What you actually bought
What this box is for, what it is not, and the one sentence that explains most of the confusion around it.
01 · 4 min
It is a whole guitar rig in one box — amps, speakers, microphones and effects, all modelled. Whether it sounds right depends almost entirely on what you plug it into.
The short version
A full-size floor modeller with two DSP chips, two signal paths, and an unusually complete set of jacks — mic input, four sends and returns, XLR and quarter-inch outputs, AES/EBU and S/PDIF, and a Variax port. It is the flagship of the original Helix generation and everything else in that generation is a subset of it.
Is this the right guide?
If your unit has a touchscreen, a Song button and a big volume knob on the left, you have a Helix Stadium — a different generation with a different manual. If it is a 3U rack with a guitar input on the front, read the Helix Rack guide instead.
The thing everyone gets wrong first
On a Helix Floor, the question we see most is footswitches that seem to have stopped working.
Press FS6. The unit is in Preset mode and you want Stomp mode.