Great stuff John, got a quad cortex about a month ago and I am already following you on the cloud and subscribed to your channel. Definitely would love to see more quad cortex content and would love to see this uploaded on the cloud, thks for your hard work and effort on these videos
You're the only quad cortex content creator that I watch and I've been enjoying your channel since I picked up my quad so please continue! Liked and subscribed
To me, one of the true tests of a modeler is how good the clean to mid-gain tones are and that's where the QC really shines. It is odd they have so many high-gain players though. I get the sense they are metalheads themselves. Definitely upload it!
That's because the high gain players are the bigger influencers online, so they pushed it towards those players. I think the guys/gals playing cleaner styles are still fixed on real amps... I might be wrong on that though
@@tommurrayGTR I use a qc, gigging 2-3 times a month. 90% of what I do is clean and works a treat. I’ve had valve amps and found them to sound brilliant but reliability and weight were issues for me. I used a Roland Blues Cube which I still have. Great amp. I use the QC as my primary rig and I run it through a Laney 1x12 FRFR. Works fine. Sound engineers love it. Level it and leave it. I have an FM3 which, to me, sounds better than the QC, but it’s a pain in the arse to edit and the 3 button thing, as clever as it is, is a bit limiting. Editing the QC is a piece of piss and I can do it on the fly if I have to. So yeah, clean all day for me but I gotta say when the band lets me go, my lead tone screams!
Always here for the QC content; you're the best as far as I'm concerned. Loved that preset. Side note though, there's nothing wrong with using the Jewel compressor. The bug was only in presets from before the update that used the Jewel compressor; you couldn't make edits to the compressor without an error message. The current work-around is to simply delete that effect and re-add it. This shouldn't affect you adding to a new preset. However, they didn't add the compression meter to the Jewel, which is kind of sad. The Jewel, when used as a light compression at the front of the chain, is probably my favorite. Edit: ...because English is hard.
Excellent as always sir! And yes the low to mid-gain tones I agree are really where the QC shines and you also illustrated just how easily really great tones can be dialed up with minimal effort or experience with the unit. Well done!
I hope you’re getting a commission from Neural DSP. Your lower gain/clean demos of the QC have pushed me over the edge and I have one arriving tomorrow. This demo finally did it, plus the news that Tone Junkie is starting to get on board with captures. Lovely playing as per usual. Your playing is beautifully dynamic and it seems to me the QC responds very well.
No, he’s dead on. I don’t use metal tones at all, and it took me awhile to find the amps that work otherwise. The first best ones I found were done by RabeaAfro …the sparkle amp captures…twin sis sparkle…slo sparkle…twin sis takes…and some of his presets he uses these captures in. Start there man, and edit them to your taste! I actually prefer the captures to the amps in the quad as a starting point. (Add a cab though) Just set up a basic amp try preset with a little reverb, and start plugging in amps and captures to see what they are like. Keep what you like!
Love the playing and the tone! I'm a new QC owner and I have felt like I'm in the minority using it for low-mid gain tones (country). Love the Lonestar. I'd love to download this preset you created.
@BenjaminJDenen I'm currently on the fence for ordering a QC but your comment is helping push me over that edge. I run a Pedaltrain Novo 24 stacked with a ton of pedals into a Lonestar Special with the 4CM and play in a modern country band. We'll be going on a few festival runs this summer and I'm trying to decide if I can capture my stuff with the QC and it be close enough to match my normal tone snob quality. How's it working out for you so far?
The factory captures of Komet and Tone King amps are great for this style, and there are tons of good free captures on the cloud of Suhr, Divided by 13, Magnatone, Supro, Two-Rock, etc. Takes a little fishing, but they're out there. Great work as always, John!
The clean channel on the new JP-2C model that came with the 2.0 update is really nice as well. I love how much headroom the models have - they take pedals really well. Great playing as usual!
Mate you make it sound right. Have you noticed a massive difference placing the amps in front of your effects versus being last on the signal path on the QC? I see you've placed your amps in the middle of the chain.. But would love to know your thoughts on placement!
