Quad Cortex Mini

Jkist7 said:
Hard agree. It's crazy how much more capability/ flexibility you get with just 1 more switch. My gigs usually consist of 4 main presets, and then slight variations on each. Clean, crunch / rhythm, lead, and then solo.

The clean has a dotted 8th delay as a variation. The rhythm has a crunch, and then slightly boosted. Etc.

Started with FM3, then moved to Nano with an expression pedal to effectively get 8 switches. Now I've got the Mini on order, and I'm very excited. Should be perfect for what I do.
Click to expand...

I used to be there too, but I've gotten in the habit of variants of clean/rhythm (Blame @2112 and his "greasy" scenes for his gig patches) PLUS I like the option of having momentary switches where I can get a couple seconds of feedback or crazy pitch stuff just for a particular phrase or solo segment.

Now, make no mistake...those are wants. I truly don't need more than four switches either.

If I wanted to go beyond the Ampero or Stomp XL for my backup rig.....I'd be hard pressed to get a Quad Cortex Mini over an AM4 for double the price.
 
SeeD said:
The footswitches are dual mode, so it`s more like 8

And with the hole Capture thing, I feel for the first time owning a modeler, that I get new `things all the time` for free
It`s wierd for folks that don`t own capture tech devices..I know. But it`sure a hell of a lot fun :love

I had a Axe Fx II with 200 amps and efx, I don`t miss it at all
Click to expand...
Dual mode switches isn't really the same as 8 though is it?
 
I think the switches argument is a potential circle jerk conversation - and at the end of the day it’s not for the people who want a lot of switches. That’s totally ok!

This is a really perfect desk rig, or controlled via midi in a rack, or for the guitarist that uses 4 or under scenes. I think eventually we’ll see DIYers come out with rack mount attachments so that the QC can display facing you and that will be cool.
 
These days I don’t feel like casting aspersions at any of these top tier modelers makes much sense. They all sound great and all have their pros and cons in various ways. It’s a cool time for me because I don’t feel any real draw to find “the next great thing.”
 
Last edited:
deadpool_25 said:
It’s a cool time for me because I don’t feel any real draw to find “the next great thing.”
Click to expand...
When the Axe Fx III came out I did feel the need to test it, and it did sound good, but I had my Axe Fx II that was tuned to my presets so I was `happy` But when the QC was new, for the first time in 10-12 years I needed a new thing, and from day one I liked it, still have it. My presets still sound the same... that never happend on my Axe Fx II, when Cliff was updating it every month.. broke my presets all the time, add a new thing and removed this thing, tuned this thing, broke presets... Sure we got new things, but my presets broke all the time...but when he did stop the updates for the II, I was happy for a long time with my presets, for 2 years I think.
I play guitar and bass, and when Cliff flipped the 2 bass Ampeg models in the axe fx II, and broke all my bass presets in one of the last updates for the II ( I don`t know why he needed to do that...) I had a enough!
Tried the Axe Fx III once more over a weekend just to be sure, and yes.. finally I had my QC Capture box (that I was hoping for for years in the Fractal, but no...)

Not a fiber in my body whants the new Helix Stadium

Happy camper!
 
SeeD said:
... that never happend on my Axe Fx II, when Cliff was updating it every month.. broke my presets all the time, add a new thing and removed this thing, tuned this thing, broke presets... Sure we got new things, but my presets broke all the time...
Click to expand...
Since you brought it up...my sentiments exactly: It is asinine. No other product/vendor that I know does this. Coupled with the fact that sometimes resets are needed on blocks to re-read parameters and sometimes not. Sometimes controls/parameters just disappear altogether. It's a dog's breakfast. People rarely bring this up or the fact that my Fractals crash more in a month than my Helix did in 10 years. When most vendors add new amps or effects they seldom if ever touch other established blocks. They just create new ones. Fractal sounds fine and it does have its merits but I hope the QCM will help give me a fresh start. One where I'll actually want to power on the unit.
On a brighter note, I was surprised today to find that my Neural plugs are freely upgradable to version X. I'll get to hear what Nolly, the SLO and Nameless sound like in the unit.
 
