Should you buy a a Quad Cortex?
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Guitar Modeling
Neural DSP Quad Cortex - sweetwater.sjv.io/4PY0yZ
SKB Quad Cortex Case - sweetwater.sjv.io/PyZEmY
It’s no secret that I love the Quad Cortex, but it definitely wasn’t love at first sight. It’s been a slow burn over the past 3 months, I’ve had to put time and work into it, and our relationship is finally in a good place. So in order to determine whether the Quad Cortex is right for you, I want to tell you the story of my relationship with QC here: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
I posted about my first quad cortex experience on April 14, 2023. I had never used an all in one rig, like a kemper, helix, etc before but I really wanted to get to learning it as quickly as possible so I thought, hey I’m good at tone, I can figure this out in one night right? I’d say for just two hours with the unit, it was solid. I was encouraged that if this is the base level, then that means the potential for this thing is huge.
Two weeks into using the unit, I found my tone took a leap. I felt so good about it that i decided to put the Quad Cortex up against my pedalboard. No captures no nothing. Just stock sounds. And yeah, in my opinion the pedalboard won, but I found the quad to be pretty impressive.
One month into this thing, and I felt like man, it’s so fun to use. The user interface is incredibly sleek and fast. The stock sounds, especially the factory amp captures are really great. And by stacking reverbs, I was able to get that expansive strymon style reverb we all know and love. But my most favorite feature is how quick it is to make changes on the fly, which I did have to do in a rehearsal. No need to rebuild your pedalboard, buy a new pedal, cables, etc. everything you need is right here- Ultimately, the one month mark is where I felt like the quad cortex was finally sounding like me.
I started to play with the capture features, and they are impressive. I broke out the old tube amp for the first time in over a year and tried to capture it.
The feel was there, the tone was there. Now, here comes the main reason I bought the Quad Cortex: pedal capture. I tried it out with three of my favorite drive pedals and it worked so well on the first try with all of them.
So now I have my drive pedals all loaded up into my go-to basic preset. It’s really handy because I can just copy and paste this rig between presets and tweak from there.Within the last couple weeks I found a way to up my sound another ten percent by creatively using the routing and splitter capabilities. Sort of reminiscent of a wet dry wet rig, I’ve isolated my delay and reverb effects from each other which gives me the ability to increase the effect mixes even higher without losing the clarity on my guitar.
I’ve taken the quad cortex on tour, I’ve used it at church, and I’ve used at home, and in all circumstances, it’s been a really wonderful tool. The best things about it for me are the sound quality, the ability to capture effects and amps, the ease of utilizing and maximizing the touch screen interface, and just the overall convenience. Like bringing this tiny little lunch pale case to a gig is much easier than lugging around my 45lb pedalboard.
Now for the bad. If you’re a tone guy, then it’ll probably take some time to get it to sound like you again. Second, I’m not a huge fan of the app system. It’s weird to me as a creator that I can’t access my own files so that I can sell preset packs. And with no marketplace built into the app, it seems to be undervaluing creators in this space. Third, this one isn’t specific to the quad cortex, but there’s something that’s just so pristine about modelers that makes them sound a touch compressed or smooth to my ear. Now I think sound quality wise, the quad cortex sounds far less compressed than the Kemper, but every now and then when I’m playing, I find myself thinking, this sounds a touch too smooth.
Chapters
0:00 The Quad Cortex
0:44 My First Time Using the QC
2:21 Week 2 of Using the QC
3:35 One Month with the QC: This is Where The Fun Begins
5:45 Neural Capture is Mindblowing
7:30 Routing + Signal Flow Flexibility
8:30 What I Love
9:55 What I Don't Love
11:16 Final Thoughts
#quadcortex #neuraldsp #guitartone #guitarpedals #kemper #line6 #line6helix #neuralquadcortex #pedalcapture