This unit does it all, you can recreate any artist tone or acoustic, classical guitar tones with an electric guitar, absolutely amazing pedal!
I have 25 other boutique pedals that are high end pedals, strymon big sky, korg sdd3000 delay, hughes & kentner rotosphere and many more and honestly I was at the point where I had too many pedals, they all sound great but my signal chain became overwhelming, coupled with the fact that I was looking at switching systems that isolate and power all these pedals and it can get really expensive to design a switching system that can handle all the pedals and create button presets, which led me to going back to having one system that does it all, the the Helix does the trick !
I will still keep my other pedals for specific applications but now I have everything in one unit which simplifies everything,,
The factory presets are OK but not near the potential that the Helix is capable of, so I purchased some online custom patches and wow I am glad I did because they are not expensive, they allow you to see how a professional creates the patches and snapshots so you have a guideline to follow, saving you alot of time figuring the unit out,, the custom presets I purchased online were simple to download and add to the factory presets and they did not disappoint,, I am so glad I purchased the custom patches,,
These patches also come programmed as snapshots, which means one preset becomes all the buttons, where you can switch on effects within one preset or patch and turn on overdrive or other effects for a solo or a bridge or chorus section of a song, click one button and your pedal board is back to presets mode where each button is its own sound,, very handy tool snapshots can be !
I also purchased 2 Headrush 112 FRFR full response flat response PA speakers, which you need to get the full enjoyment of the Helix because the unit comes with so many different Amp Models, you don’t really want to feed the output if the Helix into a Fender Twin or Marshall or Mesa Boogie amp because you will not get the true sound of the Helix because your Amp will alter the sound whereas a Flat Response Speaker will give you the true sound from the Helix, you can still run a Helix into your guitar amp but the FRFR speaker is the way to go, IMO,, and so all you need is Guitar straight into the Helix and the Helix into your FRFR PA or Console Mixer then out to the PA,, now you just have the guitar and pedal board to deal with.
I am really happy I took the plunge and bought the Helix, it is a solid unit and sounds amazing!! The staff at Long and McQuade Calgary are a great team who are knowledgeable and helpful in every way 👍
Steve J - Calgary, Alberta

I've had the helix now for a month and I love it! It's everything I need built into one board. You can mix it any sound you want with all its features. There's tons of efx and amp models to choose from and you can even buy more. There's also a software that let's you access your presets and snapshots. The software can be downloaded at the line 6 website.
Speaking of snapshots, that's my favourite feature on the line 6.
For its price it's well worth it. The only problem I've encountered was the learning curve (mind you I've always been an analog efx guy. It's my first time with multi)
It's gonna sound rough for the first few days unless you know you're way around eqing and setting your parameters but that's really my fault not the helix.
Overall, I recommend buying the helix. I just bring the helix and my guitar to gigs.

I've been using Line6 floor processors for nearly a decade, and the Helix is easily their best yet. I loved my HD500, preferred the extra power of the 500x, and was shocked at the difference upgrading to the Helix. Great sounding effects, the ability to use IRs, and lots of processing power to create far more intricate tones than ever before. Combined with a Variax guitar, this is easily the best setup I've ever played with. If something were to happen, I would buy my current rig again.
Sound guys love it, which is particularly nice if playing in a range of venues. No amp, and stereo XLR outputs allow me to plug straight into the sound system, with no extraneous stage volume. IMPORTANT NOTE: turn off the phantom power.

Where to begin?
So many options. Presets are already enough for almost any style. Heavy duty for travel and gigs. Saving so much cash and space on pedal nightmares. That is probably my favourite feature. Adjustments for levels and the option to use the expression pedal on any effect works big time.
Play any immerse yourself into it.

This is a must have for guitarist who love to create. Easy to use . Worth every penny.

I have had the Helix for a few months now and yes it is costly but what a dream. I run it through the board sometimes and I have a 50w Atomic which is a great very clean amp. I am never unhappy with the tone I get.
There is a bit of a learning curve just trying to understand how IRs impact the tone and getting use to the interface did not actually take that long.
Finally the Snapshot feature was a very pleasant surprise.
Great pedal, great sound I can't really ask for more and my wife will likely not let me.

