Line 6 vs Helix Floor vs Fractal Axe FX III

Geoff said:
I definitely prefer Fractal sounds. But I also have a Stomp as backup and efx with a real amp. The stomp is tiny, easy and flexible and can sound great. The fractals just have some special sauce that is hard to describe that makes it more natural (for me).
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This pretty much sums my situation up. I have an Axe III and a Stomp. The Axe is King of the Hill--no questions, no exceptions. The Stomp is nice for when I want to experiment with something else. It's also a fine USB interface for when I want to use plugins.
 
Each model has their strong points, some of which are selling points to the end user. Each will "get the job done" but the "which is better" argument is never really won because of the features that some 'must' have. No one wins because there really is no clear winner in everyone's opinion. Each player buys what they feel is best for them and suits their needs or wants. We can relish in the fact that we have the better gear, but in their eyes so do they.

All that said, I've mentioned a couple of times before; I was an ardent supporter and advocate of Line 6 for years and would never go to the dark side with Fractal. It was an overpriced, over-hyped piece of gear with an extremely exclusive and snobby fanbase. I've been eating crow for the last few years; I own an FX8, FM3 and Axe III.

I was in the market for another modeler, hadn't had one for a few years (story for another time) and loved my amps and pedals but needed a fly-rig. Was excited because the Helix had just been released but there was this other floor modeler that was getting rave reviews- the AX8. Listening to all the clips I could find and watching all of the videos, I couldn't help feeling that there was something 'better' in the clips of the AX8. But it was Fractal!

Bottom line; while the Helix amps and effects sounded much better than previous devices, there was still something in the modeling that reminded me of the XT Live. I wasn't going to spend $1500 on something that had the feel of a modeler I got rid of so I took a chance on the AX8. Changed my tone chasing life forever. I haven't played through any of my amps for over 2 years. They get used when guys come over to jam and they "don't like modelers". I wind up showing them the same tones from the Axe and some will plug in with me. Occasionally I get a message showing me their new Axe or AX8.
 
JoKeR III said:
Bottom line; while the Helix amps and effects sounded much better than previous devices, there was still something in the modeling that reminded me of the XT Live.
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Exactly my experience. My bandmate used an XT Live. I spent hours trying to dial in his tones to make them blend with the Axe II and not sound weak, sterile, and stiff. I never succeeded. There was not even facility to dial in power amp gain vs preamp gain. In order to get reasonable compression and sustain, you had to dial in way too much gain. It sounded like shit. The Helix is not much of an improvement. It is an improvement, but not much of one. After reading Line6 hype at product launch, I was expecting huge leaps in realism. Nope.
 
That's not likely, but I would have bought a all in one with 10 or 12 switches and the full Axe3 horsepower in an instant. I maybe still would...lol
 
had em all, only have the axe 3 ... Thinking its time to sell all my pedals seeing as the horizon pedal was added now.... I'm kidding I'm keeping my Miku pedal... doubt we'll ever get that modeled lol
 
I am in a band the two guitarists run a Helix and POD Go, I play bass through the AX8...they have bought professional made patches and to me..neither product sounds good at all, it could be user error but everyone I know who owns a Helix never seems to get a great sound out of it.
 
@DFauvre I owned both the Helix Floor, the Axe-Fx II, and the Axe-Fx III. I sold the Helix.

With the Helix, their 2 line, pseudo 4 line grid is very limited in its implementation. If you want to implement two drive pedals in parallel then summed and feeding two amps, you just used up all 4 lines of your grid on the Helix without even able to do parallel effects. Axe-Fx II and III don't break a proverbial sweat doing this.

Helix drive block lacked a wet/dry mix control for the 3 years that I owned it. It also lacks a way in the block itself to mute audio when the block is not engaged, which is a must have for parallel drive processing. There's a way to achieve the same muting in the Helix using path volume levels, but it's a clunkier implementation.

The Helix modulation and delay blocks lack EQ sections in most of the models. Fractal has had that since I started using them on OFW 10.0 on the Axe-Fx II.

The firmware update implementation for Helix is clunky and bricks many users' units. They still haven't gotten that down like Fractal has. They also don't do incremental updates for bug fixes, be prepared to wait 6 months or a year for some bugs to be fixed.

The modifiers section of the Fractal is far beyond anything that Helix has been able to implement to date.

The amp models in the Helix feel like they have training wheels compared head to head with the Fractal, the sound is more compressed. You really need to battle with the Helix to try and get close to the feel of the Fractal amps and you will never hit the nail on the head.

If you like using Variacs in real life, you can do that on the Fractal. For Helix you are SOOL as they really have no desire after 3 years of me begging them to implement one.

The Helix stock cabs sound like ass compared head to head with similarly named Fractal stock cabs.

Pitch tracking on Helix just blows chunks compared to the Axe-Fx III. Expect to hear a lot of bad tracking and splices with Helix.

So what were the positives of Helix?
  • More dedicated bass drives.
  • More dedicated in name bass amps (though the tweaks one can do in the Fractal makes every guitar amp into a killer bass amp)
  • Some Strymon-esque mulit effect reverbs available in one block.
  • (Edit) Line 6 exclusive model of a modified Traynor YBA called the Cartographer. And their other original called Badonk. Those were the best feeling amps in the unit.
  • Billy Sheehan's Pearce preamp model in the Helix was a thing of beauty that I haven't had luck replicating in the Fractal. @FractalAudio can you please get one to model?
  • They have a drive block supposedly modeled on a Klon. But the Fractal FET block with some mods again outshines it for feel and sound.
  • Integrated foot controller on the unit.
  • On the fly sample rate conversions.
Depending upon what you are looking for, my recommendation is the Axe-Fx III.
 
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dr bonkers said:
Line 6 exclusive model of a modified Traynor YBA called Badonk. That was the best feeling amp in the unit.
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Is that what the Badonk model is emulating??? I always thought it was some kind of tweaked Recto, akin to the FAS Modern amps. May have to check that amp out. I agree it’s the best helix model by a country mile.
 
Brian Angiel said:
Is that what the Badonk model is emulating??? I always thought it was some kind of tweaked Recto, akin to the FAS Modern amps. May have to check that amp out. I agree it’s the best helix model by a country mile.
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Yeah I thought it was based on the Big Bottom (ugh) model which was Recto based, iirc. The Traynor modded amp is the Cartographer I think.
 
While I occasionally fret over some stuff… I am so happy that I don’t have these kinds of worries/gas.

FAS solved that for me in 2014/15; awesome, incredible ride! 😊
 
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Brian Angiel said:
Is that what the Badonk model is emulating??? I always thought it was some kind of tweaked Recto, akin to the FAS Modern amps. May have to check that amp out. I agree it’s the best helix model by a country mile.
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Excuse me, I made a mistake. The Cartographer was the modified Traynor YBA.
JiveTurkey said:
Yeah I thought it was based on the Big Bottom (ugh) model which was Recto based, iirc. The Traynor modded amp is the Cartographer I think.
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Sorry about that. You are correct.
 
JiveTurkey said:
The Cartographer is actually kind of neat to play around with. Weird set of controls and interesting design.
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That model, Badonk, and the Pearce preamp were the only things I really miss on the Helix, but I felt kind of excessive daisy chaining units just for 3 models.
 
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strabes said:
I used Helix for over 3 years, two of those spent on the road. Through the same cab IRs the amp modeling differences aren't as huge as some claim, but they're there. The Helix can sound great but I do agree that Fractal is a step up in sound, feel, and effects. The thing with Helix is that you have to fight it to get where you want, whereas with Fractal you can just pull up any amp model, set the knobs where you would set the knobs on the real amp, pull up 57+121 IRs for a cab that goes with the amp, and you instantly have a very usable recorded or live tone with zero tweaking, and it feels great, as far as cleaning up with the volume knob or breaking up as you dig in, etc. Helix makes you work for it, as the knobs absolutely do not correspond to their real-world counterparts, and there is this weird high end that you have to manage by messing with EQ, high cuts, cab settings, and the amp settings. The high end on the Fractal is so smooth and nice, you can get an amp bright without any "digital weirdness." It's hard to explain but people who have used a Helix and compared them through the same IRs will probably agree with me on the high end. Best way to test it is to reamp some dry guitar through corresponding amp models on both units running the same cab IRs. It's very obvious in a direct A/B test like that.

The Helix is $1700 so to me the FM3+FC6 is an absolute home run at $1500 if you don't need to run two amps.


Native has exactly the same processing as the hardware. Any differences people experience are due to differences in the interface. If you use a Helix or HX Stomp as your interface (so you're controlling for the impedance and AD conversion), and set the input of your Native track to USB 7 (so Native is seeing the raw guitar input signal), they sound identical.
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Thanks, very useful comparison and info.

Have you tried Helix since the 3.1 update? (oversampling, etc)
 
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TubeStack said:
Thanks, very useful comparison and info.

