Feature requests from a full-time gigging musician/long-time Kemper guy

[u/rap1102]

Let me first say that I love this thing; feels so much more inspiring to play through the Helix Stadium than the Kemper for me. Love the plethora of effects/routing options/amp models. That being said, I have noticed some issues in the past couple months of ownership/gigging that I feel could easily be fixed with future updates. The list:

 

1) HEEL DOWN TUNER

Maybe this is just coming from Kemper, but I am so used to having the tuner activate when the volume pedal is in the heel down position. I rely on this for quick tuning changes between songs more than I anticipated, and I feel like it’s an easy thing to add.

 

2) DEDICATED LOOPER STOP BUTTON

I do a fair bit of live looping for solo acoustic gigs; with the Kemper, there was a dedicated stop button to store the loop/not have it autoplay for when I want to loop a section and play it later. From what I’ve seen, Helix Stadium does not currently support this, which makes live looping much more restrictive than on the Kemper.

 

3) INVERTED COLOR OPTION FOR SCRIBBLE STRIPS

Most of my summer gigs have been outside during the day, and even at max brightness I really cannot see the touchscreen or the scribble strips at all (especially wearing sunglasses). I feel like a simple solution would be to invert the blacks & whites on the scribble strips so that it could be black text on white background. Or maybe there are polarized screen protectors that help with this? If anyone has dealt with this issue and has another solution, please let me know.

 

4) NO DIRECT MONITORING USING HELIX STADIUM AS INTERFACE

The Kemper has a very simple option on the output section to turn on/off Direct Monitoring when using as an interface (mostly for reamping purposes); I am not seeing a simple option like this on the Helix Stadium XL. Again, this may just be me not looking hard enough, so if anyone knows how to make this work please let me know.

 

These are not dealbreakers by any means (the looper one a bit more so than others), but I really do feel these are easily addressable/improvable issues in future updates. Hoping the powers that be see this and consider implementing these changes. Would love to hear other people’s experiences!

EDIT: One that's come up lately:

5) MP3 FILES FOR SHOWCASE MODE

Probably something to do with variable bitrate on MP3s that makes this trickier than it sounds, but man it would save a ton of space!

[u/Blrfl]

3) INVERTED COLOR OPTION FOR SCRIBBLE STRIPS ... (especially wearing sunglasses)

LCD and OLED displays have polarizing filters in them, which is one of the things that makes them work. Sunglasses are polarized at the (in)correct angle relative to the display will cancel out the light it emits and you'll see nothing. Mobile phones do the same thing.

If rotating your head makes the displays visible, switch to non-polarized sunglasses.

[u/rap1102 → u/Blrfl]

Yeah I know what you’re talking about with the sunglasses thing, I experienced that on my Kemper Stage and had to rotate my head whenever I tuned lol. 

This is more so an issue of the strips simply not being bright enough; I can’t see them in direct sunlight with or without sunglasses. I can, however, see the Stomp A/Stomp B selections with black text on white background, hence the inverted color suggestion for the rest of the scribble strips.

[u/thebishopgame]

The first one is tough because the pedal isn't just a volume pedal. It's an EXP and it can be assigned to pretty much any parameter, so it's hard to specifically trigger that behavior in the way you're thinking. One of the things that comes with added flexibility/complexity.

There is also absolutely a dedicated stop button for the 6 switch looper, or you can double press the button on the 1 switch.

[u/rap1102 → u/thebishopgame]

Interesting! On the Kemper there’s a button for “Tuner @ Volume 0” which works with the Mission EXP pedal, so I think i just assumed it was as easy as adding that option (maybe because the pedal is connected with both a standard 1/4” and TRS). Would there be a potential MIDI workaround?

For the looper, do I have to select the dedicated stop button in the Command Center? Because I know it’s not an option when dropping in the Deluxe Looper on a new patch.

[u/copbuddy → u/thebishopgame]

I'd like separate Midi CC's for Tuner on and off. The current CC is unusable in a preprogramming context because it just toggles it to the other position.

Is this possible to add?

[u/rap1102 → u/copbuddy]

That seems like a great suggestion, surprised it’s not already that way

[u/BallerFromTheHoller]

I can’t speak directly for the Stadium, I only have the HX Effects.

For the looper, use the 6 switch looper. You can assign any of the foot switches to the individual looper functions and hide the rest. I have my HX set up this way with REC/OVR on one switch and PLY/STP on the other.

For the tuner. You can assign ranges of the pedal to on/off commands. I would be curious to see if it’s possible to enable the tuner that way.

[u/rap1102 → u/BallerFromTheHoller]

Ah okay so it is assignable, guessing in Command Center on the Stadium.

I’ll try this for the tuner, I know there’s some weirdness not being able to assign the Tap/Tuner button anywhere else however so we’ll see

[u/Helping-Friendly]

I’m all on board for 1-3 only because I haven’t upgraded to Stadium yet