I recently bought a line6 Helix and a Variax to go with it, and I must say, I am very impressed.

I play cover songs, and my approach is to duplicate the original sound as much as possible. In the past, that frequently meant owning a ton of different amps, guitars and effects pedals, because each piece of gear has its own signature sound... and in order to get the same sound as the original recording, you need the same gear that was used on it.

The Helix has EVERYTHING... amp models, cabinet models, clones of all the classic pedals... and you can arrange them in any order. The best part for me is that its all MIDI controllable. By embedding MIDI commands in my sequence, I can change settings on the fly without having to shift my focus from playing to stomping on a pedal.

The Variax is an interesting guitar... it too is programmable. It has built-in models for a Strat, two Les Pauls, a Rickenbacker 12 string, an Epiphone Jazz box, several acoustics and a variety of other guitars and stringed instruments. You can even program different tunings, such as open G, DADGAD , virtual capo settings, or you can even create your own tuning and recall it later in a song. MIDI can change the guitar from a 12 string to a Les Paul in mid song, just mind-blowing what this combo can do. You can go from a realistic Beatles sound to Tom Petty to Led Zeppelin... and absolutely nail the original sound. Without ever touching a knob during the performance (assuming you get it all nailed down when you create your patches)

In a world that is more and more focused on streaming online, the ability to program a set list so you can go seamlessly from one song to the next without having to manually change any settings is priceless. One pause and the click-through rate starts to skyrocket.

And the best part is that the modeling is latency free as far as I can tell. The DSP processing in these units is very powerful. I could go on and on... But I just wanted to offer a heads up to anybody who might be looking for the features this provides.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ey71h8ep047758h/AAC12jNM0Hz9Q8zsh5iDeqNHa?dl=0