… still very much honeymoon and all, but I’m so far very impressed by the sound & feel.
I’ve used various Fractals over the years, as well as Kemper, extensively both live and in the studio. I also have been through a hell of a lot of amps (all the usual suspects, boutique and not), and still have a few goodies still that I plan to capture (Friedmans, Wizard, and an incredibly great sounding Cornford MK2).
I currently also own an FM9. The FM9 is really good, and some will be drawn to that concept. But I think there’s something with the Neural approach that appeals to me and what I expect from an amp. I perceive it as ‘better’ or ‘more correct’ in terms of both how it sounds and feels, others may not. The Plexis in the QC just has ‘it’ compared with the FM9, in my opinion. My meat and potatoes are Marshall-type tones, and boy do the QC have that in spades!
Looking forward to bringing this to a gig tonight, need to go back and set up a patch (must find out how to split the signal before the cab so I can use it with a power amp and cab on stage).
Nice return, I recieved it few days ago and digging just a little.
For the moment I’m struggling with levels cause I want to use it as my main soundcard too (also for gigging).
I’m a Kemper user but I don’t want to keep both units, was hoping the QC to kill the Kemper but the Kemper is obviously more mature. For me the QC have to improve a lot but I’m confident when you see the power of this untit, if there are not hardware conceptions issues of course.
For me they have to make a lot of updates with many new things like kemper did or to make a video game analogy, it will be the Sega Dreamcast of modelers…
Question, don’t you find it very noisy ? Compared to the kemper, it is for me, the noise gates are way less good than the kemper one and there are some kind of white noise added to the guitar sounds sometimes.
need a few more details to diagnose noise;
how are you monitoring it? Noise on high-gain tones mostly, or across the board?
Anything else plugged into the unit? What guitar/p’ups are you using? Have you balanced your I/O settings for that particular guitar’s gain staging?
as a general observation, some of the amp models or captures can produce a bit of hiss at higher levels just like the actual physical amps would.
Nice! I also just got a QC after a couple years trying everything. 2 Helixes, 2 Kemper Stages, 3 Fractal FM3s, and most recently an FM9.
For me, the QC is a good balance. Core amp and cab sounds are amazing. FX are limited but good, and the UX is just so much better than everything but Helix. Took me about 30 seconds to build a preset from scratch that sounded just like I wanted it to.
I liked the Kemper Stage hardware and was all about it in the studio, but I didn’t like it in a live band situation. I found the performance mode to be really weird in practice, with the whole 5 rig slots and separate pedals within those rigs. And the whole browse through 80000000000000000000 rigs to find the perfect match thing got really old really fast. I wish they would have a nicely curated list of factory captured rigs that included all the standard, well known amps. Instead, the unit ships with a hodge podge of rigs from different contributors that vary wildly in quality. If you want the best tones, you have to buy more, which is annoying after just dropping $1700 on the unit itself
Helix has a fantastic user interface, and to me, is the best mix of programming flexibility and easy to use default settings. FX are great, amps and cabs are kinda terrible
Fractal is a fucking nightmare to use. I’d rather make spreadsheets than build presets and tweak tones on Fractal products. Their default cabs aren’t good either, so I had to use 3rd party IRs. I don’t understand how anyone enjoys using a Fractal product.
I’m stoked for the QC’s future, and all the things on the roadmap.
yeah, browsing through rigs on the Kemper was a nightmare. But I used my own profiled amps on the Kemper, which is what I intend to do on the QC as well, although a couple of the stock modeled amps are really great (Plexi 50 jumped, the 2203 and the Friedmans, for example). I find the Fractal FM9 a huge step forward from the previous generation, though, both the amp sims and the cabs. But at the moment, comparing it with the amps in the QC that I gravitate towards (Marshall-ish amps), the QC’s amps win IMHO. The Fractal amps sound good, but in an engineered kind of way. A capture seems to grab more of the stuff in an amp that kind of rattles, scratches sings along when you play, which I struggle to find in the more polished Axe-FX. That’s how I hear it now, anyway, comparing the units directly. Some like that, some don’t.
But I really hope they put in the effort and keep updating the QC at a faster pace. There’s a lot missing compared with the competition.
Agree with you on Fractal. The sounds are in there …but it was a MASSIVE tweek-fest. I owned an Axe II, Axe III, AX8 and FM3. I could get all of them sounding decent …eventually.
I love the QC, because it is simple but powerful. QC is like having a toolbox with all of the tools you need - nothing you don’t. Fractal is like walking up and down the aisles of Home Depot - looking for what you want.
Welcome welcome y’all! I just got my QC a few weeks ago and am impressed too. Sure it’s got some maturing and development to go but it does a lot very very well. Its sounds are on par with any modeler out there IMO and I’m confident more options and upgrades to its models & FX will address many users’ feedback. The form factor alone makes it a joy to work with.
I also agree, the Marshalls on this thing sound sick. I also really enjoy the other high gain models and the captures offer almost infinite possibilities.
Today is Smallbox profiling day. Have made a couple of DI profiles using the two notes captor 8, and it sounds great! I remember from my Kemper years that using your own profiles is really where it’s at. At least for me.
I never got that far with the AFX III really. I didn’t want to use the software - I write code for a living so I’d really rather not be tied to a desktop or laptop for playing my guitar. The less said about the hardware UI, the better. I wasn’t going to get into that. Some of the presets are very good, so I just used them.
We all know that if you’re familiar with real tube amps and pedals, the Quad Cortex simply requires that you’re comfortable with a smartphone like interface. Skim through the user manual once and go. I’m old, I know what knobs to turn.
Really, I’m not saying anything bad about the sound of the Fractal stuff - it’s endorsed by some big names and it does indeed sound good. For me though, it’s really just not nearly as enjoyable as the QC. The ability to knock together a preset in moments with a little drag and drop and no USB connection, that’s brilliant. It gets me back to playing quickly, which is really the point.
