MrDinsdale

Pushed some captures up of my Shiftline Olympic mk3 preamp. Been playing with these quite a bit and am pretty happy with them. They're virtually indistinguishable from the real thing and take drives really nicely. https://cloud.neuraldsp.com/cloud/u/MrDinsdale/neural_capture I particularly like the "SLO - Clank - Mid" capture. It has the top-end boost engaged and a little hair, which sounds great with a pick.

Sorry typo, I meant the Cali76 and Black Math are the 2 I couldn't replicate 😂

So far, though, the Black Math and Cali76 are the 2 pedals I could replicate on the device via captures or onboard models. This is a first for me. I never got close on a GT1000/HX no matter how much EQ and parallel processing I tried.

I've been having a play with running some drives into the QC fx loop (before the Science Mother). Most of these can easily be swapped for captures, I've already got a couple captured reasonably well. The Black Math is a spluttery monster of a fuzz and probably won't capture well. Is anyone using a fuzz in the fx loop or up front of the QC? I've dipped the send level to -4.5db for unity gain, which made the pedals instantly respond in a more predictable way.

These sound great. I love the demo stuff I've heard. This and the new Eae Prismic Wall fall into the “stuff I desperately want to play with but have no idea what I'd do with it” category.

What does it do?! Looks great!

Had the QC a few days now and had a bit of time to dig in. I'm really impressed with the amp models, so far better than any others I've tried. There are a bunch of excellent captures for stuff like the Nobel pre, too. The drives are great, although they need some more. The modulations and other effects are great, but we need more variety. For me, given that I'm mostly interested in amps and drives though its perfect.

I’m not sure it’s a different direction to a typical user, just a different direction to some people here. I know plenty of people who’re all about having everything in one unit and totally get it. I’m just far too picky about my drive and preamp tones, so far only the QC has gotten close but the compressors ain’t great so I want to have my Cali on there. Built in PSU/IEC isn’t a big for me, even if I had a big floor unit I’d probably have it on a pedalboard with a patchbay so I wasn’t plugging/unplugging it all the time. If anything having something I can power with the Cioks 7 is a bigger selling point.

Aye, I've not found one that does everything perfectly. My findings so far: QC absolutely nails the amps, cabs and drives, IMO better than either the HX or GT. That's before you factor in captures etc. It really falls short of the other 2 for modulation and delay options. The GT offers up some solid Boss classics along with a bunch of other classics. Still, it's mostly straightforward stuff you'd expect, and their ecosystem of supporting software and release cadence is pretty underwhelming. HX offers way more stuff and a better community and update cycle. I think they have some cool boutique-esq stuff in there, too, besides the more predictable offerings, which would take a lot of faffing to emulate on a GT or QC. I wasn't impressed with the amps or drives except for a couple, which were fine. The DSP power of the stomp is the biggest detractor. It's all incredibly subjective, at the end of the day, and what is a good or acceptable sound will differ wildly between individuals based on their preferences, the kind of music they play, and their willingness to compromise. For me, if I had to pick one or if I had to use it in isolation without any external pedals, it'd be the same order: Quad Cortex GT1000core HX Stomp Fractal looks incredible despite the minimal bass offering, but it is way out of my acceptable price range.

It's less the cost of the Floor which I dislike, but the footprint; the same goes for the full GT1000. I love the Stomp/GT1000core profile and the ability to integrate with other pedals, I'd pay more for a Stomp with a more modern chipset with the power of the Floor. When I tried the Stomp, I hit DSP issues quickly, especially once I started doing any parallel processing, which was a huge disappointment. This was far less the case with the GT1000core which, for me, made it far more worthwhile. I could use the GT1000core by itself happily if I wasn't so picky about some of the drive tones, I don't think the Stomp would get me through without supplementing with a preamp and drive or two. Both are cool units, but both carry some caveats.

Well, I'm having a minor crisis as I think I liked the Hiwatt amp model more than the SLOmk3, which was my holy grail of preamps. Gonna have to do more AB comparisons, but it's forces me to re-evaluate and possibly have a switch up of what goes on the board with the QC.

