I’m tryina do something crazy. I was thinking of sending my quad cortex plus a seymour duncan powerstage to a custom fabricator to convert them both into a rack mounted amp modeler/amp head kind of like the axe fx and keepers depending on what they can do. This will probably be the first one ever turned into a fully raci mounted quad cortex. It’ll include the powerstage in it incase i wanted to use it for cabs and will still have the same outputs and screen and everything from quad cortex. I’ve been wanting to do it for a while but never got the chance to start planning it. Any ideas on the front design? I will have all the outputs and inputs of both the quad cortex and powerstage in the back of it out of sight so those won’t matter. I was going to put the screen on the front, as well as the power, and volume knobs for both the powerstage and quad cortex, and however many knobs would fit in the rest of the 2U/3U size. The rest would go in a foot switch or midi controller.
Sounds like a brave endevor. I think the screen will require you to go with at least a 3U case. Since you will have to control it from a separate MIDI controller, what do you hope to gain with this project?
I respect the idea and trying a new thing with the QC, but there’s definitely a reason why no one has done it before haha. I would just suggest a rack drawer to mount the QC in if you’re so set on rack mounting it. I can’t see any sort of upside to this approach…..
I’m sure there will be a bunch of technical difficulties getting the QC to work properly from ripping the whole thing apart. Those things are already kinda finicky, so I can’t even imagine what they’ll be like when someone breaks it apart and shifts stuff around with the boards, etc.
You’ll also be super limited in what midi footswitches can do with the QC + would be concerned about the midi cable length. They aren’t supposed to be super long.
The devices you’re trying to replicate have specific rack mount versions (Kemper, Helix, Fractal) and were engineered for that. Plus their footswitches are proprietary connections usually so everything will sync properly on the board. Midi footswitches are much more limited.
I’m sure this will look interesting, but you’ll probably spend a couple grand on hacking up the QC for an Instagram post.
Electrical engineer here. The drawbacks FAR outweigh the benefits of going full chop shop on both the QC and the PowerStage.
High risk of damage to the QC circuit board, screen, and other components when disassembling and reassembling into a new enclosure. Legitimate risk of electric shock from the PowerStage circuitry being exposed and rewired.
Every single solder connection from a switch or a jack to the circuit board would have to be individually re-soldered to accommodate new wire to stretch that switch or jack to a longer distance than it was originally intended to be.
This caught my eye:
You can’t run the switches (knobs) over long cable distances to a foot controller like that and expect it to work. DC voltage in those lines will drop, which will cause wonky behavior at best and complete malfunction at worst.
Please please pleeeeeease don’t attempt this.
I echo the sentiments of others here, what you’re trying to accomplish can be done by simply placing the QC in a rack drawer and controlling it from there with MIDI.
Whatever midi footswitch you end up using will probably be comparable in size to the QC, and you’ll have no screen, more stuff to carry, etc. I don’t see any sort of upside…..