You always sound good on any of these devices. I’m interested in either the QC or Fractal, but they all sound good when your playing them. Good players are going to sound good on any of these devices. I wish the FM3 could run dual amps. It’s one of the main reasons I’m leaning QC. There’s a lot more processing power in the QC and the capture library is really nice nowadays. I wish it had more effects, but I think it would be fine with the included set. Please upload any presets to the Cortex cloud. When I get my QC I will be happy to buy you a coffee 😊
Great as always John! I sounded great to me. I would agree with you on the two rock or some magnatone captures would be great. Plus put the patch up in the clouds when you get a chance
Thank you this is super helpful. Love these videos. I’ve owned all three- Helix, Kemper and QC. Mainly a clean to breakup player on guitar and also a bass player. Took Ke a while to pull the trigger on a QC but glad I did. I love it. Feels like a kemper, sounds as good as a Helix and the workflow is perfect. For bass it is incomparably better. There’s just nothing else can touch it. For guitar it’s less of a distance ahead but still the best unit. Still have my kemper but never use it so will sell. The Helix sold this week. Solid resale on those puppies though.
Hi John, Hoping all of your family are well. I love and use the Fenderish tones when I play at our church. I would really appreciate the preset if you would upload it. I have only had my QC about 3 weeks and I certainly am overwhelmed by its potential. I call it my MacBook Pro for my guitar. I received it as a gift from my wife for my 62nd. birthday. I was formerly using a Pod Go for the last year or so. I really enjoyed your presets that you made for that as well. Okay, I am going to figure out how to buy you a coffee. God bless you and all you love!
Really love your clean to mid-gain playing. Also you’ve stopped going up and down long legato runs so much, which to me sounded a bit like you’d temporarily run out of ideas before picking up again. Of course they are effective in the right place. I’ve been a regular on your channel for a while now and have noticed your playing is getting better all the time (it was pretty good to start with)
Clean and ambient presets are my favorite right now as I'm a newbie player of only a few months. The ambient stuff is really easy to come up with beautiful sounds with a limited skillset. What speakers or headphones do you have connected to your quad? I can only really play at low volume with a sub 100$ pair of monitors and Sennheiser 640s cans
I will first admit, I bought one and use it. It is the only modeler I own, and I am an avid tube amp guy. It does the moderate distorted tones well too. I wish it had a 4-10 CTS Alnicos cab IR to use with the super reverb captures - after all - that IS the super reverb sound as it adds some warmth and speaker compression that really fattens up the tone. Does the IR capture the compression and inefficiency in the cabinet accurately? I captured all my amps I personally built and many I own using a topedo capture. So you'd need a good speaker cab IR. I would need some good mics to capture the super with the CTS Alnicos, which I don't have good mics. I also go online, so there are all kinds of amps you can download/share for free, so if you want it - it is probably out there. I've downloaded most or all the amps you mentioned. I even have modeled my own builds, and some of them are great moderate distorted tones. It includes a lot of amps with it in included captures, not just default presets. Please download the River City amps captures - two models are tweed deluxe inspired circuits but cleaner/more headroom so that they rather clean. I have a capture for LBB - one in the normal channel, one in the bright channel - both captured with amp at a moderate volume, so maybe between tweed and black panel eras of sounds. They are great building blocks to add your own distortion and compression and FX. And no, this is not a shameless plug of my stuff, I am not actively building right now. They sound great through greenback cabinets (real amps usually sold with weber 12B signatures in open back tweed cabs). I bet you can get great strat tones on that, especially through the normal channel capture. They can rock with a tube screamer, klon, or whatever flavor you prefer. I also made a 4x6V6 model with a marshall JMP front end that I put out there (it sounds a lot like a 2203 just a little more gain). I will put a kustom on there too. Mine are captures though, not a complete preset. So add your fav cab and flavors to it and season to your liking. Hope you try it.
Good points and I agree. My custom clean sound on QC... is my fav. of all time. I haven't found/created HIGH-GAIN amazing leads (yet) but the clean is so good it hasn't been a priority for me. But, time to change that thanks!
Have you had any experience with the Quad having latency? I recently saw something where a few people have tested the latency on it, and apparently it gets worse for the more you load into a preset. Also, I’m wondering if this got solved or improved with Cors 2.0. I’m considering getting a quad cortex, but if latency is perceivable I may pass on it…
YES!! TWO ROCKS and Dumbles for sure!! I love the mid gain on the Cortex! Not familiar with the Helix so I can't comment on that. May get one someday though.. ~cheers
I believe they are all good. But, I can´t really tell since I´m stuck with my Boss GT-100 😆😅and cant even get good distorted sounds. The cleans are good thought
Other things that aren’t just meant for metal: distortion, minor scales, heavy gauge strings and picks, alternate tunings and according to this guy aluminum neck guitars aren’t either. Even though I’ve always seen those associated with jazz.
People are dumping these things in droves. They have lost their shine IMO. The new Ampero II for less than $500 is revealing how over priced some modelers really are. You did a great job in the comparison to the AxeFX which costs over 4 times more money. People preferred the Ampero II. When they release the III (this year) with more DSP, it is going to rightfully take major market share. It is also much simpler to use and unlike any fractal product, it has a modern touchscreen.
