Congrats. The QC is a badass piece of gear. I agree with almost all of your initial thoughts.
Modeling: I don’t think their modeling is light years behind something like the Fractal. The very brief A/B’ing I’ve done (the path to madness) they hold up relatively well. They just are never going to catch up in the sheer volume of amps, and I don’t think their modeling approach will lead to some of the deep tweaking options.
UI: Pretty much the gold standard at this point. Using it is an absolute breeze. It actually makes complex routing and integration with other gear extremely straightforward. This they absolutely nailed.
Effects: I think this is the weakest part of the platform. If you’re not too hardcore of an effect degenerate and don’t A/B they are perfectly functional, but honestly half of their delay and reverbs are kind of rubbish. Some I’m not even sure what they are actually doing. The octave and freeze are great though, and I like a lot of the drives. They should focus a lot of dev on effects imo.
Captures: Def some good ones, I’ve just never been a huge capture guy. I trust those that do though, so I could totally see this as being the primary selling point of the unit + UI.
I also think their wireless integration (when it works) is badass. Wireless updates and capture/preset downloads are awesome. All modelers need these features (plus an equivalent UI)
Rock on dude
Thanks! Agree on all points.
As for effects, I'm not a big effect maniac, and so far I've not found anything lacking other than the Uni-Vibe (which is still usable and WAY better than Kemper's). And that's just a once-in-a-while thing for me, when I want to get my Hendrix/Trower on. Not make or break at all. I'm still really liking the Phase 90 a lot better than Helix's, and I'd even say it's pretty much as good as Fractal's.
As for delays, all I ever use is Tape Delay, with the odd Analog, and I like both of the QC's a lot. I actually like QC's tape delay better than Fractal's, though not as much as Helix's Transistor Tape, which is still my all-time favourite. I can totally see how someone hugely into delays would be very underwhelmed, though. Helix and Fractal absolutely slay the QC delay-wise overall, no contest.
I actually think the QC drives are fantastic. I immediately found what I need, which is two flavours of boost in their Blues Breaker and SD1 models. I use these to boost a crunch tone though, I'm not a pedals-as-your-whole-drive-tone guy. My main drive is always from the amp, be it tube or a model.
Footswitch inflexibility was one of the many small things that formed a "last straw" in aggregate that broke my QC back....
Yes! I can't believe you can't choose the colour of the switches/LEDs in Stomp mode. Like, if you have multiple effects assigned to one switch, it's auto-chosen as white and there's nothing you can do. I often put an EQ/volume boost+delay on one switch for solos, and like it coloured red, but I'm forced to have it be a white LED.
And, it sounds silly, but one of the pure-simple-fun aspects I always enjoyed about digital units - going back to my first HXFX that was the gateway into all of this - is assigning multiple things to single switches and choosing a colour, naming it, etc. I always love that part of the process and it just plain sucks on the QC. I hope they add this in the future, as it is a common feature request, from what I've seen.
I dont own a QC and havent used one a great deal, but I found the built in models to be basically on par with their plugins and (for me) better than the captures. I'm always a little surprised that people prefer the captures to the models, when NDSP's background is making machine learned models of real amps.
Also yes! I spoke a little early when I was talking about preferring captures over models, especially after trying the Friedman model. Also, in the end, I do much prefer having the fine-detail control a model gives, especially when going from one physical environment and musical setting to another, ie. from jamming in my basement to playing loud with my band. A capture that sounds great at home might not work with the band, and the limited editing control of captures does make me nervous. Still open to trying them, though. Love that with the QC I can try both.
When I had mine, I did find the output level to be much lower than other modellers.
One guy on the official forum told me to use balanced cables in order to benefit from a +6dB boost, but I never tried it.
I did read that, thanks, and was using a TRS cable for my output to the ISP. I'm now thinking I need to set the overall output above +4dB for true line level, though? Still don't really get how the QC is working on that end. But ultimately the volume was decent, I just needed way more wattage/headroom.
PS100, accept no substitute.
Ah, dude, you've set the spark now..
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