Neural Quad Cortex

  • Man :). What's wrong? Leave Hodor alone, he's my friend.. I would say, you are distorting completely what I said: I said, there is a word in German for making music that does not imply "playing", that's all I said. I did not point to what you answer when being asked which musical instrument you "play". We use "play" in this case only because of the absence of a better word, not because we literally compare the biological behavior "playing" with "using an instrument". And yes, people use "musizieren" in Germany a lot in various cases, for example in school language or when people describe social activities. It is not "stiff" at all by itself, it is how you use apply it. Don't blame me, blame those .... German to the bone Germans.

    We have the same in swedish. I guess it comes from the german language. But we say göra musik.

    Think for yourself, or others will think for you wihout thinking of you

    Henry David Thoreau

  • The element of surprise, of delivering on core amp functionality while introducing novel parameters we didn’t know we needed but quickly realized that we did, continues to mean sweet tones and a fun ride.

    Indeed, the forward thinking / planning prior to release 10 years ago was astonishing IMHO.


    Also, I reckon the last thing CK would want to be seen to be doing is getting sucked into a tit-for-tat game of one-upmanship with the new kid on the block. In essence, this would damage that reputation of careful planning of the hardware design/s and the roadmap that Kemper enjoys, deservedly so. I believe it to be critical to the brand's success.


    You're not going to get peeps to buy into 10 year-old hardware unless you have and maintain a record of thinking things through, sticking to your guns and thereby guaranteeing customers a mature-product experience that isn't going to be pulled from under their feet at the drop of a hat.

  • Man :). What's wrong? Leave Hodor alone, he's my friend.. I would say, you are distorting completely what I said: I said, there is a word in German for making music that does not imply "playing", that's all I said. I did not point to what you answer when being asked which musical instrument you "play". We use "play" in this case only because of the absence of a better word, not because we literally compare the biological behavior "playing" with "using an instrument". And yes, people use "musizieren" in Germany a lot in various cases, for example in school language or when people describe social activities. It is not "stiff" at all by itself, it is how you use apply it. Don't blame me, blame those .... German to the bone Germans.

    All good.But you will not deny that you have to freakin' play this freakin' guitar/drums/bass or whatever to "make"/create music..will you?


    We play.This is what we do.Everywhere.


    I will agree that there are different approaches to name instruments.In other cultures they call them "organos" like extensions of the body parts or in other just "toys".


    But everywhere ...you play to make/create music.And please stop denying that.

  • The fun part is that I hear a lot of good things about the neural SLO plug in.Have some friends using it and are full of praise.It has "the voicing" and stands well in dense mixes.


    Plug ins are getting better and better.I wonder when we will see the first plug in combined with a good guitar synth.This will make me very,very excited.If this synth sounds organic and stands well in the mix together with the guitar..then..

  • But everywhere ...you play to make/create music.And please stop denying that.

    I cannot stop what I never started, no matter how much you want me to have done it. We only "play" instruments for lack of other terms. Better you stop denying THAT, because I never denied what you accuse me of having denied, I won't fall into that trap:D.


    But here'sthe thing: the QC seems to be a "toy" in comparison to the Kemper (though a good toy and only in my personal eyes). Therefore let's agree that messing with IT is literally "playing", even if we had another word for it 8o. Which we don't.

    Better have it and not need it, than need it and not have it! - Michael Angelo Batio

  • well I’m not bonding with the Quad Cortex.
    ‘unless I have a “eureka” moment, it’s going back tomorrow

    Kemper is still king to me

    I didn't really expect the modelling to be anywhere near Kemper's profiles. But how were the factory captures in your opinion? Have you done own captures? If anything, they say, then the captures are indistinguishable from a their real amp. Are they?

    Better have it and not need it, than need it and not have it! - Michael Angelo Batio

  • I’m gonna try to make some captures this this week, before I send it back..

    the factory captures are only marginally better then the models

    The captures, other then the Princeton , are not mainstream amps, not even a Marshall (which aren’t my favorite amps, but ones I mostly use , in my cover bands)

  • So just got back to London. Went up to Oxford this weekend to play with the band.


    But this weekend threw me a bit of a curve ball. I took my Marshall amp and my Helix, because my plan was to switch the JVM by midi from the Helix, and run it how I always do. But since the QC arrived on Friday and we were leaving Friday evening, I decided to take it with me.


    So the JVM wouldn't respond to any midi commands, and I don't know why. I never tested it before hand. I spent ages trying to get it to work. Nothing to do with midi channel or anything like that. I think the amp is broken when it comes to midi.


    So in the end, I did the entire weekend on the QC, into the FX loop return on the JVM.


    All my effects and distortion came from the QC. No midi switching. Just using scenes mode on the thing. Two presets that I very very quickly rushed together.


    I used a Neural Capture of the Fryette Sig X for most of it. But I also took a capture of my JVM's OD1 red channel.


    Basically - cut a long story short... I loved it. I didn't miss having a full on valve amp setup at all the entire weekend, and I kept checking with a Seymour Duncan Powerstage as well, to make sure it wasn't just the Marshall power section I was loving.



    I'll post more, but I wanna collect my thoughts.

  • Ok so I’ve been playing with my QC a lot and agree it’s not a Kemper killer. But I still think it is good.
    so many clips are with fizzy high gain amp models I thought I’d capture my Two Rock on clean and overdriven settings.


    Here’s a vid

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    on my Mackie monitors, it sounds basically the same. Ymmv

  • Ok so I’ve been playing with my QC a lot and agree it’s not a Kemper killer. But I still think it is good.
    so many clips are with fizzy high gain amp models I thought I’d capture my Two Rock on clean and overdriven settings.


    Here’s a vid

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    on my Mackie monitors, it sounds basically the same. Ymmv

    Sounds great my friend.


    I won't be capturing amps when I get my QC, but I think I'll do a few OD's.


    I'll post my results here. Sure to make a few heads explode.

  • What am I missing here? I'm trying to have an open mind and I realize that patches can be tweaked to taste, etc., but this sounds awful to me. Someone posted this clip over at TGP and it sounds buzzy, fizzy, and like a square wave distortion...somewhat like playing your guitar directly into a solid state mixing board and turning up the input gain.

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    Just to note this a capture and not an amp model.

  • Alienator

    What would make a Kemper killer for you?

    I’m actually pretty happy with the sounds on the QC.
    It feels slightly stiffer than the Kemper, though.
    the Kemper also has many more and, in my opinion, better effects, especially the delays and reverbs.
    Also, the added tone shaping controls of the Kemper are amazing, clarity, definition to mention a couple. Plus the morph functions, plus all the extras of the whole ecosystem like the kabs and kones.


    It’s a hard thing to beat to be honest.
    I’ll keep the Kemper, especially as I have a powered one and like to use it with my real cab.


    Might sell the helix tho;)

  • Okay, so some thoughts... I'm lucky enough to own the Kemper, Helix, and now QC. I've owned the Axe FX II in the past as well. I have 5 multi-channel high-gainer valve heads, and a whole corner of pedals to boot.



    Ok....


    QC palm-mutes just seem more "real" to me than the Kemper, unfortunately. This is the overriding observation of my weekend. I REALLY noticed this in a band context. My palm mutes sat in the mix just like my valve amps do.


    I love my Kemper for a lot of things, but high-gain palm-mute riffing isn't really one of them. The Kemper has this low-mid flubb going on that can't really be dialed out, and there is a weird response where some profiles are under-hyped when doing palm mutes, and some are over-hyped. It can often sound akin to proximity effect when you put a microphone against a grille cloth. A lot of people question this observation, and of course they're free too, but time and time again it's the thing that stops me from playing my Kemper.


    The QC doesn't have this problem. Even if it sounds slightly different to the amps captured, it *feels* the same. And that's what is important.


    Despite my earlier comments about the neural captures being identical to the amp, they are not. But they're very close. The Kemper is very close too. There is a lot of subjectivity to this and a lot of perceptual differences, but to me the QC feels closer to my amp when I capture it than the Kemper.


    I didn't miss refining. At all. That part of the Kemper profiling process needs to be put out to pasture. It introduces needless subjectivity and complexity.


    I could definitely see Kemper users being annoyed by the QC. Not being able to change the definition of a capture, the pick attack, and not being able to turn down a high-gain capture to a super clean tone, and getting all of that lovely extra dynamic range... I can totally see Kemper owners really thinking that this is a backwards move for them. I don't much care for those things. They're very cool aspects of the Kemper, but they're not hugely important to my use case.


