Just took delivery of a new Quad Cortex from Andertons in the UK and enjoyed the unboxing experience… Until I touched the metal footswitches/pots. The first thing I noticed was that there seemed to be excessive ‘wiggle’ (up, down, left and right) possible on all of the pots. It seemed odd but maybe that’s by design… Then I turned the first pot and thought, this can’t be right. I was met with an extremely annoying squeaking sound. High pitched metal on metal grinding/squeaking. This is on all the pots (some worse than others). It feels like any ‘lubrication’ that should be part of the pot is missing. Has any one else experienced this? (I can’t imagine life editing the unit and having to listen to that on every pot turn.) I’ve raised a support ticket with Neural but haven’t had a response yet… I’d like to find out from fellow owners if I have a dud so that I can arrange a return, or if this is normal. Thanks!
I can confirm the ‘wiggle’ on my unit as well, but I guess this kind of clearance is by design and nothing to worry about. I don’t hear any noise when turning the switches apart from the expected sound due to the pots being notched. But it’s far from being noisy and in no way squeaking. When I press the switches down, they tend to make a grinding sound due to the fixed part and the moving part rubbing against each other and having a matt finish. As far as I remember, the switches were advertised to be made of stainless steel, so I’m not concerned about the grinding.
Do you have a video of your switches making the strange noise?
Thanks for the quick response 2342. Everything you describe I would consider normal behaviour, but it seems that you don’t have this grinding/squeaking noise when rotating the pots like I do.
I do have a short video which I’ve already sent to Neural and Andertons. (Andertons haven’t seen this issue before) Is there a way to attach it to a post in this forum? I can’t see any option to do so.
There is an “upload” button in the editing section when writing a new post/reply. I don’t know if it accepts videos, however. Alternatively you could upload it to any cloud storage like dropbox, google drive, icloud drive, etc. and then include a public link to it in your post.
Thanks again 2342… I’m unable to upload a video file on this forum, but I’ve created a Google Drive link where you should be able get it:
(It’s a MOV file taken with my iPhone)
Mine don’t produce such noise ! There’s definitively something wrong with this unit …
But the fact that the pots ‘wiggle’ is normal.
Thanks for the video. To me it sounds like a spring scratching on its support. I don’t hear any similar noise on any of my knobs.
EDIT: here’s an example of my unit
Thanks BenM and 2342…You’ve both helped me decide to return the unit which I’ve just arranged to do. I had to decide on a replacement or a refund and I went for the refund. As it’s all of the knobs doing this, I can’t believe that I just got an unlucky ‘one off’ bad unit. I’ll probably wait a month or so and buy again.(From a new batch). Thanks for your help on this one!
If anybody else has this issue I thought that it’s best for me to add to this thread the response which I’ve just received from the support team at Neural.
They wrote: “Please, do not open the unit, it will void its warranty. Like any other similar devices, spray contact cleaners are very safe options. Feel free to keep us in the loop!”
Personally, I wouldn’t feel confident in doing this on such a high price item , especially when it seems that no one else has this issue (Andertons had never heard of it before). This official response leaves me worried about Neural’s quality control and I’m hesitant about buying another unit down the line. Maybe my loss, I know.
Although my post comes a bit late, I actually do have a similar issue with two of the switches. They make a similar noise when turned.
I did not apply sprays to them, but then the noise is also not really a problem for me.
True, but having the official hint from support, you could even try it for the sake of experimentation and return it nevertheless.
Probably the final update from me here as my Quad Cortex has just been collected by the courierr company for a refund…
I received another response from Neural support. Part of it said: “Indeed, this is not supposed to produce this noise, this is why we suggested you to try using contact cleaner.”
I wish they would’ve admitted that in the first place. I then would’ve felt that they had my back as a customer and not just told me to ‘spray it’ without admitting that the noise isn’t ‘normal’.
Off to make some music…. (With my Kemper).
I think we’re still in an early stage in terms of shipped units and QC users in the wild. At least with NDSP compared to other companies who already released several iterations and different models of their products. It’s kind of to be expected for the support to build up expertise over time and to troubleshoot problems more effectively when issues occur more often. In some sense it could be a good sign for the product when they’re not bombarded by the same issue every day.
Obviously I don’t know the whole conversation between you and the Neural Support. But judging from what you wrote here, they did a pretty good job.
You complained (rightfully so!) that the knobs were making weird sounds, to which Neural replied with “try using contact spray.” That makes a whole lot of sense because it could easily solve the issue. They also wrote: "Feel free to keep us in the loop!”, which means they cared.
Then you decided that you don’t wanna do this because it would be too risky. I don’t really get that, because that is what the support told you to do. Anyway, you didn’t have to and so they gave you both options to either return or refund the unit. Not sure what else a support could or should have done better.
Your logic that you don’t trust the quality control doesn’t make sense though. Because if you are indeed the only one who had this issue so far, then that means the quality control is damn good, right? 
By the way, I am not trying to cover up for Neural. I had a unit replaced for other reasons and also had some ongoing discussion with the support. So my personal is experience with the Neural support has been both very good as well as bad at times.
Hi 747. I appreciate your feedback but it contains many inaccuracies. I’m not going to write a long post explaining the details but in short this is what happened: I (correctly) believed my unit to be faulty and reached out (not complained) to Neural support. They didn’t answer so I came here for help. Thanks to a couple of other members I got the confirmation that my unit was faulty. I asked Andertons for a refund and that was arranged. Highly recommend them as a company. Then Neural responded, and I thought it would be helpful to other people (who may have the same issue, and search the internet for an answer) if I posted the first response (use contact spray) and then post an update with the second (it isn’t normal to have this issue).
I never came here to criticise or bash anyone, just to ask for help and then to ‘pay it back’.
As you can see from Andyjcp’s post I’m not the only person with this issue on their QC. I just decided that I wasn’t happy to live with it.
Yes, I didn’t think so either. Just wanted to show you and others another perspective.
That’s the spirit!
Just fyi:
I tried a little contact spray and the noise has gone.
And Quad Cortex is still working : 