Aye chaining should be good. There's definitely little things I'm noticing that seems crazy not to have in there, like having preset input levels for different instruments. Nothing seems like a major issue so far, and it is all easy to work around. I'm really surprised how good the amp models sound, particularly Hiwatt. I'm not surprised. I like it as the Science Mother is based on a Hiwatt, which I also love. Had another hour to play around and got a nice basic guitar and bass rig going. It sounds excellent and is already gonna resolve a few recording issues I was having with my 2i2 and reamping etc.

I just downloaded a few presets. It was great to find all the captures and presets I'd found while waiting for it to be delivered waiting for me. I've had an hour on it: I absolutely love their Hiwatt 103 bass amp model, it sounds excellent. The interface is super intuitive, haven't read the manual yet and haven't hit any issues. After a quick play with the drives, they seem pretty decent so far and even enjoy the DG drives. Cab simulations seem solid. Compressors seem passable, better than HX but not as good as GT1000 IMO. I'll be keeping the Cali76. Set up Cortex Control on my Mac. I managed to do a few captures of my Science Mother preamp pedal. It's so easy, and I'd say they're about 98% there but the real test will be how they handle being pushed. All in all, a pretty impressive amount was achieved within a short space of time! Excited to really get stuck in!

Gonna have some fun with this 👌

If you have no interest in replicating the sound of any specific effects or amps and are completely happy with the built-in effects on your current modeller, I'm not really sure what you were hoping it would give you? I've spoken to plenty of people who were perfectly happy with the sounds they were getting from their modeller of choice. I really didn't get there with the GT1000 or HX, certainly nothing that came close to my pedals, so capturing them is a perfect way to scale down for me with minimal sacrifice.

Well, I just plugged it in, and straight out of the box it sounded great on guitar, much better stock sounds than any of the other modellers I've tried. I'll hopefully get some time to get properly stuck in and make some presets and explore some of the community presets and captures later on 🙌 First impressions are solid though.

I'm not planning on selling off my pedals, I use the same across guitar and bass, so having captures of the settings I need for each is a huge time saver. Not to mention cheaper to replace! I know with AIDA I’d have a low, mid, and high gain, for example. The built-in gain and EQ parameters were sufficient for any extra fine tuning. My low gain Capo capture actually sounded great with higher gain applied in the plugin. It's not the same character as the real thing but surprisingly close.

They're great; although you might be able to get similar results with the Infinity via an eq block.

It's still related to the input signal. There are no trails or repeats etc.

Yeah, I've done some captures on the MOD Dwarf. It worked great with overdrivess and distortion pedals, great for preamps like the Capo. Really struggled with stuff like fuzz pedals once they start getting into the spluttery territory or where you start getting heavy compression. The AIDA-x models are much smaller than the neural ones, I believe.

Well, I caved and grabbed one. It ended up being £850 2nd hand with some discounts through work schemes, etc, so it was hard to turn down! I think it's the captures that sell me on it. The HX stuff seems good for fx, but the drives I just couldn't get onboard with. If I can capture my fave drives and get like 90% there, I'd be sorted. I've seen there are already some pretty solid captures of most my favourite pedals already have captures uploaded, which are apparently super close. If anyone has any good patches, send over your usernames for the cortex cloud. It'd be a handy starting point 👌

Never had a V1 but really enjoying the V2 after an hour of fiddling. I loved the Lusithand Alma before eventually selling it on and making do with GT1000core built in comps. When I sold that too it left a sizeable gap for compression, I think this is a keeper though.

Another day, another pedalboard iteration. Still not sure if the Black Math will stay on here or go on my mini guitar board. Thinking I’ll rig up the Thru on the Olympic incase I want to run guitar through this board into the Science Mother preamp.

Not had chance to try them (aside from 5 mins with the Black Math on guitar) but very excited to completely rebuild my board again to accommodate these beauties 🙌