I’m new to Quad Cortex so my questions might be silly, but gonna ask them anyways
I just picked up the Quad Cortex a few days back (its currently being shipped down to me) and wanted to add a few external pedals to it namely - Mission Engineering SP1-ND, Strymon Timeline and Strymon Bigsky.
My questions here is on what power supply would best suit for the job and if I require to use only TRS cables for connecting the external pedals to the QC. I checked around and found that the QC takes in 12V and 3 Amps. Not sure if there are any specific power bricks that would support it directly along with providing power supply for the other 2 Strymon pedals (without having to combine multiple 9V/12V outs from the power brick). Anyone here added more pedals to the QC and found a power brick I could use?
Also, I do realize that the SP-1ND requires a TRS cable, but would that be the case for the other 2 Strymon pedals as well? If yes, which company’s TRS cables would you guys recommend (tried and tested of course )
One power supply that works for me and reportedly for others is CIOKS DC7. A little on the pricey side, but great quality and very compact.
You have 2 options here.
Use 4 combined 12V outputs (2A) via parallel adapters. Then you have 3 more outputs with 9/12/15/18V to power other pedals.
Purchase an additional CIOKS Crux, connect it to the DC7 to have a Single 12V/2A output and still have all 7 variable outputs of the DC7 left.
I personnaly use option 1. and apart from looking a little strange, it works flawlessly. Option 2 is obviously more expensive but a little more tidy.
The Strymon pedals need 300mA each and the DC7 9V outputs deliver 660mA. So you could either power both on one input (with splitter/daisy chain) or use one output for each. Which leaves you with 1-2 outputs left for option 1 and 5-6 for option 2.
I don’t own any of the Strymon pedals but from the specs it seems they have unbalanced L/R inputs and outputs. So you should just use TS cables.
I think option 1 is the more practical and pocket friendly one. Finding the parallel adapters might be a challenge though.
For the Strymon cables so you’re saying I can just use normal patch cables to link them to the QC? I thought the QC only accepted TRS cables for expression pedals and FX. Sorry if thats a stupid question again XD
The connections for the Expression pedal are not audio connections. They are just used to transmit the pedal position and switch signals. In other words: Your sound doesn’t go throught the expression pedal.
The inputs and outputs on the QC support TRS to have a balanced signal, but that won’t work if the other side doesn’t support TRS. In that case you should just use a normal patch cable (TS).
Strymon also recommends using a mono TS cable in their FAQ:
