Personal Impressions- Axe III vs Helix

JoKeR III

Fractal Fanatic
I finally had the opportunity to use a Helix in a live environment and thought I'd share the experience.

We recorded a set for a Sunday service last week and to make things easier for me, my buddy offered to let me use his Helix since it was already setup at the campus. I had not really found anything I disliked about his tone when we've played together so I agreed. However, during the session I found myself missing the Axe III. We recorded a lot earlier this year due to Covid and the results we got from his Helix was really good and the sound from last week's recording is just as good.

The thing that was interesting and eventually stood out to me is the quality of the tone. When I first started playing at sound check, the Helix really sounded good as expected. As the session progressed I started feeling like something was missing and by the time we finished up, I came to this conclusion:

The Helix and the Axe III both offer a great guitar sound; they both sound really good in a recording or live setting. The Axe Fx III offers a great guitar tone and feel. The interaction between the guitar and the amp is quite noticeably present in the Axe III and lacking in the Helix.

The best comparison I can make is playing a racing game using a controller with (Axe III) and without (Helix) force-feedback.
Anyway, just thought I'd share since there's such a shortage of Axe III and Helix comparisons.
 
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