My name is Daryl, and I'm a gear addict. Guitars, amps, pedals, you name it, I have a fascination with them. Now, I'd say my tastes mainly fall under the vintage and traditional category. My main love is vintage reissue Gibson guitars and retro-voiced valve combos. That said, with $150 off the celebrated Line 6 Helix, my head has been turned, and maybe it's time to ditch the cumbersome tube amp in favor of its contemporary digital counterpart.
While my home studio is littered with amps from a '68 reissue Fender Twin, to the far more portable Fender Blues Jnr, a monstrous 100W Soldano-inspired head and cab, I always gravitate towards one in particular, my all-time favorite, the Vox AC30. This diamond-clad combo is my go-to gigging companion, and while I love its throaty midrange bark and fierce top-end, I could really do without its back-breaking weight.
At my last show, it really hit me that it was time to make a change. After loading the car up again with two guitars, a handsome mahogany Gibson Explorer and the somewhat less good-looking Gibson Theodore, my downsized pedalboard, and then the AC30, my back was in bits - and the thought of doing it again at the other side was enough to bring me out in a cold sweat.
Now, digital modeling technology has never been better, and the Helix is a stunning example of what is possible in this day and age. So, I know I can easily get a convincing AC tone from a modern floor unit, and its lightweight nature will drastically reduce the effort it takes to load in and out of gigs, but I'm still left wondering if I'll use it to its full potential.
I'm not a massive user of effects. Currently, my board consists of my main heavy overdrive, a lighter gain stage, a boost for solos, an octave pedal for when things get riffy, a harmonic tremolo for some spacey movement, and a wah that I'm guilty of overusing.
My fear with a multi-effects unit, like the Line 6 Helix, is that I won't use half of the effects, amp models, and other fancy features. That said, who says I need to use it all? Surely, a handful of great effects, a seriously convincing amp model, and the added portability are enough to make the unit a well-worth investment. I guess there's only one way to find out... I'm going to have to buy one and try it live. Thank God there's $150 slashed off the price!
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