Anyone transitioned from Fractal to QC, and why?

Thanks. Yes, I was aware that not all plugins will be available today.

I trialled the Morgan, Tone King, Plini and Soldano because it seemed like a good spread of tones. Only a guess, but I’m assuming they will be at least representative of the character of QC models.

In anticipation of possibly buying a QC, I took the plunge on the Plini and Soldano plugins in the black Friday sales. I believe both of these are already compatible. I also gather the original Soldano model on the QC is a bit weak so figured the plugin (which sounds great) would be useful to have.

I’d love to see the Morgan and Tone King in due course but I didn’t purchase the QC assuming I’d have them any time soon (or even at all).

I believe the Morgan 50 model on the QC is already pretty good. Does anyone have any tips for the closest existing model to the Tone King plugin?

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The Tone King factory captures already on the QC will be the closest; they are just a static picture of the amp which is essentially all that models are comprised of anyway.

Another approach would be to capture any plugin that isn’t available thru PCOM yet; there are already captures on the Cloud of all the cabs and amps in the plugins.

The new 64 Deluxe is very nice along the lines of a clean tone to warm and growly like the Morgan and Toneking. Have not spent much time with the revamped DRRI yet.

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I’m sure noone would mind if you had just said “Be aware ToneKing and other plugins aren’t available on QC yet and there’s no official time frame when it will happen.”

The problem is that you’re derailing yet another thread, which was about transitioning from Fractal to QC, and not your personal story of suffering because you made an uninformed purchase.

No one is calling you stupid, they’re just annoyed because this is completely unproductive and not helpful to anyone.
You made a bad decision. It happens to the best of us. Just get over it.

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Bit the bullet and ordered a QC. Should be here Wednesday. Looking forward to trying it out. I’ll post how I get on.

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Congrats! I think you’ll love it!

For what it is worth, I found it very easy/clear to establish which plugins are currently compatible with the QC and which are slated to be available in the near furture. It’s a shame that the Tone King, Morgan and Mesa models aren’t yet scheduled but I was quickly able to find this info. I certainly did not find myself buying the QC or any plugins on false pretences.

Possibly it’s not always been the case (I know plugin compatibility has been promised for years) but, I think, since 3.0 the messaging has been okay.

Just my experience, YMMV.

Out of curiosity, can you load compatible ‘trial’ plugins onto your QC or only purchased ones?

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Agreed to everything you said. And you make the correct distinction that gets lost so often. It is clear now. But it wasn’t before.
You can’t load trials on the QC. Only purchased ones.

I have all the boxes. I always end up back at the QC.

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Fair point. Still, I think you’re coming across as overly negative and bitter. But you’re not wrong.

Hopefully you will love it.

I’ve not tried anything from Fractal, but I do have an HX Stomp as a backup. Even controls like Sag and Bias are more than I need/want. I played with them once, then have just left them in the default position ever since.

From what I understand, Fractal has even more granular control over extra settings, but that’s just something I have no interest in whatsover. I’ve never taken an amp to a tech and asked for it to be biased a specific way. I just handed him the amp and some tubes and said “make it make noise again please”. :wink:
Some people love that stuff though.

For me the QC is all about great sound, but also the absolute best and fastest UI. It’s about as close to having real pedals/amp as you can get, in terms of being able to tweak a setting on the fly - usually just one/two taps on the screen and then turn a knob.
Gives you more time to concentrate on playing, rather than menu diving.

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Last warning before people are banned. Keep your posts on topic, don’t harass fellow members and try to learn to be productive for our community. Thanks

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QC slated to arrive today. Meanwhile, here’s a rundown of my own obsessive amp modeller experiences :slight_smile:

I started out with a Line6 Helix. Now, I know I’m in the minority here but, I didn’t get on with it. Easy to drive sure but the amp sounds were uniformly just a bit flat and lifeless to me. I found to get anywhere near a good sparkling clean tone, I’d have to run two amps in parallel and then a treble boost with low gain up front. Even then there was a soft/mushy/distant feel to the sound. If I were to guess, I’d say the modeller didn’t really create enough upper harmonics or intermod distortion but, like I say, that’s just a guess.