Last edited:
dean701 said:
On a brighter note, I was surprised today to find that my Neural plugs are freely upgradable to version X. I'll get to hear what Nolly, the SLO and Nameless sound like in the unit.
Click to expand...
I recently got back into Nolly, bought it before the X update, and the changes to the IRs are quite large, with additions of other speakers, both straight and angled Mesa V30 etc. Enjoy!
 
dean701 said:
Since you brought it up...my sentiments exactly: It is asinine. No other product/vendor that I know does this. Coupled with the fact that sometimes resets are needed on blocks to re-read parameters and sometimes not. Sometimes controls/parameters just disappear altogether. It's a dog's breakfast. People rarely bring this up or the fact that my Fractals crash more in a month than my Helix did in 10 years. When most vendors add new amps or effects they seldom if ever touch other established blocks. They just create new ones. Fractal sounds fine and it does have its merits but I hope the QCM will help give me a fresh start. One where I'll actually want to power on the unit.
On a brighter note, I was surprised today to find that my Neural plugs are freely upgradable to version X. I'll get to hear what Nolly, the SLO and Nameless sound like in the unit.
Click to expand...
Axe Edit did not work as it should for a long time ( years? ) They did fix this. But Axe Edit also did not work as it should the last few years on the Axe Fx II, made it hard to make tweeks when recording ( would crash )
I could not use Axe Edit when recoring for a long time, and had to tweek on the Axe Fx it self.

And as you say, I can not think of any other that brake presets on devices. It`s wierd, folks use it to make music ( have to update for bugs ) making you tweek presets that was just fine sounding..

It`s a bit wierd that some folk don`t talk about this stuff, I lived it and so did a lot of other folk in here to :idk

Yeah I think you will be happy with your Quad Cortex for a long time, as presets sound and act like you made them.

I do wonder if all this was happening with the QC, what would Fractal users say then... maaaannnn!! It would be a shit show :cop
 
mikah912 said:
Yeah, I used to have a FM3 that was way more versatile than just dual mode, and even there....I got tired of press-and-hold and alternate screens/functions.
Click to expand...
I liked the programmability, but the 3 switches are just not enough and just the 4th switch on the AM4 adds a lot of utility. On the Axe-Fx 3 + FC-12 I avoided hold functions a good bit and used multiple layouts instead. Holds are fine for things like turning on a tuner but you don't want to regularly rely on them.

mikah912 said:
I just want to have a good balance of switches/size/functionality. The QC Mini definitely has the latter two.

I'd be willing to overlook the lack of switches for a cheaper price because I'd strictly be using this as a backup rig to my Stadium. But not at $1400.

I'd grab a Hotone Ampero II for a third of that all day, and it runs some great captures too. Had one just before I grabbed my Stadium, and might be getting another.
Click to expand...
To me if you need captures, you can just add a cheap Tonex One to just about anything. On the QC the only advantage is the ability to run a lot of them at once. Personally I will take modeled drives and amps over captures every single time. Doesn't matter how good the captures are, I just don't enjoy working with them compared to being able to dial amp models like the real thing.

The QC Mini sits in this place where it's cheap enough vs the full QC that the QC makes less sense. You could buy the QC Mini + MIDI controller of your choice and have afaik about the same functionality as the full QC but with better switch spacing.

At the same time, it's not cheap enough vs used QC.

I was willing to buy the AM4 used for only a little bit of saving vs new EU price rather than spend more on the QC Mini, because I just don't trust Neural DSP to work on the QC feature set. With the AM4 I felt I got an already mature product from a company I do trust. It might not do everything I want, and the user interface is more dated, but the sounds are top of the class no ifs and buts.
 
