Plugging it into things
Every jack, what it is for, and the two or three that regularly cost people an evening.
04 · 7 min
For a mono rig, always use the LEFT/MONO jack of a pair. Using the right one on its own gives you half your effects and a thin sound.
The jacks
Click any jack to see what it does and what to watch for.
Helix Floor · Rear panel · schematic, drawn from Line 6’s panel diagram
GUITAR IN
TS, ¼″rear panel
Your main instrument input.
It has a switchable pad and a selectable input impedance. If a guitar sounds harsh or dull, impedance is the control almost nobody touches and it is the one that changes how your pickups load.
Helix Cheat Sheet (Rev D)The mono rule
Outputs come in stereo pairs, and only the left jack of a pair carries a summed mono signal. If you take one cable from the right jack, you get one side of a stereo image: quieter, thinner, and missing anything that was panned away from it.
This catches more people than any other cabling mistake, and it does not look like a mistake — it looks like the device sounds bad.