This is an excellent piece of gear. If you want to play around with a large variety of sounds without having 10-20 analog pedals, I highly recommend this item. On the other hand, if you've just got 2 or 3 sounds you always use, stick with the analog pedals; it'll be cheaper, you can get your sound, and let's face it there's something cool about analog.
Right now I've got the Helix going straight into my H&K tube amp; I've also played around with the 4-cable method, meaning distortion from the Helix --> amp --> rev/del/mod Helix --> back to the amp. Both methods seem great. I will probably look for some smaller monitor speakers so that I can use the Helix straight into those in stereo, as opposed to going straight to my amp; this way you can take full advantage of the Helix's modeling capabilities. Although using the Helix amp models and going straight into my own amp seems to sound pretty good to me, provided I set my amp to sound roughly neutral (but you get no stereo of course).
All in all, the Helix gives me lots of options, it's easy to use, super fun, and seems quite high quality (although I've only purchased recently so can't comment on it's longevity).
I do have a couple of minor complaints; the first being that there's no rhythm at all, it seems like it can do so much, and then not to have any sort of metronome or basic drum beats seems weird, although I knew this when I purchased it. Secondly, the toe switch on the pedal seems unusually hard to press; which is good in the sense that you won't press it by mistake, but it feels weird to me.
Highly recommended if you're willing to spend a bit more money and want to experiment with a large number of sounds.

I have had so many modeling units in the past I lost track. I should also note I am a big fan of my EVH tube amps. But I will admit I was tempted to come back to the digital side for many reasons. The technology certainly has come along nicely. Basically in the current market for higher end modeling units you have 3 choices; Kemper, Fractal and Line 6. Kemper is killer no doubt about it, but easily the most expensive option, and for reasons I can't explain not something that appealed to me. Fractal AX-8 was my other consideration, but no headphone out and no USB recording was the deal breaker. Since I already had a Pod HD500X, and had 10+ years experience with line 6 products I decided on the Helix. I also already own 2 of the Line 6 Stage Source L2T speakers, so again the upgrade to Helix just made sense. Let me just say up front, yes it does sound noticeably better than the HD500X. It takes a lot less tweaking to get a decent tone. One other huge advantage over the HD500X with the Helix is the ability to import cabinet Impulse Responses. I highly recommend 3Sigma Audio IRs. They really bring the Helix to life. Running the Helix into the two L2T speakers via L6 link in stereo is tonal bliss. The renamable scribble strips, and snapshots features are also huge improvements of Pods of the past. Think of snapshots as a built in pedal switcher that allows you to enable/disable multiple effects at once while also changing amp parameters, as well as modify cab or IR settings. Very powerful tool. Yup it costs a lot, but it offers a lot in return. I may not ever need another amp or stompbox ever again. Playing in rehearsal or live it also was more than capable and I would not hesitate to pick the Helix over my EVH for ease of use and transport. I recommend you try it in store and make sure you have a good FRFR speaker option lined up to really hear what the unit is capable of. You won't beleive it isn't really amp I assure you. You may never go back to amp and pedal board again, you have been warned. I have yet to try hooking the Helix up to my EVH amp via 4 cable method, but I would expect it to work just as well if not better than the previous HD500X did.

This is a killer unit. It is very smooth and articulate. The pre-sets are awesome. This unit is great for studio or gigging. The only problem with this unit is if you run it thru a P/A system it WILL sound very digital.....Thru an amp it sounds killer...just my opinion

Après 8 mois d'utilisation. Wow! Épatant. J'ai eu un Mark V, JVM410H, etc. Plus versatile que tout ce que j'ai eu jusqu'à maintenant.

Saw one on the rack. Decided to bite rather than cry later and have to wait for it on order. Firstly, ty L&M for making it easy for me to trade up from my POD HD500X. Had initial concerns about DSP limits (yes even with this one!). BUT, once i learned how to route the signal path to properly use both DSP processors, that concern went away and I haven't run into it again. On sound quality, its head and shoulders above anything Line6 has ever offered and equivalent or better than Kemper and Fractal Axe FX2. This truly is the next latest and greatest. Buy with confidence!

