I know we've all read a million things about the QC, however here's my personal thoughts to add on, for what they're worth.
I've been using that gold top Core 594 straight in, with an ISP Stealth Pro power amp and Mesa Rectifier 2x12.
A few thoughts on Day 3:
The Good
- it sounds and feels amazing
- captures sound REALLY GREAT, hugely realistic and with lots of "presence in the room"
- very quickly found two factory captures that could each be my main "forever tone": Marshall Silver Jubilee and Mesa Tremoverb
- I like the limited ability to fine-tune captures, it encourages me to just play and not question/tweak
- effects are limited in amount/selection, but the ones that are my go-to's all sound really good (drives, tape delay, phase, octave down)
- the UI is very effective and really ups the fun factor + speed of use/creativity/play time; I was actually smiling to myself, at points, it was so fun
- touchscreen is responsive and works well; I've been a "down with touchscreens on guitar gear" guy in the past, but this has converted me
- love the size and weight
- long-awaited desktop editor seems good and works well
- finding and downloading a few Electra Dyne captures to try was smooth and easy
The Bad
- power supply is super cheap, as we all know
- haven't been able to get it to connect to my wifi; I'm down in the basement and far from the router on main floor, but my phone, iPad, and MacBook all connect fine down there; also haven't been able to connect it to my phone's hotspot (connecting with cable to MacBook, for now)
- top switches are very close to bottom ones, will have to see how this goes when playing live
- limited ability to customize switches in Stomp/pedalboard mode, can't seem to choose LED colour when assigning multiple effects/amps to one switch?
- Uni-Vibe is meh, way better than Kemper's but not as good as L6 or Fractal
- this is more of a "we'll see" statement, but as
@DrewJD82 has pointed out, I keep coming across people having hardware/software issues and looking for help online, so I'm wary of it happening to me; however I did get a Black Friday deal of 1 year free extended warranty, so that helps a bit
The Ugly
- absolutely none!
- this is a really sleek and great looking device, love the look and overall aesthetic
- I am a visual guy and everything about the QC's physical form and on-screen visuals looks fantastic and is a pleasing experience
General Comparisons to "the others"
- it's early in the experience, but I'd say QC captures have an equal "holy sh*t" factor to Fractal's amp models, in terms of realism and wow-reaction; maybe slightly less detail, but still high levels of "this sounds insanely good and extremely close to a real amp" and just a big wow-factor
- QC amp models don't have the same impact; I'd say they're less than Fractal but better than L6 (except maybe the new L6 2203?)
- QC captures have a similar quality to Kemper profiles, in that they sound “more analog” than amp models to me, not sure how else to describe it; just a thicker, more- present sound that fills the room in a different way?
- while sharing this quality ^^^, to my ears, the QC captures seem to have a greater level of detail/are more “high def” than Kemper
- in terms of form factor, so far I much prefer the QC over any of them
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