In the end I sold that and went big on a Kemper Powerhead. I still have a LOT of love for that product. Sure, it had a ‘signature sound’ the pervaded pretty much all the tones it made but, critically, I liked that tone. It was ‘fast’ punchy and did great cleans. Of course, the issues with the user interface are well known and most significantly, it’s a profiler. So, you can’t get too far from the original profile tone before it starts to sound a bit ‘off’ .This got better with liquid profiling but I still spent too much time searching for ‘starter’ profiles for a given tone and not enough time playing.

Next, I took a knee jerk reaction and went for a Boss GT1000. I LOVED this unit. It’s easy to use, built like a tank and the limited amp models meant less options paralysis. More importantly though, to my ear it sounded and ‘felt’ good, WAY better than the Line6 but with most of the advantages of being a modeller rather than a profiler. Used it for months and had a lot of fun. Probably should have kept it but, again on the clean tones, felt I maybe wanted just a bit more realisim.

At this point I nearly bought a QC and then took a hard left and picked up my FM9. Initial reaction was ‘wow, this is great’ but I soon found that I didn’t get on with the mid gain ‘crunch’ tones it produced. The fizz/crackle just seem too pronounced or, somehow, that it is not sufficiently ‘associated’ with the harmonic content. It’s a Fractal though so you can tweak to your heart’s content. About 50% of the models on there can be made to sound ‘as I want them’ but the time investment is huge. As I 've mentioned above, I could get a tone I liked in moments on all the Neural plugins. Not to bash the FM9 though, there are a couple of models in there that are stellar. The bassman is incredible for example. It’s just that you need to do quite a bit of work to get them to ‘sound right’. Naturally, YMMV.

So, I learned something, but probably should have gone straight to the QC. Clearly, I am a fussy sod but the Neural plugins do seem to work for me so I’m hopeful. I also love that the QC can do modelling and captures. I’ll report back.

I must acknowledge though that I seem ot have weird taste in this stuff. Of all the previous gear I’ve owned, it’s the humble Boss GT1000 that I could see myself buyng again and I know it is rarely on the top of anyone elses list.

Ta for all the posts from other users here. The key themes of decent tones and easy usability seem to confirm my experience with the plugins so I feel much more comfortable making the purchase. Cheers everyone.

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The description you have for the Helix models is pretty accurate to how I feel about them as well. I can’t believe how much time I spent tweaking them, only to get a QC and just dial in sounds as if I had the amp in front of me. Not spending a ton of time with a graphic eq, and making micro adjustments to the amp settings constantly.

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I dont, because all Ive been playing is the Soldano X, my goodness what a gem. I know, not helpful, but just wanted to say that.

QC has arrived (in red/gold no less). I only has an hour to play with it (half of which was taken up with updating it to 3.1.0 ) but first impressions are really good.

I’d already bought the Soldano plugin and agree. It’s a belter and super easy to use on the QC. I’m using it with a couple of York Audio IRs which make it even better (proper visceral, chewy tones).

Basslad model is great too.

Only issue I have found is that IR loading is buggy unless my Mac is directly connected to the QC via one of it’s ownUSB ports. Connecting via USB docking station led to IRs failing to load properly somehow.

Need to get my head around work flow and I’ll be golden.

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I did. I still own my ax fx IIi but I use my QC all the time and the axe is barely turned on. It comes down to ease of use, fun factor - I own most of the plugins so being able to mix and match gojira cabs with nameless amps and plini pre-delay makes me more creative. I also enjoy programming on the unit’s touchscreen which is on my desk as opposed to mousing about. Don’t get me wrong I still think fractal has incredible modelling and effects and they are probably a touch better or in the case of effects just better than the the QC but the QC creates just as useable tones in the end. On the flip side if the axe was suddenly in the same form factor as the QC and had a touch screen I think the situation might be reversed for me given the accuracy of their modelling.

