It’s like Magic! The first sounds I got to hear from the Helios was of drums that had I looped from the recorder through the Helios and back. Now mind you that the FX Sends are limited, in that they only have a Bass Cut and High Boost/Cut control; no inductors. However, I was very pleased to find out that booth controls work very well in ‘shaping’ the sound. Shaping the Sound, is actually the best way to describe it. Nothing really gets added, you can’t add something that just is not there, well except for maybe a little warmth. But the controls really help to make something that sounds boxy or just lacking something really pop like a charm!

The High is wonderful; I could almost over use it. In the past I typically liked my mixes dark sounding, and of course there is a time and a place for that, as dark mixes, to me at least, seem to have a very intimate mood to it. But on the other side of things, when a high knob on any mixer is turned up, a very harsh tone begins to develop. This is not the case on the Helios, and I believe there is a lot of discussion how the Helios excels in the upper end of tone, whereas other mixing consoles, such as a Harrison, have better bass response than a Helios; no complaints here.

The Bass Cut, surprisingly helped tremendously with the drums, even on the kick/bass drum. I had to actually check with test tones, because at first I thought it was boosting the bass signal. But I guess what my ears heard was the clean up of muffleness that the bass cut actually rid of. To keep things level, I also forgot the Bass Drum had been Eqed to emphasize the Bass Drum prior to running in the Helios, so on it’s own it may not do it’s job as I described.

These two knobs really work wonders. Here’s the wonderful part, I only had to spend about 30 seconds to get the sound I wanted! In the past I would spend so much time trying to dial in EQ to get that sound, and doing playback after playback, comparing and comparing. Not the case here, granted there are only so many choices to choose from, but also they all work very well. The changes in sound are not in your face, but merely subtle effective shaping of sound. After hearing how the High works, I feel it’s more of a Presence knob, because it adds the best of the high end and leaves out the shrill-harshness.

I will also point out that there is a posting on the internet that I have read, that advertised the Helios as having no headroom, distorted easily, and had horrible cross talk. I have yet been able to distort this Helios, and I have tried. I may have better luck running a hot mic pre into it. As far as headroom goes, I have yet to see a problem there either, other than when I crank the gain on the FX send module the EQ curve flattens out as you reach and go beyond the limit, but the signal is loud at that point, and still no distortion. Also I have not experienced any cross talk yet, maybe that will change when I start using the bus groups, but so far no.

I did have one problem at the very beginning when I did the initial test. There was a good amount of 60 Hz hum, and when I turned the gain up on these modules there was a changing in overall volume going in cycles, like when a capacitor charges and discharges. It was a simple fix, turns out whoever rewired these modules to run direct into, connected the ground to the cold/negative wire of the XLR connector. Once I corrected that, all problems went away, and I was impressed with how quite this unit actually is, especially with how old it is.

I can’t wait to be able to hear how the Mid Section sounds, as well as the Bass Boost on the EQ units. It may be a while, as I am waiting for some transformers. I have heard the Mid works really good on booth vocals and electric guitar to make them stand out in the mix.