SeeD said:
Axe Edit did not work as it should for a long time ( years? ) They did fix this. But Axe Edit also did not work as it should the last few years on the Axe Fx II, made it hard to make tweeks when recording ( would crash )
I could not use Axe Edit when recoring for a long time, and had to tweek on the Axe Fx it self.
Click to expand...
I think your experience is an outlier as I haven't seen a lot of people report issues like that. For me Axe-Edit always worked just fine, and I was able to make the Axe-Fx 3 crash once which was promptly fixed in the next fw update.

The FM3 was more problematic for me. Footswitch not working, or the system booting up in a garbled audio state. Reboot fixed it but it was not nice. With firmware updates they eventually got fixed but the first few years of the FM3 were definitely rough - which is uncharacteristic for past Fractal products.

It's early days but so far AM4 has been very solid for me.

SeeD said:
And as you say, I can not think of any other that brake presets on devices. It`s wierd, folks use it to make music ( have to update for bugs ) making you tweek presets that was just fine sounding..

It`s a bit wierd that some folk don`t talk about this stuff, I lived it and so did a lot of other folk in here to :idk
Click to expand...
I've updated to just about every firmware version that came out when I've owned Fractal devices and never has the sound changed drastically that I'm suddenly feeling like my presets suck or are unusable. Even for the major engine updates. At most I made a few tweaks to the amp block (which gets like 95% of improvements anyway) and called it a day.

SeeD said:
Yeah I think you will be happy with your Quad Cortex for a long time, as presets sound and act like you made them.

I do wonder if all this was happening with the QC, what would Fractal users say then... maaaannnn!! It would be a shit show :cop
Click to expand...
Aren't there plenty of complaints about QC issues as well? Including hardware issues that required the unit to be sent back to NDSP.

For software issues, there's a big difference in fixing speed between Fractal and NDSP. Fractal can have a bug fixed in a matter of days while NDSP takes much longer. Looking at their firmware releases, it took them 19 days to fix some CorOS 3.3.0 bugs by releasing 3.3.1 - a couple of fairly serious looking bugs (crash or mute output). With QC's ~1 min 40 sec boot times, I certainly wouldn't want to encounter those.
 
laxu said:
I think your experience is an outlier as I haven't seen a lot of people report issues like that. For me Axe-Edit always worked just fine, and I was able to make the Axe-Fx 3 crash once which was promptly fixed in the next fw update.

The FM3 was more problematic for me. Footswitch not working, or the system booting up in a garbled audio state. Reboot fixed it but it was not nice. With firmware updates they eventually got fixed but the first few years of the FM3 were definitely rough - which is uncharacteristic for past Fractal products.

It's early days but so far AM4 has been very solid for me.


I've updated to just about every firmware version that came out when I've owned Fractal devices and never has the sound changed drastically that I'm suddenly feeling like my presets suck or are unusable. Even for the major engine updates. At most I made a few tweaks to the amp block (which gets like 95% of improvements anyway) and called it a day.


Aren't there plenty of complaints about QC issues as well? Including hardware issues that required the unit to be sent back to NDSP.

For software issues, there's a big difference in fixing speed between Fractal and NDSP. Fractal can have a bug fixed in a matter of days while NDSP takes much longer. Looking at their firmware releases, it took them 19 days to fix some CorOS 3.3.0 bugs by releasing 3.3.1 - a couple of fairly serious looking bugs (crash or mute output). With QC's ~1 min 40 sec boot times, I certainly wouldn't want to encounter those.
Click to expand...
Sure, we know about NDSP, we all know! haha

I got in 2010 with Fractal and the Axe Fx Ultra, so I`ve seen some thing since then. I know what I know and have had my share of problems with my units, saying otherwise is just wrong!

All i`m saying is that since i got my QC, my presets is all there, no need for tweeks at all.
 
deadpool_25 said:
These days I don’t feel like casting dispersions at any of these top tier modelers makes much sense. They all sound great and all have their pros and cons in various ways. It’s a cool time for me because I don’t feel any real draw to find “the next great thing.”
Click to expand...

Facts. Listen, I can say whether I think a unit is a good value or not or if it's ideal for my personal use cases or not.

But if I had to gig or record with ANY of these floorboards - QC, Stadium, AM4, FM9, Fender Tonemaster Pro, OG Helix, whatever - I'd be good!