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Yeah, as much as I love my Axe III and FM3, whenever I have to make a new preset from scratch, I always have a big sigh and go into it like I’m about to do a 14-hour shift at the plant. With QC, I’m like, “you know what might be fun? Making a new preset from scratch!” For the last few years using Fractal, I would ALWAYS just copy a pre-existing preset over and tweak it to be applicable to a new song. Awesome tones either way, but QC is much more user-friendly.

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I was using an AX8, previously (old tech, I know). I’ve had my QC for a couple of years now. In spite of the QC’s limitations and slow development, I’ve never been this satisfied with my sounds, electric and acoustic. The U.I. makes it easy/fun to create great sounding presets. I recently put together a preset for David Bowie’s Let’s Dance. The preset uses both 1/8th note and dotted 1/8th note delays. Balancing the two delays and getting the right amount of room reverb, octave-above harmonizer and chorus was quick and easy. In spite of all the heavy effects, the preset still sounds clear and articulate. Building the same preset on the AX8, I’m sure I would have been completely frustrated from all the fumble-fingered navigation and lack of clarity. To be fair, I haven’t used any of Fractal’s current processors but I’m sure they’re improved over the AX8. I do somtimes miss Fractal’s vast options, tweakability and superior MIDI capabilities.

Okay, been living with the QC for a week or so and I’m very happy with it.

The Good:

  • Sooo easy to use whether by the device itself or the app on my laptop. The fact that they look and feel the same is a really neat idea. All the other devices I’ve used seemingly see their App as an opportunity to make up for deficiencies in the UI of their unit itself. The QC just gets it right on both. Huge kudos to Neural.

  • The models are really good. Naturally I like some more than others (this stuff is, as discussed, totally subjective) but to my ear they all sound ‘about right’ and are quite distinct from one another. The Victory Kraken for example is just excellent. For me, just the right level of control/adjustability.

  • IR loading. Perhaps one area I’m not as delighted is the cab models (TBF this has been my experience of every modeller/profiler) but the IR loader is trivial to use instead. I have a set of 20 or so IRs that I love and getting those loaded and added to all my presets has been a breeze (shout out to York Audio for their IRs). Being able to add ‘room’ to them is also a super useful feature. Espcially for clean tones.

  • I’ve heard a bit of chat around poorer reverbs and delays on the QC but, to my ear they are fine. Maybe not Strymon good but still perfectly decent and, critically, really easy to dial in. Provided your entire sound is not built around ‘the perfect reverb’, they should do you fine.

  • Captures!!! Okay, I didn’t even factor the captures into my buying decision. As said above, I loved my Kemper’s sound but hated spending too many hours searching for the best profile to start a given preset with. Having limited myself to the library of factory presets, I’m not having that experience with the QC. Again, this stuff is probably the definition of subjective, but somebody involved in creating the factory captures at Neural seems to think amps should sound the same way I think they should sound. As a result most of the amp captures I have tried have been good/great and the realism of the capture seems (to my ear) to be better preserved when tweaking gain etc than I experienced with my Kemper.

  • The drive pedals are very good. To my ear, better than the Fractal. They all sound distinct from eachother and, helpfully, where I have a point of comparison, a lot like the real thing.

The Bad:

  • Really not much to complain about here. Like I say, I don’t love the Cab models but I never seem to get on with those whether it be on the Helix, Fractal or Boss GT1000.

  • A couple more effects like a tape compressor or similar would be nice.

That’s it!

So, in summary, is it as flexible as the Fractal, probably not. Has it hit the sweet spot in terms of useability for me. Absolutely. I can’t believe how much flexibility has, theoretically, been stripped out of the QC vs the Fractal without leaving me feeling like I’m wanting for more.

Plus, on balance I prefer the models on the QC and having even just the factory captures is a total boon.

Plus, probably most importantly, I got the red gold one and it looks ace :slight_smile:

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