    The QC only gives you 24dB reduction, so a high-gain profile will only clean up so much. But it's more amp-like and so it felt more intuitive to use. The EQ is WAAAAAAYYYY less brutal than the one in the Kemper, feels smoother and not as drastic. So you never feel like you've totally ruined the tone.


    I thought that the reverbs and delays would be limiting on the QC. They're sooooooooo good on the Kemper. Really. Top class effects. They're pretty serviceable on the QC though, and they cut through the mix better than any of the reverbs or delays on the Helix. I like a delay to have a really long amount of echoes, with no difussion and no smearing. Helix can't do that. QC and Kemper can.


    The adaptive gate is very cool. The gate on the Kemper is best in class IMHO. Very tough to beat it, but QC does a good job.


    My QC preset was much simpler than my Helix presets on account of how little time I had to get them setup. I had to be up and running in 10 minutes, and so didn't have much time to get into the nitty gritty like I have done with my Helix. But it makes me think that doing a show with my Kemper actually wouldn't be the limiting thing I always thought it would be. I'm a bit of an effects junkie, and the limitations of the Kemper always put me off. But .... reckon it'd be fine.


    Helix tuner is pants. Kemper tuner is good. QC tuner is exceptional. Likewise with tempo readouts. QC tap tempo is great and accurate.


    Over the whole weekend, I didn't accidentally press a wrong footswitch at all. This surprises me, because I really thought it was going to be an issue, and would have returned the unit if it had turned out to be a major workflow killer.


    The touchscreen is brilliant I have to say. I was very skeptical about it. It works. It uses so many concepts that you are used to with your phone, that everything feels like second nature. You don't even have to read the manual. That is not true with the Kemper. 10 years after using Kempers, I still find the thing mega confusing, with crazy menus and 80's arcade controls that suck up more time than the operations deserve. I'm naming a preset... it should take less than 10 seconds!!


    So what didn't I enjoy??


    Setting up different parameters in scenes mode.... unless I'm dumb, you basically have to set the parameter in each scene. Let's say I have a default gain of 5.0, but I want one scene that is 3.0.... and then I decide, actually my default gain should be 4.0 .... I have to go through all the other scenes to set them to 4.0. Not sure there is any way around that. Helix has a cool thing where you press in the knob and turn it in order to assign a parameter to the scene selection, otherwise it's just global.


    I REALLY found myself wanting dB meters in order to balance the levels across my scenes. I was bringing in different amps and captures and found I had to do a lot of tweaking to get the levels. I'm used to being able to grab a knob on an amp, so this was more involved than it could be I reckon.


    Currently you're only able to send ONE midi program change per scene. This sucks. Needs improving ASAP imho. Anyone with a QC and the Stryfecta is going to be disappointed with the current midi implementation.


    The cloud stuff is confusing. Not intuitive at all when it comes to sharing presets and captures. Getting the damn things on the device took us ages and made us all feel like old men. We all work in the tech industry too, so we know what we're doing!! Not being able to share IR's.... okay, I understand why, but it sucks.


    Can't think of much else to put right now. I am certainly a fan. I've not made my mind up about selling my Kemper or my Helix yet. Time will tell. All three are great devices.

  • Thanks for your Post!

    I love the Amp settings of the Kemper - Pick, Definition, etc etc!

    But ok maybe this is coming for the QC in an update!


    BUT what is really a desaster from an Company who wants to rule the guitar World with the QC is that this unit is relly hard to get!


    They did so much of marketing and especially through all the Youtubers and then you have to wait for months to get this?


    On the Thomann Website its written right now that its coming in the next months again! Now its May.....so maybe for Christmas or next year? :D

  • I have had the QC over a week now and it does sound very good i think, at least as good as the kemper.


    I captured some of my Kemper patches and they sound exactly the same to my ears.


    I think the Kemper has obviously had 10 years of development behind it and is more advanced and it will be interesting to see how quickly Neural can catch up in that respect.


    I am taking it to practice hopefully next week and will then see how it sounds at higher volumes via my FRFR speaker


    it does seem quite intuitive is setting up patches etc, but then i dont have any problems with the Kemper UI as soon as you know where everything is.


    at some point i will have to make a decision between the two as i cant justify having both

  • Here's a nice comparison from Guitar Bonedo:

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    Edited once, last by Lucky T ().