What? The Quad Cortex? Who's dumping them in droves because I wouldn't mind getting a good deal on a second unit as a backup. Especially when you're working with the captures, you've got a tone bed that very few setups can even come close to.
Your spoken content would sound a lot better if you had some sort of mike. Seems sometimes you do but not always. The in the room sound captured by your camera is lacking and not up to your playing sound.
It's not even good for metal. It's good for everything else though. No matter what you can't get enough gain on any of the built-in heads. It's horrible. They all sound like shit. They sound exactly like the real amp and that's pretty much the problem. I did not know most tube amps sound like s*** until I got the quad cortex.
Great stuff John, got a quad cortex about a month ago and I am already following you on the cloud and subscribed to your channel. Definitely would love to see more quad cortex content and would love to see this uploaded on the cloud, thks for your hard work and effort on these videos
You're the only quad cortex content creator that I watch and I've been enjoying your channel since I picked up my quad so please continue! Liked and subscribed
To me, one of the true tests of a modeler is how good the clean to mid-gain tones are and that's where the QC really shines. It is odd they have so many high-gain players though. I get the sense they are metalheads themselves. Definitely upload it!
That's because the high gain players are the bigger influencers online, so they pushed it towards those players.
I think the guys/gals playing cleaner styles are still fixed on real amps... I might be wrong on that though
@@tommurrayGTR
I use a qc, gigging 2-3 times a month. 90% of what I do is clean and works a treat. I’ve had valve amps and found them to sound brilliant but reliability and weight were issues for me. I used a Roland Blues Cube which I still have. Great amp.
I use the QC as my primary rig and I run it through a Laney 1x12 FRFR. Works fine. Sound engineers love it. Level it and leave it. I have an FM3 which, to me, sounds better than the QC, but it’s a pain in the arse to edit and the 3 button thing, as clever as it is, is a bit limiting. Editing the QC is a piece of piss and I can do it on the fly if I have to.
So yeah, clean all day for me but I gotta say when the band lets me go, my lead tone screams!
Even if I use the same preset I don’t get the same sound. Why is that?
@@shouberthelus7370 Different guitar, different pickups?
@@EdPettersen I’m using a PRS CE24 custom and Roland 120 jazz chorus amp.
I just needed to pause after the playing in the intro and say - wow. You play absolutely amazing.
Great explanation!
I wonder which cabinet in the first row?
B. r. Thomas
Great playing and tones as usual John! Would love to have this one in the cloud please!
Always here for the QC content; you're the best as far as I'm concerned. Loved that preset.
Side note though, there's nothing wrong with using the Jewel compressor. The bug was only in presets from before the update that used the Jewel compressor; you couldn't make edits to the compressor without an error message. The current work-around is to simply delete that effect and re-add it. This shouldn't affect you adding to a new preset. However, they didn't add the compression meter to the Jewel, which is kind of sad. The Jewel, when used as a light compression at the front of the chain, is probably my favorite.
Edit: ...because English is hard.
Excellent as always sir! And yes the low to mid-gain tones I agree are really where the QC shines and you also illustrated just how easily really great tones can be dialed up with minimal effort or experience with the unit. Well done!
I hope you’re getting a commission from Neural DSP. Your lower gain/clean demos of the QC have pushed me over the edge and I have one arriving tomorrow. This demo finally did it, plus the news that Tone Junkie is starting to get on board with captures. Lovely playing as per usual. Your playing is beautifully dynamic and it seems to me the QC responds very well.
No, he’s dead on. I don’t use metal tones at all, and it took me awhile to find the amps that work otherwise. The first best ones I found were done by RabeaAfro …the sparkle amp captures…twin sis sparkle…slo sparkle…twin sis takes…and some of his presets he uses these captures in. Start there man, and edit them to your taste! I actually prefer the captures to the amps in the quad as a starting point. (Add a cab though) Just set up a basic amp try preset with a little reverb, and start plugging in amps and captures to see what they are like. Keep what you like!
Gotta try this. Sounds amazing. Please leave in the cloud if you can!
Love the playing and the tone! I'm a new QC owner and I have felt like I'm in the minority using it for low-mid gain tones (country). Love the Lonestar. I'd love to download this preset you created.
I play mostly blues, so the edge of breakup stuff has been really impressive on the QC.
Sorry that you over paid Benji.
