Quad Cortex - has anybody cloned/replaced their pedalboard with it?

sjo89 · November 2021

Not gonna lie, I'm gassing for a Quad Cortex right now.

Done a couple of festival gigs in quick succession that made me long for a rig that can get on and off the stage faster.

Reason quad cortex appeals to me is that it can capture pedals. So I can literally have my pedal sounds in digital form and have options of going either direct to FOH with amp sims or just going direct into a clean house amp. I've got an HX Stomp and the drive pedals into a real amp at volume don't convince me TBH. I also find a lot of the drive pedal selection isn't what I'm after or have on my board.

Have any quad cortex owners done the above? How have you found the unit? thanks

onyir · November 2021

There was a video by the Studio Rats where he did something similar, cloning all of his drive pedals

JohnCordy · November 2021

@sjo89 it can't do a convincing job of Fuzz, or pedals that have clean signal blended (like Tubescreamer and so on)...

It also can't have more than one pedal assigned to a footswitch in stomp mode, so there are some fairly significant limitations at the moment.

What is actually on your board out of interest?

sjo89 · November 2021

JohnCordy said:

@sjo89 it can't do a convincing job of Fuzz, or pedals that have clean signal blended (like Tubescreamer and so on)...

It also can't have more than one pedal assigned to a footswitch in stomp mode, so there are some fairly significant limitations at the moment.

What is actually on your board out of interest?

ive a strymon riverside, nano big muff, mxr super badass variac fuzz, a timmy clone and a bogner ecstasy red mini.

JohnCordy · November 2021

So the two fuzzes it'd struggle with, and the Timmy also....

sjo89 · November 2021

JohnCordy said:

So the two fuzzes it'd struggle with, and the Timmy also....

bummer - what about the inbuilt drives and fuzzes? any good

onyir · November 2021

JohnCordy · November 2021

@sjo89 there's only one fuzz atm, it's the big muff (which should work for you?).

Otherwise the selection of drives is ok! No Timmy though

onyir · November 2021

There's a Fuzz Face now, too. It's got an interesting approach to the whole clean up issue

sjo89 · November 2021

onyir said:

There's a Fuzz Face now, too. It's got an interesting approach to the whole clean up issue

theres only 2 fuzzes? man Neural need to get off their backsides and up the number of pedals on this thing as they're way behind the competition.

maharg101 · November 2021

Seems like a fundamental limitation of a pedal cloning concept, if it struggles with drives and fuzzes.

JohnCordy · November 2021

@maharg101 yeh it can't do anything with a time component, which a fuzz does..

maharg101 · November 2021

I'm not familiar with the product at all, so forgive my ignorance - does that mean it can't do _any_ time-based effects then ? no modulation or delay ?

Also - fuzz - I didn't realise it had a time component - perhaps I've not understood the term correctly. Could you expand on that ?

maharg101 · November 2021

Having read the user guide for it, I now realise the "pedal capture" is actually for sampling overdrive / amp / microphone /speaker dynamics. I get it.

Still confused by the idea that fuzz has a time component.

sweepy · November 2021

I know everyone’s ears vary but those captured pedals sound radically different to the real thing, neither better nor worse, just different. I’ve been guilty of buying into the bleeding edge many times and I really do hope the Cortex matures properly but I’d still not get one for awhile yet

JohnCordy · November 2021

@maharg101 so Fuzz pedals often have a sort of envelope and that's definitely a part of the sound.

Basically I think the capture technology does not sample a long enough period of time to get that sag/whatever that a fuzz pedal has. Presumably this would make the processing time exponentially longer.

There's a comment from Doug somewhere online about the specifics of why the quad can't really accurately replicate fuzz with the captures...

maharg101 · November 2021

JohnCordy said:

@maharg101 so Fuzz pedals often have a sort of envelope and that's definitely a part of the sound.

Basically I think the capture technology does not sample a long enough period of time to get that sag/whatever that a fuzz pedal has. Presumably this would make the processing time exponentially longer.

There's a comment from Doug somewhere online about the specifics of why the quad can't really accurately replicate fuzz with the captures...

Interesting, thanks. Seems to me that pretty much all overdrive / distortion has the same kind of thing going on to some extent at least, but it's more dynamic and pronounced with fuzz, and hence more noticeable I guess.

For your next challenge, please capture a Zvex Machine

JohnCordy · November 2021

here's trying to capture a Cornish NG2

onyir · November 2021

I have captured a few of my pedals (including a Ramblefx Twin bender) and has gotten pretty good results. The twin bender doesn't feel like the original, depending on how spitty you set it, but the drives are pretty much spot on. I think what most people don't realize is that you're comparing the capture with the pedal in a loop (after a buffer), and a lot of pedals do sound different after a buffer.

maharg101 · November 2021

Ah yeah, buffer before most fuzzes is not good.... Twin Bender is a great pedal ! I can never settle on Mk1.5 or MkII mode for any length of time though !!!

meltedbuzzbox · November 2021

sjo89 said:

JohnCordy said:

@sjo89 it can't do a convincing job of Fuzz, or pedals that have clean signal blended (like Tubescreamer and so on)...

It also can't have more than one pedal assigned to a footswitch in stomp mode, so there are some fairly significant limitations at the moment.

What is actually on your board out of interest?

ive a strymon riverside, nano big muff, mxr super badass variac fuzz, a timmy clone and a bogner ecstasy red mini.

Why so much drive?
Seems a really, non-complicated board, I don't get why you would digitise that unless you have a monsterously heavy amp

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Quad Cortex - has anybody cloned/replaced their pedalboard with it?

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