quad cortex (impressions)

DankStar

Her Little Mojo Minion
I know some people don't like "impressions" type reviews, so if that's you, you may want to bail at this point.

My brother got a quad cortex and I got to play it last weekend. We connected it into the effects return on his mini EVH head and 1 x 12" EVH cab.

It loads up on the 2203, which I didn't quite care for to be honest, even with in-the-box pedals in front of it.

However, the other amps sounded killer (the roland sounded very close to a real jazz chorus, and the trem-o-verb was outstanding).

One thing that really blew me away was the user captures. I randomly selected an ADA (mp-1 I think) capture (some sort of modded marshall tone) and it was crazy good. I briefly owned an ADA in the past and hated it, but this thing sounded wonderful. It was hard to make sense of the user captures unfortunately from a file-sorting perspective. There would be like 30 captures of an amp with similar names, then another 25 with the same amp on a different setting, then another, etc. There wasn't much of a description that I could tell so after awhile you're like where the heck am I in this guy's 100 captures of this thing? BUT, when they sound that good, I'd say that's a small price to pay.

It was super easy to make a chain with reverb, delay, etc. The cab options were really cool - changing mics and placements. I could see getting lost in that section alone with all the features. The delays and reverbs were like a wet dream, I loved the ones I tested.

Oddly enough, I liked it best with the cab sim on even though we ran it through an actual cab. It was a little too trebly or something without the cab sim (like too in-your-face). I guess it would work for a live situation, but I was having a blast noodling with the internal cab sim, sounded perfect to me.

Would definitely be a piece of gear I'd use and probably shun all my other gear for quite a long time.
 
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I'd love a chance to try one. I like the idea of the captures, too. I'd certainly do that to my analog rig.
 
I'd love to try one. I wonder how they compare to the Kemper, because I love my Kemper!!

It's amazing just how great of guitar gear there is out there now. It's definitely a great time to be a guitar player in that sense. When I was a teen, I used to put headphones around my acoustic, plug them into my cassette deck, and then crank the input level all of the way so that I could play a guitar with distortion. It sounded like T total crap, but I thought it was awesome....lol.
 
I'd love to try one. I wonder how they compare to the Kemper, because I love my Kemper!!

It's amazing just how great of guitar gear there is out there now. It's definitely a great time to be a guitar player in that sense. When I was a teen, I used to put headphones around my acoustic, plug them into my cassette deck, and then crank the input level all of the way so that I could play a guitar with distortion. It sounded like T total crap, but I thought it was awesome....lol.

haha! When I started, the guy in town that sounded like metallica was using this little hotwatt headphone amp as an overdrive pedal, so I bought one and plugged that into a tiny peavey. the tone was probably horrible but at the time I thought it was the bee's knees.

yeah, it's almost ridiculous the ways to get a decent tone now.
 
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Isn’t that always the way? The first time we ever got any kind of distortion happening from pedals or whatever crappy overdrive channel was on our little practice amp that came in the guitar “starter pack” with a little 8” speaker was so satisfying, no matter how objectively terrible it sounded and we’d work our way uo to one day owning a big stack to get that coveted tone. It’s amazing how far along the technology has come.

Decent tone has never been easier to obtain. Now people starting on guitar these days can get sounds almost just like their favourite albums with little more than a computer and an interface, even for free if they’re resourceful enough. Killer write-up mak! It’s definitely got me curious.
 
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