Neural DSP

REVIEW
NEURAL DSP QUAD CORTEX
100
GUITARIST AUGUST 2021
Creating and editing
presets is easy with
swiping, tapping and
drag-and-drop moves
on the touchscreen
In Use
The presets are built on a grid with four
rows of eight blocks, each hosting a
virtual device. This could be set up as four
individual signal paths, but you have the
ability to split and mix paths so you can use
all four rows together to create a complex
rig. There’s no shortage of presets, either.
10 onboard setlists can each contain 256
presets (32 banks of eight). As for the
virtual devices, you get more than 50 amps
and more than 70 effects, and there are
over 1,000 IRs, as well as the opportunity
to load your own.
Creating and editing presets is quick and
easy with swiping, tapping and drag-and-
drop moves on the touchscreen. Just tap
on any on-screen block and its parameters
show up on the screen as virtual knobs. In
addition, the footswitches – whose rotary
caps correspond to those virtual knobs
– light up, and you then have a choice of
turning those or using the screen to make
adjustments.
Hold the tuner/tap
switch to tune or tap in
time for tempo change.
A simultaneous press
with the down footswitch
changes modes
The sizeable Volume
knob is in just the right
place. Turn it up here!
All the connections
you need are clustered
on the back panel
The amount of footswitches makes
onstage use painless. There are three
easily toggled main modes for the
A to H footswitches: Preset, Scene and
Stomp. In Preset mode, each of the eight
footswitches calls up a preset in the bank.
Scene mode uses the footswitches to
access the eight ‘scenes’ you can have
within a preset – variations on the theme,
perhaps with adjusted parameter values
or a different set of active blocks. While
Stomp is for those who wish to use the unit
as a standard effects pedalboard where any
device block in a rig can be assigned to a
footswitch for instant recall.
For all of these modes, the screen can be
set to Gig View, which divides it into eight
segments showing what each footswitch
is assigned to. Expression pedals can be
assigned to any device and control multiple
parameters simultaneously.
Neural Capture, using modern AI
technology, is dead easy to set up, too – just
follow the on-screen instructions – and
THE RIVALS
With similar functions for capturing
sounds, the Kemper Profiler Stage
(£1,401) combines the Kemper Profiler
digital guitar amplifier with the Profiler
Remote foot controller.
Line 6 modelling and effects floorboards
are massively popular choices. There’s the
large Helix Floor (£1,230 street price) and
the Helix LT (£799 street price), but the HX
Stomp XL (£599 street price) offers great
foot-switching ability in a smaller package.
Fractal Audio’s Axe-Fx III is arguably the
king of the hardware processors, but the
company’s FM3 floorboard (€1,299) is the
unit most equivalent to the Quad Cortex,
but only has three footswitches.