As a long long time engineer, I can not help but wonder about the reliability of this design. Seems like it would be fraught with failure modes.
Same here. I´m actually looking forward to the Quad Cortex & I think it would fit just great into my enironment - but the reliability of those buttons...i don´t know..
Same here. I´m actually looking forward to the Quad Cortex & I think it would fit just great into my enironment - but the reliability of those buttons...i don´t know..
I can't tell about the reliability of such buttons since I never used nor saw them.
However, for me, the problem would be that these a difficult to get as a spare part. I never opened my Kemper, but I have seen gut shots. My impression of the Kemper hardware design is, that the PCB has a lot of space and the important user-interface components are wired in a way that they could be "easily" exchanged if needed. Just from the technical perspective, I guess, someone with EE skills would be able to understand the design and exchange most of the things without any "special" tools. Furthermore, a lot of standard components seem to be used, which is a big plus for me. A "normal" latch stomp button is very easy to get, should it fail once. I am not sure about these "special" buttons.
Neural does great VSTs and it would be cool to be able to use them live with dedicated hardware. My one question on this is, how does it FEEL? What puts the Kemper head and shoulders over everything else I've ever played on is the feeling of playing it. The Helix feels dead by comparison.
Neural does great VSTs and it would be cool to be able to use them live with dedicated hardware. My one question on this is, how does it FEEL? What puts the Kemper head and shoulders over everything else I've ever played on is the feeling of playing it. The Helix feels dead by comparison.
Fully agree. This is the main thing for me as well.
Neural have recently stated that a lot of the amps and FX will not be ready at launch, as well as the editor, hybrid mode etc.
Slightly disappointing, but still looking forward to getting it.
Neural does great VSTs and it would be cool to be able to use them live with dedicated hardware. My one question on this is, how does it FEEL? What puts the Kemper head and shoulders over everything else I've ever played on is the feeling of playing it. The Helix feels dead by comparison.
I downloaded the Helix native that shold be the same as the hardware, stated by Line6 and...what? If this is like the hardware, I would have cried blood if I had purchased it. There was nothing I liked about it. There are so many better, cheaper and some even free, ampsims that are better than the Helix native. So when I got a email from Line6 and wanted to know my honest opinion about the plugin...I told them my honest opinion.
I can't tell about the reliability of such buttons since I never used nor saw them.
However, for me, the problem would be that these a difficult to get as a spare part. I never opened my Kemper, but I have seen gut shots. My impression of the Kemper hardware design is, that the PCB has a lot of space and the important user-interface components are wired in a way that they could be "easily" exchanged if needed. Just from the technical perspective, I guess, someone with EE skills would be able to understand the design and exchange most of the things without any "special" tools. Furthermore, a lot of standard components seem to be used, which is a big plus for me. A "normal" latch stomp button is very easy to get, should it fail once. I am not sure about these "special" buttons.
Yep. The buttons on the KPA FC are 100% off-the-shelf. My guess is that you could get them from any number of places. My further guess is that they are pretty robust since they are a very simple switch. This also means you can get them cheep if you do need to replace them.
I have had a couple go bad on other devices over the years (I have been playing out off-and-on for well over 30 years). Usually they just get rust in them due to humidity, getting rained on, or getting beer spilled on them, and then become sticky.
A socket, ratchet, a soldering iron, and a small Allen wrench (I think) is all you would need to do the repair on a KPA Stage, or Foot controller ;).
Maybe you guys can answer this? I can't get an answer on their forum, their youtube page, and I'm apparently the only human on planet earth with this need.
The Quad, like the Helix, has four independent signal paths in each preset. Can you select ONE signal path as a singular unit, copy it, and paste it into an unused signal path in another preset? Then, using the Scenes feature, can you set it up so that each scene activities one signal path and deactivates and mutes the others?
From what I can tell, Quad follows the Helix philosophy of giving you so many options and DSP for one preset, that you can park their for entire songs, but at the expense of having a large audio gap on top of no spillover if you switch presets, even in the same bank. This is versus the kemper's DSP philosophy: giving you a smaller limit on what you can do in one preset (rig) in order to provide virtually gapless preset (rig) switching WITH spillover. So on the Helix/Quad you MUST stay in one preset per song unless you know you have breaks where you are not playing in order to switch, the need or lack thereof for this varies enormously from song to song.
On the KPA there's no need to cram everything you need or may need for one song into one preset (rig) because you can have five completely independent rigs in the same Performance bank, and each of them with their own second "Scene/Snapshot" by utilizing instant morph with the Remote. Since morph provides the ability to adjust the mix of every effects block from zero to 100% you can even set up effects you want to essentially turn on and off simply by setting the mix to 0% in the base state and 100% in the morph state, or vice versa. Finally you can assign different toggling of effect block combos to the four back row stomps on each of the five rigs in that performance. And use all of that with gapless switching and spillover.
