I’m rather new to the Quad Cortex. Just got the unit a few weeks ago. Still checking out the excellent presets on Cortex Cloud. How does this look for an early EVH Brown sound? Have yet to try it.
Use an EP Booster instead of a tube screamer. I don’t there is a model of that in the QC but you can find a capture of one.
I have not found an amp model that sounds close and I don’t think the Master reacts like you think it does, (making the EL34s work harder). So again, try a capture. The way most people seem to dial in the amp is everything on 10 but dial back the bass to like 4 and turn the presence down too. All to taste.
For the delay, I prefer a digital delay if you use it after the amp. Just sounds cleaner. Delay time at 228 ms is what will get you close to the Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love and Atomic Punk slap. Feedback on zero and mix at 40-60% to taste. Cut the highs. If you put the delay in front of the amp, then use an Analog or Tape delay with similar settings.
On the reverb there is a lot of it on the first few albums. I would go with a decay around 3 seconds, Mix at least 20%, and pre-delay is key. Set that to about 60-80ms. It takes it out of the way of the attack of the guitar.
One big part of VH1 and 2 is hard-panning the reverb. I’d probably go as far as use the splitter/mixer set to stereo split, and only put the reverb on one side.
And even though I love the digital delays on the QC, on this particular instance I’d probably go for the tape delay. And if you’re looking for Fair Warning tones, add a touch of MicroPitch.
And of course, the modulations, the sims in the QC are spot on for EVH.
As a side note, using the SLO100-X plugin, the aforementioned Micropitch, Circular Delay and the newer Studio Plate Reverb (that emulates the Lexicon PCM70), you can totally nail F.U.C.K. era EVH (it also works very well for Kingdom of Desire Lukather by the way, with slightly different settings).
If one is going for a good 1984 tone there’s some slight detune used by EVH on that album as well? Not a lot though. Nothing compared to his setup later with Balance and F.U.C.K. I think that goes for gain as well. EVH really started increasing the gain much later.
There’s definitely some pitch detune on Fair Warning, and I’ve seen some say there’s some as early as on VH2.
And yeah, gain definitely goes up over time, as does the detune, which culminates on Balance…sounds unbelievably good though, 30 years later I still haven’t gotten over that first listen of Don’t Tell (What Love Can Do).
I dialed in the settings into the QC as close as I could from my original post above. I need to try it out though and see how accurate I think it is. How would I post the preset I made from the above settings here on the forum when I think it’s complete so I can possibly get people’s opinions and/or suggestions?
If you want to share links to your presets, you first have to upload them to the Cloud from either the QC or Cortex Control (aka CoCo), then go to the Cloud portal, go to your profile and set the preset to public, then you get a share link you can copy paste:
The good thing with EVH’s first rig is, it’s very well documented, so what I’d do is simply reproduce the whole chain (including the graphic EQs) in the QC.
If you can’t get the Plexi sims to sound the way you want, maybe grab one of the many Suhr SL67 or Friedman Plex captures that are available on the Cloud, chances are you’ll be able to find something that works for you.
