Troubleshooting

Press FS6, marked PRESET / STOMP. This is the single most common Helix question and it is one press.

Nothing is wrong. Touching a switch selects its block on screen without changing the sound — that is how you edit with your feet. Move your foot off.

Select the Output block at the end of the path and check where it is sending. A preset built for USB or for Path 2 will be silent at the jacks.

Spillover hides Path 2 and routes nothing to it. If your Output blocks point at Path 2, you get silence. Turn spillover off, or re-point the outputs.

Both output pairs are stereo, and the LEFT/MONO jack is the one that sums to mono. Move the cable.

Two speakers stacked. Bypass the Cab block, or use an Amp model rather than Amp+Cab.

Press the GND/LIFT switch on the rear panel, beside the XLR outputs. It is physical, not a menu item.

Four amps per preset, two per path. One looper per preset. One poly effect per path. These are fixed limits and no amount of free DSP unlocks them.

Make a stereo block mono, swap a Legacy cab for the newer IR-based one, or replace two amp blocks with one amp into a Dual cab. Each of those buys back real space.

Bypassing does not free DSP. Delete what you are not using.

Every block unloads and reloads. Either build the change as a snapshot inside one preset, or turn on Preset Spillover — hold ACTION and press HOME — and accept losing Path 2.

An “E” beside the preset name means edited and unsaved. Press SAVE twice. Changing preset with the E showing discards everything.

There is no global assignment. Build the pedal into a template preset and copy that, rather than assigning it again on each one.

Six knobs cannot show everything. Press ◀ PAGE ▶ — the scrollbar under the parameter row tells you how many pages the block has.

Global Settings > Preferences > Snapshot Edits decides this. Recall (the default) keeps your changes as you left them. Discard returns the snapshot to its last-saved state — which is the behaviour you want live, and the behaviour that eats your work while you are building. Hold BYPASS and press SAVE to flip it at any time; the camera icon on the Home screen is grey for Recall and red for Discard.

That is exactly what an unedited snapshot does — it carries the state you arrived with. It only becomes its own thing the moment you change something in it. Nothing is broken; you have simply not written it yet.

Saving a preset stores all of its snapshots and remembers which one you were on. If a song should always start on the intro sound, select that snapshot and then save — the choice is made at save time, not at load time.

Set Global Settings > Footswitches > Snapshot Mode Switches to Manual Return and it stays in snapshot mode until you press CANCEL. Auto Return is right when snapshots are an occasional visit; Manual Return is right when they are how you play the set.

Trails Off mutes repeats and decays the moment the block is bypassed. Trails On lets them ring out naturally, through a bypass and through a snapshot change. It is set per block, so one delay left wrong is enough to make a whole rig feel abrupt.

A tempo-synced delay re-syncs its trails to the incoming preset's BPM, so the tail you are still hearing shifts under you. If you want the trails to hold their speed across a change, set that delay in milliseconds rather than to a note value.

Never connect these XLR outputs to a device whose XLR inputs have 48V phantom power enabled. On a desk, that means switching phantom off for those channels before you plug in, not after.

S/PDIF and AES/EBU are a choice, not a pair — pick one in Global Settings > Ins/Outs. And connecting an L6 LINK device disables the S/PDIF output automatically, which is the version of this that catches people who have just added a Powercab.

Global Settings > Ins/Outs page 3, Volume Knob Controls, decides which outputs the knob touches. Set to Digital it controls nothing at all and both output pairs sit at unity — which is deliberate, for rigs where front of house sets the level and a stray knob would be a disaster.