Browse Helix Models and Effects

Helix currently supports 72 amplifier models, 194 effects, 37 speaker cab models, and 16 microphones. On top of all that you also have the ability to load Impulse Responses (IRs) that you can grab from free or paid sources. Go have fun.

Recorded using a Les Paul Standard.

You may have heard that for a period of time in the 1970's, Electro-Harmonix changed the circuit of their legendary Big Muff Pi* from one based on discrete transistors to one based on integrated circuit operational amplifiers. This is true.

As a matter of fact, the opamp Big Muff Pi was the first fuzzbox I ever fell in love with, back in 1983. I didn’t know that it was an opamp one until I bought my own Big Muff and thought it sounded different from my friend’s. His later needed repair, and when I opened the case to check it out, I saw that the printed circuit board had a pair of integrated circuits on it, where mine had transistors.

Over the next 20 years, I never again encountered a Big Muff Pi made with opamps. Mike Matthews of E-H went out of business a couple of times, then got into the vacuum tube business, started making Big Muffs again, and then launched a new Electro-Harmonix with a mix of historical E-H effects and new ones. Still no opamp Big Muff Pi.

I myself started building and selling effects, helped greatly by the information available on the www, but when I tried building opamp Big Muffs from the schematics I found on the web, they didn’t work. Finally, I got my hands on an actual unit, and sat down with it to see if I could learn its secrets and make my own.

It worked, and once again I heard that immense yowl that only an opamp-based Big Muff circuit can make. And once again, the music-playing public can get that sound for their very own.

Description source: effectsdatabase.com

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