I've had all but the AM4. I've gigged them all successfully. I've been inspired to write music on them all as well.

Whatever I think about NDSP or whatever quibbles I've had with previous iterations of their firmware, the fact is the current state of QC and QC Mini is that these are extremely well-engineered and capable platforms that would meet and exceed the vast majority of guitarists' needs.

I want them to continue to push Line 6, Fractal and others. We ALL benefit from that.
 
dean701 said:
Since you brought it up...my sentiments exactly: It is asinine. No other product/vendor that I know does this. Coupled with the fact that sometimes resets are needed on blocks to re-read parameters and sometimes not. Sometimes controls/parameters just disappear altogether. It's a dog's breakfast. People rarely bring this up or the fact that my Fractals crash more in a month than my Helix did in 10 years. When most vendors add new amps or effects they seldom if ever touch other established blocks. They just create new ones. Fractal sounds fine and it does have its merits but I hope the QCM will help give me a fresh start. One where I'll actually want to power on the unit.
On a brighter note, I was surprised today to find that my Neural plugs are freely upgradable to version X. I'll get to hear what Nolly, the SLO and Nameless sound like in the unit.
Click to expand...
It sounds like Fractals are not for you. I love the constant updates. I’ve noticed a distinct improvement in the amp models over time and think Cliff and team’s dedication to giving us free updates for now nearly decade-old devices like the Axe FX III and it’s sub units (FM series, AM4, and VP4) is downright impressive. Do I think amp captures are better than models? Yes, but that’s coming from someone that owns and captures his own amps. If I didn’t have amps, I’d be happy with Fractal models for sure, they sound great.

Contrast that with the Nano Cortex that couldn’t upload captures for 8 months and was only just updated. Or the fact that every time I upload 4-5 IRs to the Cortex cloud, only 1-2 shows up available in my NC (and I’ve verified they are all the same format). The bugs with Neural products are a little intense compared to the relatively stable Fractal software. Plus I can click and drag presets from the device, and I can click and drag IRs to the device, things I can do on all fractal devices, while my NC can’t do either as there’s no PC app and the ecosystem is locked down.
 
mbenigni said:
Admittedly, I haven't paid much attention to the NC. Are you telling me that their only product without a touchscreen is also their only product without a PC editor? That's... insane. :wat
Click to expand...
Yep. Phone only, and it will only connect to the device if it’s connected to the internet. Terrible design. Imaging needing to make a change to your delay sound at a gig and having to get the bar’s WIFI password to change your delay. But the sound of the device is pretty great.
 
mbenigni said:
Admittedly, I haven't paid much attention to the NC. Are you telling me that their only product without a touchscreen is also their only product without a PC editor? That's... insane. :wat
Click to expand...
Yeah, that´s right.

Now, I have to say that I don´t need a PC editor. I don´t actually want a PC editor. If there was a PC editor, I wouldn´t use it anyway.

It just depends on someone´s workflow or usecase. I never felt too comfortable using editors (tried Boss, Zoom, Atomic or Helix... and at the end, I just prefer editing on the unit).

I understand that many users want and need the editor. In my opinion, it´s not a critical feature, as long as it works so easily with a phone/tablet.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

gergohajer
WARHEAD Mini DI captures for Kemper, QC, TONEX & NAM by Strange Angles
Replies
0
Views
600
gergohajer
gergohajer
gergohajer
MLC Amp Bundle for ToneX, Kemper, Quad Cortex & NAM
Replies
0
Views
706
gergohajer
gergohajer
gergohajer
Real Amp VS Quad Cortex VS Kemper VS ToneX
2
Replies
30
Views
16K
ejecta
ejecta
fiftyshadesofslay
Line 6 Helix Stadium vs Quad Cortex
2
Replies
33
Views
2K
ejecta
ejecta
nightlight
Captured an Engl Savage 120 with the Quad Cortex today
Replies
0
Views
942
nightlight
nightlight
Back
Top