my life. Good for a healthy life you know? I tweaked the bejesus out of it and got what I thought at the time was a nice smooth modern clean.
I wanted a good drive tone to go with it, but as I mentioned on the last blog post I wasn't thrilled with the distortion options on tap, and I'm still not overly happy with them. The Archon reacts very differently than the AC30 so I did give them a go, but still didn't really like what I was hearing. So I decided to add the Archon Lead channel to the mix. I created a second path and now my signal chain splits before the amps and the rejoined before heading out the cab.
The Archon Lead is super powerful and I really dig it! I think I may want the real thing, this is a fantastic sounding patch. Really thick and heavy. Makes my Telecaster sound like a humbucker equipped lead machine! I decided to run both amps in tandem for my lead tone and just have a foot switch take the Archon out of the signal path. At this time I put a reverb behind the clean amp only.
Ahhh... the clean Archon and the Lead Archon get pretty thick and heavy together but loosing a lot of definition... thus the heavy tweaking commences. I swapped out the clean side for a bright Fender Bassman patch and edited it until I got some nice chime in with the lead tone. Very complex and dynamic tone. I adjusted the lead tone some more and started diving into bias and sag settings to get a good feel and response. I then went clean... holy ice pick!
I played with the Bassman some more. I really like this amp, but I don't know if its idea for what I'm trying to do... So I swapped it for a blackface Fender Deluxe normal channel. I don't like how the drive control gets this amp dirty so quickly, so I have it set to 1.0 or below to get what I'm looking for. A lot more EQ tweaking to get the clean sound I wanted but still retain some top end definition. Merged with the Lead channel I was super happy.
I wanted another gain stage however, so I started to go back to the overdrive and distortion pedals. I put these in front of the Deluxe so they wouldn't affect the Archon. I don't know how long I played with the, but I never got something I overly enjoyed... I figured it was the Deluxe itself and how the pedals interact with that amp. This is where I threw out the Pod HD mentality and wondered if I could create another amp path... I was right.
I took an AC30 Essex model and threw it in behind the Deluxe along the same "clean" signal path. I setup a foot switch to hot swap between the two amps. Dialed in a chimy crunch from the AC30 and done. I added a little boost with the Exotic EP Booster and the foundation was done.
There is some bottom end flub I get from this patch that I need to go in and fine tune with some EQ patches, but overall I'm really liking the tones I'm getting from it. So it was time to fill in the rest.
I added a trem, put the speed on the expression pedal, then added my usual phaser and delay pedals. Reverb got moved to the master channel, and all done.
All of a sudden its midnight and I have to work in the morning... so it's time to pack it up and record tomorrow.
But before I do that I look at my signal chain for recording that I've fine tuned and slap myself a little bit....
My signal path is:
Guitar -> TC Electronic Hyper Gravity -> Ernie Ball Expression Overdrive -> ABY Box
ABY Box A -> TC Sub n' Up -> Maxon Ad999 delay -> Orange Rockerverb 50 -> Cabclone
ABY Box B -> Helix
The compressor was on the whole time.... oh well, it sounded fantastic.
You can download the patch from my dropbox at the link at the top of this post. I'll be updating that folder as I add patches as you come with me on this journey. Thanks for reading.
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