NPD: Line 6 HX Effects

A

ADAOCE

Well-known member
Decided to try out the HX Effects. I’ve been buying and selling pedals lately trying to figure out what I like and ended up selling off my SA Nemesis and Keeley Halo. I’ve been toying with building a MIDI controller, and buying a stereo looper and a new tuner pedal, and an EQ pedal and I thought I’d give this a try as a command station.

So far I’m actually super impressed by the comp/drive/dynamics. I also really love the delay options. I have no qualms about selling my delay pedals. Reverb is another story.. nothing even touches the Ventris. It’s such an unbelievable pedal and It’s got permanent status at this point especially because I can control it through MIDI on the HXFX and even give each Ventris preset it’s own preset on the HX.

I have the top row of pedals going to one of the effects loops and the Dream 65 going to the other. Anyone else have one of these?
 

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I've had one for a while, but haven't really delved too far into it. Only really been messing with the modulation and synth models.
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I've got all the Hammond-boxed pedals in one loop, and the HOG and two bigger enclosures in the other, each with their own bypass on the HX.
 
ADAOCE said:
Decided to try out the HX Effects. I’ve been buying and selling pedals lately trying to figure out what I like and ended up selling off my SA Nemesis and Keeley Halo. I’ve been toying with building a MIDI controller, and buying a stereo looper and a new tuner pedal, and an EQ pedal and I thought I’d give this a try as a command station.

So far I’m actually super impressed by the comp/drive/dynamics. I also really love the delay options. I have no qualms about selling my delay pedals. Reverb is another story.. nothing even touches the Ventris. It’s such an unbelievable pedal and It’s got permanent status at this point especially because I can control it through MIDI on the HXFX and even give each Ventris preset it’s own preset on the HX.

I have the top row of pedals going to one of the effects loops and the Dream 65 going to the other. Anyone else have one of these?
Click to expand...

They're excellent and basically killed my gas for most pedals. I've back to backed a load of drive pedals vs the Helix drives and they're as close as component tolerances will allow. So many different uses for them.
 
DGWVI said:
I've had one for a while, but haven't really delved too far into it. Only really been messing with the modulation and synth models.
View attachment 51639

I've got all the Hammond-boxed pedals in one loop, and the HOG and two bigger enclosures in the other, each with their own bypass on the HX.
Click to expand...
Wow that’s so awesome. Love the board man. I’m really surprised how good the delays are and the tremolo is good too.
 
SillyOctpuss said:
They're excellent and basically killed my gas for most pedals. I've back to backed a load of drive pedals vs the Helix drives and they're as close as component tolerances will allow. So many different uses for them.
Click to expand...
Yeah I’ve noticed the same thing. I A/B the protein blue against the prince of tone model and I get similar and great sounds from both. I don’t have a tube screamer type pedal currently and it’s nice to have a few options for the Dream with this thing. They added a Plumes model in the latest firmware update which sounds great.
 
ADAOCE said:
Wow that’s so awesome. Love the board man. I’m really surprised how good the delays are and the tremolo is good too.
Click to expand...
Haven't messed with the delays outside of the factory presets yet, but even those did sound pretty good.
Need to check out more of the Trem sounds after I get a couple more builds finished up
 
I love my HX effects. I had a m5 and m9 as a “Swiss army knife” type thing for years so the HX family just made sense. Had a Stomp for a while for that purpose too which I really liked but moved on from it as I found a couple different modeling solutions I liked better… I still use a timeline and Bigsky for the “heavy lifting” with delay and reverb, but honestly could probably do away with the timeline and not notice a ton lost if I really wanted.

In the same way I always feel a conflict between the HX and my analog drives. Because the digital drives are 99% there to my ear and tbh probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference (sound or feel) in a proper blind test. So I could really get away without any drive pedals at all, but I don’t know. I still tend to prefer tweaking physical knobs than their digital representations, it’s just a bit different…

On the whole though I think it’s fantastic for stuff that I need every now and then but can’t justify buying/keeping a dedicated spot on my board. I use it as a midi controller for my Strymons as well and it works nicely for my purposes there too.

At the moment I’m still using a dedicated compressor on the front end (General Tso). Could probably get away without it (the LA2A model is really nice) but in brief testing I found it had a better mix of compression to noise added than any of the HX models. But I suspect with more testing could get something to replace it, too. I sometimes run a noise gate up front as my first block but am not 100% happy with how I have it dialed in.

My typical HX patch will then have an octave pedal, loops are each an analog drive pedal (changes around), then some modulation (usually a chorus/vibe) and an extra delay. From there it’s out into Tonex, then Tonex out to Timeline stereo to Bigsky and that’s that.
 
Joben Magooch said:
I love my HX effects. I had a m5 and m9 as a “Swiss army knife” type thing for years so the HX family just made sense. Had a Stomp for a while for that purpose too which I really liked but moved on from it as I found a couple different modeling solutions I liked better… I still use a timeline and Bigsky for the “heavy lifting” with delay and reverb, but honestly could probably do away with the timeline and not notice a ton lost if I really wanted.

In the same way I always feel a conflict between the HX and my analog drives. Because the digital drives are 99% there to my ear and tbh probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference (sound or feel) in a proper blind test. So I could really get away without any drive pedals at all, but I don’t know. I still tend to prefer tweaking physical knobs than their digital representations, it’s just a bit different…

On the whole though I think it’s fantastic for stuff that I need every now and then but can’t justify buying/keeping a dedicated spot on my board. I use it as a midi controller for my Strymons as well and it works nicely for my purposes there too.

At the moment I’m still using a dedicated compressor on the front end (General Tso). Could probably get away without it (the LA2A model is really nice) but in brief testing I found it had a better mix of compression to noise added than any of the HX models. But I suspect with more testing could get something to replace it, too. I sometimes run a noise gate up front as my first block but am not 100% happy with how I have it dialed in.

My typical HX patch will then have an octave pedal, loops are each an analog drive pedal (changes around), then some modulation (usually a chorus/vibe) and an extra delay. From there it’s out into Tonex, then Tonex out to Timeline stereo to Bigsky and that’s that.
Click to expand...
Just seeing this reply now for some reason. Thanks for the reply. So I echo all of these sentiments with regards to the HX Effects. I’m using it basically the same way. I’m really liking the drives but I’ll probably always keep the protein and the dung beetle. The LA2A comp in Hx is awesome I’ve been digging that.

I just sold my keeley halo because of the delays in Hx but I’ll definitely be keeping my Ventris. I just can’t seem to dial in the stereo width and depth that the Ventris can get. Every time I think I’m close in HX I go back to Ventris and it’s so much better. Since it’s midi I’ll just control it with HX.

Of course now I’ll be integrating the Tonex into it so I love that it has midi too
 
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