@@MOAB-UT why do you troll the QC comments everywhere?? You’re not changing anyone’s mind! Go enjoy your Fractal gear! ✌️
@BenjaminJDenen I'm currently on the fence for ordering a QC but your comment is helping push me over that edge. I run a Pedaltrain Novo 24 stacked with a ton of pedals into a Lonestar Special with the 4CM and play in a modern country band. We'll be going on a few festival runs this summer and I'm trying to decide if I can capture my stuff with the QC and it be close enough to match my normal tone snob quality. How's it working out for you so far?
really awesome
The factory captures of Komet and Tone King amps are great for this style, and there are tons of good free captures on the cloud of Suhr, Divided by 13, Magnatone, Supro, Two-Rock, etc. Takes a little fishing, but they're out there. Great work as always, John!
Love this kind of tone! Thanks for the preset John!
The clean channel on the new JP-2C model that came with the 2.0 update is really nice as well. I love how much headroom the models have - they take pedals really well. Great playing as usual!
Virtual pedals or real pedals?
@@tonepilot mostly I've had good results with overdrive models or captures (on their own or stacked)
I made a preset using the new Tone King Captures. It sounds great. I play in church every Sunday and I've been using that one for 2 weeks.
Mate you make it sound right.
Have you noticed a massive difference placing the amps in front of your effects versus being last on the signal path on the QC?
I see you've placed your amps in the middle of the chain.. But would love to know your thoughts on placement!
You always sound good on any of these devices. I’m interested in either the QC or Fractal, but they all sound good when your playing them. Good players are going to sound good on any of these devices.
I wish the FM3 could run dual amps. It’s one of the main reasons I’m leaning QC. There’s a lot more processing power in the QC and the capture library is really nice nowadays. I wish it had more effects, but I think it would be fine with the included set.
Please upload any presets to the Cortex cloud. When I get my QC I will be happy to buy you a coffee 😊
Great as always John! I sounded great to me. I would agree with you on the two rock or some magnatone captures would be great. Plus put the patch up in the clouds when you get a chance
Bill Shea, what’s his name on the cloud? I can’t find him.
Your best tone ever! I freaking loved it!
So good, really great sound. I agree adding a Dumble etc would be nice. Thank you for all of your QC posts, they are highly apreciated!
Thank you this is super helpful. Love these videos. I’ve owned all three- Helix, Kemper and QC. Mainly a clean to breakup player on guitar and also a bass player. Took Ke a while to pull the trigger on a QC but glad I did. I love it. Feels like a kemper, sounds as good as a Helix and the workflow is perfect. For bass it is incomparably better. There’s just nothing else can touch it. For guitar it’s less of a distance ahead but still the best unit.
Still have my kemper but never use it so will sell. The Helix sold this week. Solid resale on those puppies though.
None of the modellers have a rivera amp as far as I know . I have an old TBR1M and nothing seems to come close
And, yes, please do post this preset. Thx!
Hi John, Hoping all of your family are well. I love and use the Fenderish tones when I play at our church. I would really appreciate the preset if you would upload it. I have only had my QC about 3 weeks and I certainly am overwhelmed by its potential. I call it my MacBook Pro for my guitar. I received it as a gift from my wife for my 62nd. birthday. I was formerly using a Pod Go for the last year or so. I really enjoyed your presets that you made for that as well. Okay, I am going to figure out how to buy you a coffee. God bless you and all you love!
My biggest takeaways from this channel are:
1) Every modeler can be made to sound great
2) I should practice more
Great playing and tones as usual.
Look at Ampero II.
Can you get like a blusey sound out of it. Like the black keys, rival sons, white stripes, or the cold stares?
Really love your clean to mid-gain playing. Also you’ve stopped going up and down long legato runs so much, which to me sounded a bit like you’d temporarily run out of ideas before picking up again. Of course they are effective in the right place. I’ve been a regular on your channel for a while now and have noticed your playing is getting better all the time (it was pretty good to start with)
Clean and ambient presets are my favorite right now as I'm a newbie player of only a few months. The ambient stuff is really easy to come up with beautiful sounds with a limited skillset. What speakers or headphones do you have connected to your quad? I can only really play at low volume with a sub 100$ pair of monitors and Sennheiser 640s cans
Thank you Jonathan. It is very helpful.
