I've used Les Pauls for rock, Teles for country and funk, and the Firebird for drop D tuned heavy blues. I've used a lot of different guitar and tunings in my everyday work, from the 12 string acoustic in DADGAD to wild sitars with the Eventide H9 reverbs. Of course, I’ll always love my Guild 12 strings, Strats and Teles, but when it comes to working fast and getting badass tones, Variax and Helix are a potent combination.
Scarbee rickenbacker bass line 6 helix full#
I have a closet full of guitars, and this has actually replaced a few of them.
Scarbee rickenbacker bass line 6 helix tv#
In the world of TV composing, you need lots of sounds. Wow, I had no idea how powerful this rig was until I dug into it. But even better is to connect a Line 6 Variax cable from the relevant guitar jack to the back of Helix. You can connect a ¼” guitar cable and power up Variax with the supplied battery, which fits inside the JTV-89F. But what makes this a Variax, and therefore quite unique, is the Model and Alt Tune knobs that let you access 29 vintage instrument sounds and 11 alternate down tunings, right from the guitar. Scale length is 25 ½” and there are 24 jumbo frets and a pair of Tyler designed hi-gain alnico humbucking pickups. The body is black mahogany (blood red is also available) and the three piece maple neck is fast and fairly flat. It comes equipped with a double locking Graph Tech tremolo system licensed by Floyd Rose. James Tyler is a talented, creative guitar luthier, and the details in this model show that skill set. The guitar I received for testing was the James Tyler JTV-89F. You can also choose to use just the ¼” jack and plug the included battery into your guitar, which then lets you use the variety of built in models and tunings. Or you can plug in the special Variax Digital Interface cable to the guitar and into Helix and have access to all of the instruments and tunings, both through the guitar itself and through Line 6 Workbench software. This you can plug into Helix, or of course any amp or DI outside of Helix as a regular instrument. Firstly, you can just plug the ¼” jack in and use it as a standard guitar with the magnetic analog pickups. There are two ways to use a Variax guitar. Ok, so that’s one way that I use Helix, by plugging in any of my guitars into the ¼” input, using the FX Loop and getting sounds that way.īut once I got my hands on a Variax, a whole new world opened up, which is exactly what I was looking for. Since a lot of the TV cues that I do are ambient guitar cues, the combination of the internal Helix effects and one or more Eventide H9’s can handle most needs with no sweat. In fact, I often hook up two H9s and insert them into Effects Loops 1-4, extending the sound pallette of my Helix even further. It's also useful that I can move the I/O insert inside of the Helix signal path, for example put them before or after distortion, etc. I happen to use Eventide's H9 multi effects processor quite a bit, and by connecting it to Helix’s ¼ inch send and returns in an I/O FX effects loop, I can access all my H9 sounds. Also with the Editor, I am able to insert external effects into my Helix signal path. It comes in handy for live work, or for example just having a wetter or drier version of the same patch. As long as you leave modules within that preset alone, you can turn on and off any effect you choose and save that. Also with the Version 2.00 update, Helix Editor offers the ability to save up to 8 Snapshots, which are variations on a preset. Note that while the screen can sometimes appear to take a second to make changes, the changes to the hardware are immediate. You can even export the entire contents of Helix into one file, which is handy for backups or to take to another location. You can drag and drop any of the above mentioned amp, effects cabinets and I/O paths in the signal chain, as well as import a wide variety of Impulse Response cabinets for different tonal options. While the Helix hardware does have a nice 6.2 inch color display and touch sensitive foot switches, I find it much easier in the heat of a session to have the Helix Editor open on screen and navigate through my sounds that way. Taking it a step further, I get the most out of of Helix by using the Helix Edit software. Inside of those overall sounds, it offers an updateable selection of 62 amps, 104 pedals, 37 speakers and 16 mic options, along with a selection of analog and digital I/O options in a tour grade heavy duty floorboard system. Plugging in 4 string cigar boxes through 6, 7 and 8 string guitars, it offers the flexibility I need from clean through hard and heavy. In my production studio and outside, I tend to use it either alone, or in combination with my Mesa Boogie, Magnatone and Gibson amps. I’ve been using Line 6’s Helix for well over a year now, and have relied on it as one of my go-to tools for a variety of guitar sounds.
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