Not long after getting my Helix LT unit, I discovered some uses for running two channels in parallel, which I wrote about in early June. I had a Long Player rock gig in mind but, since then, I’ve also had a couple of times when it has been invaluable at church, too.

Both were instances when Magnus was staying over a weekend and so I invited him to join the band at church. Since my six string bass is still in my funny tuning (low D to high Eb), I put him on my Variax guitar. He can plug in with the ethernet cable and then use one of the sends to feed into the PA; meanwhile, the bass goes via a regular jack lead into the main input and thence to the main output, bass amp and then the PA.

It works pretty well, particularly since Magnus isn’t an FX hungry player – he has been happy with the guitar just set up with a simple acoustic model. I can’t have such an FX-heavy set up as I normally use but the option of chorus and rotary speaker was more than enough. With planning, it would be possible to use more complex combinations too.

I remain very happy with what the unit allows me to do – a lot more than any previous box I’ve had, going a good way towards justifying the price tag.