Have you tried Helix since the 3.1 update? (oversampling, etc)
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Yep, I still use Helix regularly as the artist I play for still uses them (switching an artist over is a pretty big task as everything needs to be reprogrammed, they have to learn how to use the new unit, etc). It's just easier on me if we're all on the same platform so we only need to have 1 backup unit, but honestly next tour I will probably bring the FM9 and a Helix floor as a backup. Anyway, 3.1 did slightly improve the high end aliasing I mentioned in the post you quoted, but in my opinion everything else still applies. Plugging into the Helix for the first time in awhile during production rehearsals was such a bummer, even using my own presets that I sell on my website. You sort of get used to it after awhile but coming home after 2 months and plugging into my AX3 reminded me of the difference and what made me switch in 2020. Reading the post you quoted a year later, I think I understated the differences. Everything on Fractal is better: routing, drives, compressors, amp modeling, cabs, footswitches, flexibility, effects, especially the reverbs. Some things Helix doesn't even have, for example block bypass options, multiple parallel paths, or block channels. For the price of Helix, IMO the FM9 is a much better choice. On a budget an used Helix LT is tough to beat though, it's cheaper than even the FM3. The only thing that bugs me with my Fractal units now is how when used as an interface on Mac, they don't accurately report their latency to the OS, so unless you manually test the RTL, a lot of times the recorded audio is out of sync.
 
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DFauvre said:
I've been a HUGE Fractal Axe FX III fan. That said, I've been surprised to keep hearing well known guitarists also recommend the Line 6 Helix Floor unit which supposedly has their flagship best modeling and effects. Am very curious to hearing from anyone here whose owned both. Which has the better amp emulation? Etc?
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I have both. They are both great units. The Helix has a much less complicated UI but the Axe is much more sophisticated and does a lot more. With the Axe you could virtually build an amp from scratch if you really wanted to. Just pick a platform to start with and change all the parameters in the amp block. There is no comparison between the processing power and the capabilities of the Axe-Fx III. I think the Axe-Fx III is like 8 times more powerful. As far as amp tone is concerned I think they are both great and one is not necessary better than the other. They do sound different though. Think of it like going to a music store and there are two brand new amps there. Same manufacturer and same model number but they sound different. This is how I perceive the difference between the Axe and Helix. Youtube videos are pretty useless in the tonal difference as there is so much compression in the videos. Also most videos are people trying to get them both to sound the same.
 
strabes said:
Yep, I still use Helix regularly as the artist I play for still uses them (switching an artist over is a pretty big task as everything needs to be reprogrammed, they have to learn how to use the new unit, etc). It's just easier on me if we're all on the same platform so we only need to have 1 backup unit, but honestly next tour I will probably bring the FM9 and a Helix floor as a backup. Anyway, 3.1 did slightly improve the high end aliasing I mentioned in the post you quoted, but in my opinion everything else still applies. Plugging into the Helix for the first time in awhile during production rehearsals was such a bummer, even using my own presets that I sell on my website. You sort of get used to it after awhile but coming home after 2 months and plugging into my AX3 reminded me of the difference and what made me switch in 2020. Reading the post you quoted a year later, I think I understated the differences. Everything on Fractal is better: routing, drives, compressors, amp modeling, cabs, footswitches, flexibility, effects, especially the reverbs. Some things Helix doesn't even have, for example block bypass options, multiple parallel paths, or block channels. For the price of Helix, IMO the FM9 is a much better choice. On a budget an used Helix LT is tough to beat though, it's cheaper than even the FM3. The only thing that bugs me with my Fractal units now is how when used as an interface on Mac, they don't accurately report their latency to the OS, so unless you manually test the RTL, a lot of times the recorded audio is out of sync.
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Wow, that's a remarkable switchover! Thanks again for the feedback and sharing your experiences. I've been wondering if the latest update got the Helix amp models closer to Fractal level, guess not. Over the next year I'd like to get a modelling rig going and will probably go with an FM3 or FM9.

I would also buy the Fractal equivalent to an HXFX, if they ever make one again.
 
strabes said:
Yep, I still use Helix regularly as the artist I play for still uses them (switching an artist over is a pretty big task as everything needs to be reprogrammed, they have to learn how to use the new unit, etc). It's just easier on me if we're all on the same platform so we only need to have 1 backup unit, but honestly next tour I will probably bring the FM9 and a Helix floor as a backup. Anyway, 3.1 did slightly improve the high end aliasing I mentioned in the post you quoted, but in my opinion everything else still applies. Plugging into the Helix for the first time in awhile during production rehearsals was such a bummer, even using my own presets that I sell on my website. You sort of get used to it after awhile but coming home after 2 months and plugging into my AX3 reminded me of the difference and what made me switch in 2020. Reading the post you quoted a year later, I think I understated the differences. Everything on Fractal is better: routing, drives, compressors, amp modeling, cabs, footswitches, flexibility, effects, especially the reverbs. Some things Helix doesn't even have, for example block bypass options, multiple parallel paths, or block channels. For the price of Helix, IMO the FM9 is a much better choice. On a budget an used Helix LT is tough to beat though, it's cheaper than even the FM3. The only thing that bugs me with my Fractal units now is how when used as an interface on Mac, they don't accurately report their latency to the OS, so unless you manually test the RTL, a lot of times the recorded audio is out of sync.
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Unfortunatly the latency issue is not only on a Mac. Happens to me also on PC in Cubase, with both my FM3 and Axe3. Confirmed by others on Reaper as well.:(
 
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