Hey, I’m Yashar — welcome to Helrig 👋
Quick version: I’m a CTO by day and a hobby guitarist the rest of the time, and I’ve had a Helix (and later an HX Stomp, for portability) on the floor in front of me for the better part of ten years.
I love these units. Genuinely. But over those ten years I built up a quiet little list of things I kept wishing the editor did — cleaner ways to see a patch, to move blocks around, to actually understand what was eating my DSP before I ran out of it mid-tweak. The list never stopped growing. So at some point I stopped grumbling about it and started building.
Helrig is that list, turned into an app. It’s me putting everything I felt was missing from the Helix UX into one place — and it runs entirely in your browser, so nothing gets uploaded unless you ask for it. Open a .hlx, poke around, change things, save it back out. That’s it.
Version 1.0 is out. It brings undo and a full edit history, an overview that fits a whole signal chain on a phone screen, importing straight out of a device backup, and a mobile interface built for touch rather than shrunk to fit. The changelog has the details.
What it does today
- Works with Helix, HX Stomp and HX Effects — and converts a preset between them, telling you exactly what had to change.
- Shows the whole signal chain the way I always wanted to see it — blocks, amp + cab pairings, parallel A/B splits. On a small screen, one tap fits the whole thing on screen at once.
- Undo and redo everything, with a named history you can jump back through — “Add Deluxe Comp”, not forty rows of “Edit”.
- Lets you browse snapshots, controller assignments, and footswitch mappings without squinting.
- Estimates per-path DSP as you go, based on each block’s actual mono/stereo width — so you can see the ceiling coming.
- Drag blocks to reorder them; add, swap, or remove anything from the full model catalog.
- Search for any block by its real-world name or its Line 6 name — “tube screamer” and the internal model name both work. Not having this cost me real time building presets, so it was one of the first things I built.
- Build parallel splits, and choose mono or stereo where a model supports it.
- Set the preset tempo — type it, or tap it in against whatever you’re playing along to — and store it per snapshot.
- Assign a block’s bypass to a footswitch, a snapshot, or a MIDI CC.
- Open presets straight out of an
.hxbdevice backup or an.hlssetlist, without needing HX Edit in front of you. - Spin up a brand-new preset from scratch for HX Stomp or Helix, then export a clean
.hlx. - Keep your presets in a cloud library if you want one — organised by setlist, searchable by the gear inside them, with version history. Entirely optional; the editor works the same signed out.
Where this is going (the fun part)
Honestly, this is just the opening move. Here’s what’s actually in progress, plus a couple of ideas I’m turning over — not promises, just things I’d love to build:
- Direct hardware sync. Plug in and go — no more exporting a file and dragging it over by hand. This one’s actively being built, for desktop and mobile.
- AI rig generation — someday, maybe. Describe the tone in your head — “spongy blackface clean with a slapback” — and get a real starting patch. I’d love to build this, but it’s an idea I’m turning over, not something in active development yet.
- …and more. There’s a whole list. There’s always a list. 😅
Disclaimer
Helrig is a one-person passion project. It isn’t built by, affiliated with, or endorsed by Line 6 or Yamaha — “Line 6”, “Helix”, and “HX” are their trademarks; I’m just a long-time fan who uses their gear.