Help Needed: Combining High Gain and Clean Sounds in a Single Preset

[anihilus]

I’m trying to create a preset that includes both high gain and clean sounds. The problem is that when I use a high gain amp and turn down the gain, it doesn’t become clean. There’s still some distortion. The only workaround I can think of is to use separate amps. This is very cumbersome because I need to assign footswitches to scenes, ensuring that the signal to the high gain amp is turned down when the signal to the clean amp is turned up, and vice versa. Does anyone have a better solution or any tips?

I’m also struggling to have enough blocks for all the effects I need. I’ve found a sort of workaround with loops, but I have to set a volume pedal to 0 to stop the signal and instead route it through the loop.

Can anyone help me, or is there really no easier way to do this?

[DiffractionCircuit]

The way you have things set up in your preset example, it’s definitely not necessary to send your guitar signal to Row 1 and Row 3 separately.

You could set it up like this:
Input 1 → Row 1 → OD block → Clean amp block → High gain amp block → Cab block → Multi-out

^^^ Here you can simply use Scenes to switch which amp block you want on. I do it this way and it works great.

This method also frees up Rows 3 & 4, so you can route your signal down there and do more of what you want with effects after the Cab block, for example.

[onesecondglance]

If you want to go from true clean to high gain without pressing a footswitch… well, I can’t think of any “real” amp where that would be possible so I’m just going to assume you want to do this with a single footswitch press rather than lots.

Scenes are your friend here - I’ll show you my approach below. Apologies for the poor quality photos, the QC screen is very reflective and after taking them I realised the back of my phone was mirroring onto it !

This is one preset for one song (next song in the setlist - next preset). Scene A is a clean tone with some time FX - so amp, cap and EQ along row 1, down to row 3 where it splits to an FX chain on row 4, then merge back to the multi out on row 3. The freeze in the middle of the FX chain is just for special effects fun

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Scene B keeps the basic clean tone and adds in different FX. Because the CPU hungry time FX are on rows 3/4 and the also-CPU hungry amps are on rows 1/2, there is plenty of spare processing power. This preset is only 45% CPU and I’ve been pretty lazy with it - you could make it more efficient by combining some blocks.

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Now for scenes C and D, which are distortion tones:

See the split directly after the noise gate on row 1? This is in A/B mode. You can assign different splitter levels for different scenes just like enabling or disabling device blocks. So when I’m in scenes A+B, the splitter sends 100% level to row 1 and 0% level to row 2. For scenes C+D, it’s 100% to row 2 and 0% to row 1.

So there’s now no signal going through the clean amp/cab/EQ on row 1 - only through the distortion chain on row 2. I bypass the blocks on row 1 anyway - there’s no signal going to them, so it wouldn’t make any difference - as it helps me see what’s going on.

Again, just as with the clean tone, there’s plenty of CPU free on rows 3/4 to add time FX for this lead tone. The gain block just before the split also lets me add an extra volume boost - that’s by assigning the gain level in that block to the scene. I have other presets where I even change the amp settings and EQ for the lead tone, all managed again through scenes.

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Probably the craziest preset I have is for a song that requires an acoustic tone, a synth pad, a “regular” distortion, and that same distortion with a different synth pad playing in harmony:

That’s 74% CPU and took some working out how to fit it (and some compromises) - but it goes to show just how much you can cram in to a single preset.

…

TLDR: take advantage of being able to set levels on blocks per scene, including/especially splitter levels.

[xush]

just a sidenote here- those pics aren’t bad, but what I’ve been doing lately is taking screenshots from Cortex Control and uploading those.

[anihilus]

Thank you guys! Your posts are really helping me understand the Quad better! This was exactly the info I needed!

[anihilus]

I might as well ask you one more question.
I only have 1 expression pedal. I use this as a volume pedal. Is it possible to assign this to scenes? So that I can use it as a wha pedal on one scene and as voulm on another scene?

[xush]

yes.
Does it have a toe-switch?
If not, and it’s a single XP- assign it to the fx blocks you want, but do not use ‘auto-engage’ to activate the wah. You must link the Bypass of each effect to Scene Assignments.

The XP will remain assigned to all the blocks simultaneously, but the Scenes will turn the various blocks on or off.
If you have a Dual XP w/ a toe-switch, you could assign the switch to toggle between fx instead of assigning the Bypass to Scenes. Can’t do both though, one overrides the other (same with auto-engage)

[anihilus]

Thank you for your reply!
Yes, I have a single XP without a switch.
It now works as a volume pedal on all scenes except H. On this scene it works as a wha. But whenever I go to scene H, the wha is engaged by default. I would like it to be in an OFF state when I go to this scene, and I want it to be activated by me “turning” the XP. Are you saying that this is not possible? Do I need an XP with a toe switch to make this happen?

[xush]

You don’t need a switch, but you can’t assign the Bypass of the wah to the pedal- that will override the Scene bypass setting. That way the wah will turn on when you switch to that scene, and stay off in other scenes (or vice versa).
You must assign the bypass to the Scene by long-pressing the bypass button.

I have a template preset built for this if you’d like a link to it

[anihilus]

A link would have been great!

[xush]

sorry, got distracted.
I misremembered- it’s actually a wah and whammy combo, but the same settings apply if you substitute the Vol block for the whammy.
If this doesn’t help, I’ll make a new one w/ wah and vol only:

Neural DSP Technologies - Algorithmically Perfect

[anihilus]

I manage to turn the bypass on and off in different scenes. But this does not really help me much. I need the wha to be in an “OFF” state when I switch to my lead guitar scene, and than for the wha to be turned on whenever I am using the EXP. For this to happen I need the bypass switch to be set to “stop”. And as far as I can see, that is just not possible.
I tried your preset, but it is the same problem there.

[xush]

As long as you’re assigning the XP to the BYPASS of the wah, it will ALWAYS be on. You can’t have a Scene where it’s off if the XP position is activating it. You can’t use auto-engage in any of my examples.
If you HAVE to use the auto-engage it’s probably better to have a separate XP for only the wah

[anihilus]

I see. OK, thank you very much for your help!
If I had an exp pedal with a toe switch, could it be done with only one pedal? So that I switch on the wha sing the toe switch?

[xush]

Yes, that’s what i do. Only issue there is you have to go thru the full sweep of the pedal to get to it.
The alternative is to use a separate switch (no pedal needed) as XP 2

Sorry we couldn’t make that work.
There might be a Feature Request for independent Scene XP assignments, a lot of people want that and like you said other modelers can do it.

[MrDinsdale]

I’m new to the QC but this is how I’ve been doing it:

I have row 1 and 2 for common fx for both channels. 3 is my clean, 4 is the dirty channel. I just set the outputs of 3/4 to muted/unmuted per scene which works great.