I will first admit, I bought one and use it. It is the only modeler I own, and I am an avid tube amp guy. It does the moderate distorted tones well too. I wish it had a 4-10 CTS Alnicos cab IR to use with the super reverb captures - after all - that IS the super reverb sound as it adds some warmth and speaker compression that really fattens up the tone. Does the IR capture the compression and inefficiency in the cabinet accurately? I captured all my amps I personally built and many I own using a topedo capture. So you'd need a good speaker cab IR. I would need some good mics to capture the super with the CTS Alnicos, which I don't have good mics. I also go online, so there are all kinds of amps you can download/share for free, so if you want it - it is probably out there. I've downloaded most or all the amps you mentioned. I even have modeled my own builds, and some of them are great moderate distorted tones. It includes a lot of amps with it in included captures, not just default presets. Please download the River City amps captures - two models are tweed deluxe inspired circuits but cleaner/more headroom so that they rather clean. I have a capture for LBB - one in the normal channel, one in the bright channel - both captured with amp at a moderate volume, so maybe between tweed and black panel eras of sounds. They are great building blocks to add your own distortion and compression and FX. And no, this is not a shameless plug of my stuff, I am not actively building right now. They sound great through greenback cabinets (real amps usually sold with weber 12B signatures in open back tweed cabs). I bet you can get great strat tones on that, especially through the normal channel capture. They can rock with a tube screamer, klon, or whatever flavor you prefer. I also made a 4x6V6 model with a marshall JMP front end that I put out there (it sounds a lot like a 2203 just a little more gain). I will put a kustom on there too. Mine are captures though, not a complete preset. So add your fav cab and flavors to it and season to your liking. Hope you try it.
Good points and I agree.
My custom clean sound on QC... is my fav. of all time.
I haven't found/created HIGH-GAIN amazing leads (yet) but the clean is so good it hasn't been a priority for me. But, time to change that thanks!
By the way, congratulations! Been there 6 times. Life's greatest joy
Love the cortex vids. I recently got my dream amp (mesa boogie mark V:35) and looking to develop my modelling chops at the same time.
Sounds amazing. Thx.
Have you had any experience with the Quad having latency? I recently saw something where a few people have tested the latency on it, and apparently it gets worse for the more you load into a preset. Also, I’m wondering if this got solved or improved with Cors 2.0.
I’m considering getting a quad cortex, but if latency is perceivable I may pass on it…
If you run a preset in series across the processors, you can easily run quite high latency relative to other modelers for sure
YES!! TWO ROCKS and Dumbles for sure!! I love the mid gain on the Cortex! Not familiar with the Helix so I can't comment on that. May get one someday though.. ~cheers
You made a comment about the Jewel compressor not working anymore? What's up with that?
There’s a bug in the update. Easy work around is to delete the jewl then re add it.
I believe they are all good. But, I can´t really tell since I´m stuck with my Boss GT-100 😆😅and cant even get good distorted sounds. The cleans are good thought
Would love the backing track on this one. Man your playing is silky smooth
How has 2.0 changed the game?
They should release a foot pedal version of this like the FM3
The QC is actually a similar size to the FM3 but lighter?
I use my QC for country, no problems !
Let's be real.... The be100 into the xxl cab is insanely good., Ps I love your vids dude
Yes
if it can nail a hot rodded plexi sound then I’m buying it
Other things that aren’t just meant for metal: distortion, minor scales, heavy gauge strings and picks, alternate tunings and according to this guy aluminum neck guitars aren’t either. Even though I’ve always seen those associated with jazz.
John!!! Your channel has ruined me for picking a modeller: I’ve realized I have QC taste on an Ampero Stomp budget!
Amazing video! Great tones but how dare you leave your collar up I'm offended..
Pls review line 6 spider 🙏
I feel like your Cortex material sounds better than the helix or fractal on your channel. I would like to see more Dr Z amps in the cortex.
Collar up ;)
People are dumping these things in droves. They have lost their shine IMO. The new Ampero II for less than $500 is revealing how over priced some modelers really are. You did a great job in the comparison to the AxeFX which costs over 4 times more money. People preferred the Ampero II. When they release the III (this year) with more DSP, it is going to rightfully take major market share. It is also much simpler to use and unlike any fractal product, it has a modern touchscreen.
What? The Quad Cortex? Who's dumping them in droves because I wouldn't mind getting a good deal on a second unit as a backup. Especially when you're working with the captures, you've got a tone bed that very few setups can even come close to.
Your spoken content would sound a lot better if you had some sort of mike. Seems sometimes you do but not always. The in the room sound captured by your camera is lacking and not up to your playing sound.
It's not even good for metal. It's good for everything else though. No matter what you can't get enough gain on any of the built-in heads. It's horrible. They all sound like shit. They sound exactly like the real amp and that's pretty much the problem. I did not know most tube amps sound like s*** until I got the quad cortex.