I just received my Quad Cortex today, and I’m honestly a little bit sad. I don’t know if I just don’t know how to operate the quad yet, but I have been stuck for the last hour and a half just trying to get a decent, clean tone.
It distorts almost immediately, when I just try to run a blank preset.
Steps to reproduce your issue:
Step 1: Create a blank preset
Step 2: Plug in bass
Step 3: Cry
I expected this to happen:
When I do just plugged in my bass without a preset, I really expected it to sound the same as plugging my bass directly into the amp.
I have tried the following things:
I’ve tested the cables and the amp, no issues there.
I’ve also tried to fiddle with the input gain in the I/O menu and on the row in the grid.
I’ve tried to change the impediance
Do you guys have any suggestions? Is it a faulty product? Does it suck? Please help me <3
First: What is your listening environment? At home at low volume (FRFR studio monitors), FOH system at high volume, running into a power amp + cab, etc.?
Since you’re saying your bass distorts immediately, what kind of bass is it? Does it have hot active (up to +18V) pickups? What kind of levels are you getting with the input gain on the I/O screen?
My listening environment is an Aguilar Tone Hammer 350 and an EBS Cabinet.
I tried a lot of different stuff for the input levels - I changed it in the input in the grid and I also tried changing it in the I/O menu.
I’ve tried to add a compressor (the opto comp mono as the only block in the chain) while having the output at -20 dB and the input at -6 dB.
The levels at the input gain were quite different through the different set-ups. Do you have any recommendations for what I could try? Then I can get back to you with specific numbers.
The distortion sounds digital to my ears. I was able to get a somewhat clean tone if I played with a very soft attack.
I tried switching out the cables, I tried to bypass the quad cortex and go straight into the amp.
The bass is a Sandberg California VT4 with Delano pickups (p/j). I don’t know much about pickup voltage - do you need any other info?
I had the bass in its passive mode, I don’t know if that makes a difference.
Your amp is design for a guitar signal, not a (much hotter) line-level signal. That’s not to say that you can’t reduce the output frm the QC enough to make it work. If your amp has an effects loop, you might try running into the FX return.
Yeah, I tried turning down the output from the QC in as many ways as I could think of - through the IO section, with the big knob, with gainstaging each preset, but I couldn’t really get it to work.
I guess I just kept on fiddling the settings, and it works now.