Line6 HX One

I bought this pedal hoping to use it in four cable mode to get the most out of it. I use a fairly high gain Friedman-style amp set at a moderate gain level. As soon as I plugged it in there was an unacceptable amount of white noise in the signal that was not affected by either the built in noise gate or adjustable output impedance. I tried different cables, power supplies and guitars. No change. I tried plugging into the front of my amp with only the HX One in the chain, using its included power supply, and the noise was still there. The only way I got rid of the noise with the pedal plugged in was when I put it in true bypass mode with the effect off. As soon as I turned the pedal on again the noise was back, along with the effect.

I then plugged the pedal into the effect loop of the same amp and the noise was gone. Whatever was causing the noise seems to have to do with the interaction between the pedal and the preamp.

After searching for solutions to this issue online I found that many have had issues placing the HX One before certain drive pedals and some people have had issues with certain amps. This appears to be either a hardware issue or a software issue that Line 6 has chosen to ignore. None of the people that had the issue seemed to have any solutions to the issue other than not placing the HX One in that spot in the signal chain.

Since this meant that I could not use the effects that I want to have before the preamp, the utility of this pedal was pretty much cut in half for me and the pedal had to go back.

It is a real shame for such a promising concept to stumble on the finish line like that.

Line6's Helix (and legacy) lines of effects are well known and loved. This unit refresh of the legendary M5 into the Helix line: the perfect "multi-tool" pedal to cover those effects or utility functions that you don't have dedicated pedals for.
The modulation and pitch effects in particular sound really good and the reverbs are pretty great as well.

The interface is simple and intuitive, albeit with a couple of small issues:
- unlike in the HX Stomp/Helix, the effects are only split top level between effect type; there is no separate lists between Helix and "legacy" (from DL4 and M series) effect models.
Instead, legacy effects are shown in succession to Helix effects within the same effect type.
This makes it sometimes a bit frustrating when trying to find a particular model, since there is a huge amount of items in each effect type list. Maybe a "favorites" feature which would allow to only show some of the effects per list could solve this, hopefully they will provide some improvement in a some future firmware (?)
- the computer preset editor is really basic just for saving/recalling presets, there is no UI for live editing of effect parameters which is a real downgrade compared to the Helix/Stomp which can be tweaked live from the computer.
Both of these are really minor inconveniences that may be just my personal preference, so I still give it a 5 star rating on the "handling" category.

Overall, a great piece of gear.. so, why the poor rating you may ask?

Well, I'm waiting for my second replacement unit currently due to production defects!
- first HX One that I received was very noisy. As soon as the pedal was in the signal chain, even when no effect was in use, the noise floor was terrible: any gain boost/distortion after the pedal output made this very evident; Other people have reported this same issue and it's easy to find examples in youtube or gear forums illustrating it.
- the second HX One I got in replacement did not have the noise issue, it was super quite.. however it was malfunctioning when using it mono in - stereo out, even though the settings were properly configured for stereo operation: in most of the effects models, the effect's sound came out in stereo, but the clean signal was only coming out of one side, which made the pedal unusable when running stereo effects!

I'm now waiting on my third HX One hoping that the third one will be the charm .. normaly I would have already given up, but because the HX One is indeed otherwise perfect for me (and I have used other line6 gear in the past with great satisfaction), I will give it one last chance.

Seems like Line6 really dropped the ball on quality control this time around, or I was supremely unlucky .. or both! I can only recommend that anyone who purchases an HX One really gives it a proper check before committing to the purchase.

I unfortunately had to return my HX One due to a weird noise issue. When I got the unit I added it to my pedalboard in pre/post and I noticed that it added some bad noise to some of my drive pedals. I confirmed it was the HX One by taking it out of the chain and the noise was gone. No amount of settings on the HX One helped. It’s a pity as the sounds from the HX are fantastic. I ended up getting a H9 as they were reduced and all is well.