Does the Helix Rack come with footswitches?
No. Helix Control is a separate purchase. A Rack on its own is driven from its front panel, which is fine in a studio and not much use on a stage.
The things people actually ask about the Helix Rack, answered in a sentence or two, with a link to the detail.
No. Helix Control is a separate purchase. A Rack on its own is driven from its front panel, which is fine in a studio and not much use on a stage.
The sound engine is identical. The Rack adds wordclock, AES/EBU and S/PDIF inputs, and a buffered guitar thru; the Floor has a built-in expression pedal and its footswitches included. Everything else is the same.
One Cat5 or etherCON cable into the port marked HELIX CONTROL. It carries control both ways and powers the board, so there is no second power supply to pack.
By design — it is the only guitar input there is. It has the same switchable pad and selectable impedance as the Floor's.
It passes your dry guitar signal straight out with no conversion, so you can feed a second processor or a real amp from the same instrument. The Floor does not have it.
Yes — S/PDIF and AES/EBU both come in as well as out. This is rack-only; the Floor has digital outputs and no digital input.
Changing preset unloads and reloads everything. Turn on Preset Spillover — hold ACTION and press HOME — and trails carry across, at the cost of losing Path 2.
Four amps per preset, two per path, and that is a hard cap rather than a DSP limit.
A Marshall JCM-800, 100 watt, model 2203. The Rack has the same 440 models as every other Helix, and Line 6 publish what each one is based on.
Not normally — the rack powers it down the Cat5. It has a DC IN jack for very long cable runs, using a Line 6 DC-3 adapter.
Nothing, currently. Line 6 label it reserved for future use. The USB port you want is on the rack.
Press the GND/LIFT switch on the rear panel, beside the XLR outputs. It is a physical button.