First off. Ty L&M for the upgrade program that permitted me to trade in my HD500X to get into this Helix without dealing with Craigslist. First impressions: Very high quality construction, gig-worthy unit, excellent display, intuitive control, sound quality is head-and-shoulders above my HD500X (HD500X always sounded a little thin to me even with all the tweaks; Helix is lush, rich, full bodied tone).
I was able to re-create old favorite patches from scratch within hours of exploring the unit. Amp emulators and effects behave exactly like the real-world analog equivalents when playing. (I have some of them and was able to A/B). Pinchies and squeelies are all achievable (presuming of course, if you could already do them before on the equivalent analog gear).
Some surprises: I was still able to reach the DSP limit with some of my homebrew patches. I suppose I'm just addicted to the best of the best effects. But my expectation with this unit boasting double the processing power and 2 discrete DSP processors was that I wouldn't run into this challenge - meh. That being said, its at least equivalent in tone chain effects (8) as the HD500X. And, using less DSP demanding blocks, permits much more creativity and tone crafting. But the quality of sound and ease of use in a live setting is easily better than the best of the POD line; and i'll even say so of BOSS, Digitech, Sansamp, Korg, ZOOM etc. The Helix compares to the Kemper and Fractal (Axe FX2) offerings. and IMO is superior to the Kemper for sound quality, and equivalent to AxeFX2. The Helix outclasses all of them and is at least toe-to-toe with the AxeFX2.
My expectation for the unit is to be able to tone-craft at home, and then jack to the board in the house to deliver the tones I desire. This unit does that. Global setting permit in house tweaking during sound-check and balancing. Very nice when you don't have a lot of time for setup and break-down between sets/acts; and rooms have different active surfaces to contend with.
For the price point, I would like to have had still more processing power and put DSP limits in my past (hence my 4 rating). But truthfully, I'm an effects hog, and even my analog board is fully loaded and crying for footprint. In terms of what I wanted, which is a stand alone portable unit that gives me tone sculptures that faithfully reproduce the recorded tone for songs I play - this unit does deliver. This is a unit that finally, FINALLY, can deliver tones that are dangerously close to the original artists' rigs. Overall, I'm ecstatic with this unit. I was happy with the HD500X. But this is a Ferrari by comparison to a nice Audi. Too many additional features to mention here. Total midi and even control voltage for vintage gear. 4 effect send and return loops. SPDIF, XLR, USB,... If crafting tones ain't your thing, there is lots of support online to get the patches you desire. The interface is also a significant improvement over Podfarm and/or Monkey. I haven't explored how well it works with a rack unit as a slave. But this might be an option if I'm really craving more DSP.
One final comment on controls, The foot pedal is too stiff imo for good heel-toe wah action. Also, it can't be calibrated. But - maybe the external controllers can remedy this (2 additional expression pedals are possible) - and there is nothing to say i can't just put in a send/return to my Clyde Wah. All the buttons can be assigned to the effects or discrete parameters of the effects. Multi-switching also possible. (So i can run a very clean signal, and then punch in all my drive, gates, and gain effects with one toe-switch - Me Likey!).
Bah - quit reading. Go buy one!
If i could make one request, I'd like L&M to get the Line6 rep in to run some users clinics to share/teach tips and tricks for getting the most out of this unit.

I had owned an Axe Fx in the past and I honestly think this is way better value for the price and the features it has. Not to mention, with the ability to add your own cab impulses, you can get crazy tones that match the higher end units (Axe Fx, Kemper). This is by far line 6's best product to date. Take a chance with this one, you wont regret it.

This pedal board is tour grade strong! Easy to learn and use.Can be ready to play shows within an hour or two . New updates all the time the newest update 1.06.0 will be coming in a few weeks and more upgrades to come .

Tons of support on the support page for line 6 or on the helix group chat page on Facebook .
You can also make suggestions for updates for this unit @ line6.ideascale.com which is pretty Rad !

If you buy this you won't be disappointed have fun Ladies and DjentThallMen

This is definitely Line 6's attempt to step up and play with the big dogs (Axe FX/KPA) and it was definitely a step in the right direction. Light years ahead of the HD500X and Line 6 seemingly committed to supporting this product (Firmware 1.04 already).

As with any multifx will this sound as good as your high end tube amps and boutique pedals? No, but they aren't that far off and the convenience and ease of use makes this board well worth the moment. By far the is the best UI I have ever come across.

Take the chance, you won't be disappointed.