The Neural DSP Quad Cortex is undeniably one of many best guitar amp modelers on this planet. For a sure sort of gigging musician who needs to attenuate bulk and doesn’t require a lot in the way in which of results, it will possibly fairly convincingly re-create any variety of amps, and has loads of choices for bread and butter results like delay, reverb, and refrain. Plus, its Neural Seize function lets you rapidly and simply make bespoke presets based mostly by yourself gear, and even obtain captures from different customers.
In case you’ve bought a classic Huge Muff and a Marshall half stack that you just love however don’t wish to drag round for easy membership excursions, you may create a mannequin of your particular Marshall and Huge Muff with just some button presses on the Quad Cortex. There’s only one downside: It’s $1,699.
The Nano Cortex is Neural DSP’s effort to carry its distinctive seize skills and highly effective amp modeling to the lots. At $549 it’s nonetheless not low cost. You aren’t getting a display screen, or a few of the extra superior performance from the higher-end mannequin, however my expertise tells me it could possibly be an unbelievable stage and studio companion.
No Screens
The obvious sacrifice made within the title of measurement and cost-cutting is that lack of a touchscreen. The Quad Cortex is an absurdly complicated machine that may be impenetrable with out the touchscreen. The Nano Cortex strips down the function set down sufficient that navigating the pedal with just some knobs, buttons, and footswitches is affordable.
{Photograph}: Terrence O’Brien
The place the Quad Cortex gives you with greater than 90 amp fashions, 1,000 impulse responses, and 100 totally different results, the Nano sticks with the best hits from that large library. It ships with 25 amp fashions, 300 impulse responses (IRs), and single choices for refrain, delay, and reverb, based mostly on traditional pedals.
That’s nonetheless various potential combos to cope with, and doesn’t account for the flexibility to load customized captures and impulse responses that you just’ve both created your self or downloaded from different Cortex customers. Navigating them could be a little complicated because the solely indicators on the pedal are 5 LEDs over every footswitch, and all of your captures and IRs are divided into color-coded banks. However in case you’re primarily sticking to a couple core combos it’s not too dangerous.
If you end up wanting to change issues up lots, there is a wonderful companion app. I’ve examined plenty of pedals with cell apps and so they’ve all the time been fairly unreliable. They’re usually buggy and the Bluetooth connections are finicky at greatest. I had no such points with the Cortex cell app. It related rapidly and reliably each time, and all the pieces labored precisely as anticipated.
