Help me fall in love with the QC?

Quad Cortex
1

Hey. I’m a QC owner. It’s a great unit. I like how easy to use it is. Stereo settings are great, especially through headphones. I like being able to download presets from the cloud and use scenes to skip through things like SRV, hendrix, andy timmons, EVH songs. That’s quite fun. I don’t own any of the archetypes for the QC. But there’s endless sounds from the cloud. Tried a bunch of cool amp captures that in the whole sound quite good.

My honest thought though, im not sure I love it - and I really want to. (Least of all because of the money I’ve spent on it). I find it hard to find ‘outstanding’ tones on it. I think, in my opinion, all the amps are super solid 8/10, the reverbs are OK, lots of the overdrives are fine (the fuzz options are poor), high gain stuff is good, delays are fine. I think the modulation stuff is poor. I genuinely enjoy some of the icicle and ambient presets. But I’m never sure how I’d use them in a live setting? Partly due to the latency and switching between presets (which i find really annoying)

Here’s my issue, having owned an iridium and pedalboard before, I find it hard on the QC to find a signature sound. It just doesn’t draw me in at the moment for hours of play. The novelty does! But I’m stuck at the moment never feeling truly wowed and not able to find my own sound! Almost the variety of options might be the killer? I also don’t think I’ve found anything that’s blown me away.

I really want to love the QC. Any advice? Do I need to go for a few of the archetypes to press on from the ‘good’ to ‘great’ tones. Are there certain pedals/fuzzes/modulation that just ‘works’? Or is it’s beauty in the jack-of-all-trades master of non vibe?

2

For me the 10/10 moments came with some good captures (you can try amalgamaudio or others) and now with the plugin amps.

You could, for example try the trial versions on PC/Mac. If you find the sound you are looking for, purchase the plugin and have it on your QC. (Just check which ones are compatible of course)

3 Likes
3

I think you’ve discovered the ‘my sound’ factor- plenty of users say the presets don’t sound the same in influencer videos as on their own QC. That’s because we’re all using different rigs; gear, signal path, monitoring, etc.

It’s hard to tell someone how to make it better on their specific setup, but there are some general ideas you could try:

if you can give us some touchstones maybe- what kind of tones, etc, are you going for? Help us narrow down what sounds you gravitate toward.

Also, what does your rig consist of other than the QC? How are you monitoring it?