Start Here: The Way Maker Tone in Five Blocks:
- Amp: Essex A30 into a 2x12 Blue Bell cab — the chiming Alnico-Blue AC30
- Compressor: Deluxe Comp, always on, light — evens the swells
- Boost: Minotaur (Klon-style), off by default — the chorus lift
- Delay: Adriatic Delay, dotted eighth at 68 BPM (≈661 ms), repeats dark
- Reverb: Plateaux, plate/hall bed at ~38% mix — the floor the swells float on
Simpler Than It Sounds — and That Is the Trap
What you hear on Leeland's recording of Way Maker is a wide, swelling wall of ambience that feels like three instruments. What it actually is: a Strat-style guitar, a volume pedal, one dotted-eighth delay, and a reverb. The complexity is in the timing and the signal order, not the gear count.
The rig behind the recording is well documented in rig walkthroughs of Leeland guitarist Casey Moore's setup — a Strat into a volume pedal, a Klon-style drive, a dotted-eighth delay, and a reverb pedal in front of a Vox AC30 — and it translates to the Helix in seven blocks. Every block name below is exact and ports to Helix Floor, LT, HX Stomp, and Native. Three of the settings carry the whole tone; get those right and the rest is scaffolding.
The Full Helix Chain
Key of E, 68 BPM. Verses clean and swelling, choruses lifted by the boost.
| Position | Block | On/off | Key settings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Volume Pedal (EXP 1) | On | Heel back — swell in |
| 2 | Deluxe Comp | On | Threshold −32, Ratio 3, Attack 15, Release 200, Mix 70% |
| 3 | Minotaur (Klon-style) | Off in verse | Gain 3, Tone 6, Level 6.5 |
| 4 | Essex A30 (amp) | On | Drive 4.0, Bass 5.0, Mid 5.5, Treble 6.0, Sag 5.5, Master 4.0 |
| 5 | 2x12 Blue Bell (cab) | On | Low cut 90 Hz, High cut 8.5 kHz, Position 0.45 |
| 6 | Adriatic Delay | On | Time 661 ms, Feedback 38, Mix 30%, High cut 6 kHz |
| 7 | Plateaux (reverb) | On | Decay 6.5, Mix 38%, Pre-delay 20, Low cut 130 Hz |
Note the amp knobs are on the Helix 0–10 scale — Drive at 4.0 is just shy of breakup, which is exactly where this tone lives.
Number One: 661 Milliseconds
The delay time is not a taste decision. The standard worship formula is (60000 / BPM) × 0.75, and at 68 BPM that lands at ≈661 ms. Set the Adriatic block to 661 and it locks to the song; tap it in live if you prefer, but tap to the click, not to your gut.
Why this matters more than any other setting: a dotted-eighth delay that is even slightly off-tempo does not sound like a slightly wrong delay — it sounds like a second guitarist playing the wrong rhythm. It is the same interval The Edge built a career on (the Edge delay settings covers that lineage), applied here to a slow swell instead of a driving riff. Roll the delay's high cut down to about 6 kHz while you are in there: dark repeats add motion, bright repeats tick and slap over the pad. The deeper logic of locking delay and reverb to one tempo grid is covered in one BPM, one grid.
Number Two: The Cab Is a Blue, Not a Greenback
Way Maker and Goodness of God are sibling tones — both AC30s, both dotted-eighth-into-reverb — and the fastest way to hear what separates them is the cab block. Goodness of God runs a Greenback cab: warm, woolly, top rolled off. Way Maker runs the AC30's stock Alnico Blue voice, which chimes — it keeps the top end (high cut at 8.5 kHz, not 7), it sparkles under single-coils, and it gives the swells their glassy shimmer.
Run the identical Essex A30 into both cabs back to back and the character flips completely: one is a warm hug, the other is sunlight on water. The lesson generalizes — on a Helix, the cab block is not an afterthought, it is carrying half the tonal identity. Helix cab models decoded explains why two cabs on nominally the same amp diverge this hard. For Way Maker, pick the 2x12 Blue Bell; if the patch sounds muddy, you probably have a Greenback loaded and you are fighting the wrong speaker.
A neck-position single-coil is the classic guitar pairing here — round and glassy, it swells smoothly where a bridge humbucker jumps out with attack the part does not want. The other Blue-cab sibling in this cluster, What a Beautiful Name, leans on the same chiming cab but keeps its boost on all the time — a useful A/B if you want to hear how the boost-on-versus-boost-off choice reshapes the same amp.
Number Three: The Boost Is Off
The Minotaur — the Klon-style boost — stays off for the entire verse. The Way Maker verses are clean volume-swell pads with the AC30 just shy of breakup. No drive, no hair.
The boost exists for one job: the lift. Kick it on and the transparent, low-gain, level-up voicing pushes the AC30 into a singing edge so a single-note line cuts over the full band. This is the structural opposite of Goodness of God, which has no Klon-style boost anywhere and gets its grit from stacked amp-breakup drives instead. Same family, different engine.
Verse, Chorus, Bridge: The Snapshot Layout
Way Maker builds in long waves — declarative verses, a chorus that opens wide, and a bridge that repeats and grows until it becomes the biggest moment in the room. Four snapshots cover the arc:
| Snapshot | Song moment | Minotaur | Delay | Reverb mix |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 — Swell Pad | Intro, verses | Off | Mix 30%, FB 38 | 38% |
| 2 — Clean Rhythm | Chorus 1 | Off | Mix 30%, FB 38 | 32% |
| 3 — Lift | Chorus 2, lead lines | On | Mix 30%, FB 38 | 32% |
| 4 — Bridge Build | Bridge, tag | On | Mix 32%, FB 45 | 45% |
- Snapshot 1 — Swell Pad. The verses. Volume pedal heeled back, every entrance swelled in, the reverb doing the holding. Play almost nothing; the delay fills the space between.
- Snapshot 2 — Clean Rhythm. The first chorus opens up but stays clean — light strums and arpeggios with the dotted eighth carrying the motion. Reverb pulled back a step because the band is now in.
- Snapshot 3 — Lift. Minotaur on for the second chorus and any melodic lead line. The AC30 tips into its singing edge; a single-note melody now carries over the full band without you digging in.
- Snapshot 4 — Bridge Build. The long repeating bridge. Keep the boost on, push the delay feedback up so repeats stack, and open the reverb back up — this is the one section where the wash is allowed to grow with the band until the final chorus lands.
Turn trails on so the tails carry across changes, and set snapshot 3 a touch louder (+1 dB on the output block) so the lift reads as a lift.
The Part Nobody Can Set for You: The Swell
Every number above can be handed to you. The volume-pedal swell cannot. Heel back, pluck, roll the toe forward so the note fades in with zero pick attack — that motion is the actual instrument on this song, and it lives in your foot and your patience.
The pedal sits first in the chain on purpose: swelling into the compressor, amp, delay, and reverb means the swell shapes how everything downstream blooms — the reverb tail grows with the note instead of arriving pre-formed. The mechanics are covered in volume swells 101, but the honest truth is that it is reps, not reading.
On an HX Stomp
The chain already fits: Volume Pedal · Deluxe Comp · Minotaur · Essex A30 (with the Blue Bell cab) · Adriatic Delay · Plateaux is six blocks. Collapse the four snapshots to the Stomp's three — Swell Pad, Lift, and Bridge Build — and cover the clean chorus by riding the volume pedal from the Pad snapshot. For a whole-service version of this layout, the four-snapshot Sunday morning system generalizes the same architecture.
Building out a whole worship set on the Helix? Explore the worship guitar guides for the full tone cluster.
