The controls you will actually use
Not all of them — the handful that account for nearly everything you will do, plus the gestures nothing on the chassis mentions.
03 · 7 min
Learn three things: how to change what the footswitches do (press FS6, marked PRESET / STOMP), how to save (press SAVE twice), and how to reach more parameters than the knobs can show.
Click anything
Every control on the Helix Floor, and what each press, hold and turn does.
Helix Floor · Top panel · schematic, drawn from Line 6’s panel diagram
FS1 – FS12
Twelve switches in two rows of six, each with a colour LED ring and a scribble strip above it that renames itself to whatever the switch is doing.
- Press, in Stomp mode
- Turns the assigned block or blocks on and off, like a pedal. Helix Cheat Sheet (Rev D)
- Press, in Preset mode
- Loads a preset. Pressing the one you are already on reloads it. Helix Cheat Sheet (Rev D)
- Touch, without pressing
- Selects the block that switch controls, on screen, without changing the sound. Touch again to cycle through multiple assigned items. Helix Cheat Sheet (Rev D)
Worth knowingThey are capacitive, so they respond to a foot resting on them. If the screen keeps jumping to a block you did not choose, that is what is happening — you are touching a switch you have not pressed.
Modes are the whole game
The footswitches do not have fixed jobs. What they do depends on the mode, and to change it you press FS6, marked PRESET / STOMP.
This is worth internalising because almost every report of a Line 6 modeller “breaking” is a unit sitting in a mode the owner did not choose. Nothing is wrong with it.
Save, or lose it
Changes are not saved until you tell the device to save them — press SAVE twice. Until then, an “E” beside the preset name marks it as edited.
Change preset while that E is showing and your work is gone with no warning and no undo.
Get into the habit early. Losing an afternoon's work to a preset change is a rite of passage nobody needs.
Helix Cheat Sheet (Rev D)