So why is the ability to select, copy, paste entires signal paths as single units in the Quad (and Helix) important to me? I tend to create a handful of rigs set up to do one specific thing well. A specific thing that requires several effects blocks and a particular amp/cab that seems to work well. I then use these rigs in numerous songs. As a P&W musician, I'm regularly adding new songs and playing them in different orders from week to week. So as I set up for each Sunday morning, I organize a couple new performances which end up containing a handful of song-specific rigs already stored in browse mode and I place them next to any go-to rigs (also stored in browse mode) that I use in many different situations and songs. (for example a go-to autoswell requiring a compressor before and after, a particular slightly dirty amp/cab, and generic ambience that can be used in most situations) In the Quad (if) I don't have the ability to copy and paste entire signal chains into new presets, the only way to move go-to signal chains into a new song-specific presets is to copy, paste, save going back and forth numerous times moving one block over at a time. Or, if I know I'm going to need that go to sound in a new song preset, I could always use that go-to as my template and then build my song-specific preset from there, but then I can't use a go-to edge of break up preset as my starting point and must recreate that one block at a time. Either way I'm going back and forth between presets over and over doing the copy, paste, save circle of hell over and over.
Furthermore as a guy whose guitar situation shifts from week to week, I don't always play the same song the same way each time, even if I was a "half to do it like the recording" kind of guy. Some weeks I'm the only guitarist, sometimes I'm on electric with an acoustic player driving the ship while I handle the leads and hooks. Some weeks, I have no keyboardist and do more rhythm and less lead. Sometimes I'm the only guitarist and opt for acoustic, especially if I don't have a drummer or bassist that week. So I need the ability to quickly juxtapose my go to sounds with song-specify things; copying
Maybe you guys can answer this? I can't get an answer on their forum, their youtube page, and I'm apparently the only human on planet earth with this need.
nevertheless, this seems like something that does belong in another forum entirely.
discussion of other gear is fine of course, hence the subforum, but using this forum to gain access to information the manufacturer can't give you seems a little odd...
All these discussions about Neural Quad Cortex (and I also check out other forums and Facebook groups from manufacturers like Fractal or Line 6) seem like fishing in foreign waters. Is this the manufacturer's marketing strategy, or how does Neural DSP get people to discuss questions about its product on competitor forums? Do they don't have customer support?
nevertheless, this seems like something that does belong in another forum entirely.
discussion of other gear is fine of course, hence the subforum, but using this forum to gain access to information the manufacturer can't give you seems a little odd...
I agree with you Don. What I believe my post DOES show is the the KPA company has much better customer service on top of the best users, since I can get feedback from you on a post for another product in a few minutes, and can't get that other company to answer a simple question to a potential customer in over a day. I think it also shows is that what is a likely major weakness in a competing product and should be something that other KPA user considering switching might not have even been aware with or considered the ramifications of. Many of the things I love about the Kph are things easy to take for granted, such as volume compensation and the ducking parameter on most effect, until you don't have them anymore. 2 years back I had purchased the Helix and returned it, both trying to use it as a stand alone and with my Kemper head. It was a fine product in many ways but the inability to do what I asked the question about above totally destroyed the way I planned on using it. So I returned it after 2 weeks. All that to say, I'm finally able to buy a Kemper Stage this month, as the only thing I don't like about my KPA and remote is that they are not all-in-one. Having done my due diligence and evaluating a competing product, I'm more confident I'm making the right decision.
All these discussions about Neural Quad Cortex (and I also check out other forums and Facebook groups from manufacturers like Fractal or Line 6) seem like fishing in foreign waters. Is this the manufacturer's marketing strategy, or how does Neural DSP get people to discuss questions about its product on competitor forums? Do they don't have customer support?
They have a user forum, but I can't tell if the admin is very active there. And to be fair, they might be stretched thin since they are literally bringing a complex product to market and therefore also don't have expert users like we have here helping each other out. I think Kemper's user forum is so much more organized, especially since they have one main product that everyone uses, as even the different versions of the KPA are basically the same product. For example 99% of the Q&A and info applicable to the Head/Rack+Remote and the Stage is equally relevant. So we don't have do to a lot of fishing to find what we are looking for here.
I’m pretty open about this...I have a preorder and as it’s fully refundable I’m pretty excited to be receiving what seems like a cool product. If it’s as good as they claim I’m more than happy to purchase. I’m sure the release will be delayed again and the customer support is questionable to say the least. I also think it must be incredibly difficult to develop and release a new product during these times, I’m sure they have been impacted.
Some can get tribal about their selected technology/ equipment but I’m happy for a new competitor in the market.
My serious thoughts are more to how I would have to adapt my setup. I haven’t seen any mentions about losing access to a Kemper Kab/Kone, if one did a full switch over. Many have already mentioned the ‘feel’ which makes listening to YouTube videos essentially pointless - hence the preorder.
I’ll be more than happy if it matches a Kemper sonically and has all of the additional functionality- audio interface, touchscreen etc.
I do think that Kemper has reached near the ceiling of Profiling/modelling. There seems to be the assumption that as this is all digital technology it will evolve infinitely. The functions will as would technology to capture more accurately, the GUI and general interface - but the exported guitar/bass sound? If it sounds amazing now it will do in ten years, new modellers may just produce different sounds. I think the biggest gain is in the ability to produce the digital sound in a live setting.
I thought about deleting the last paragraph as I’m well out of depth:)
I preordered one but in the end it will be more for effects for my synths than amp modeling. Even said that, I will extensively test all its capturing and guitar tonality functions and add my findings to the interwebs. Cherrs!
Another issue is that the Quad foot switches seem way too close together. Not sure why they didn't just make this thing a little bigger, and while they're at it, add a couple more foot-switches for live convenience, such as dedicated switches for a global looper and mode, instead of awkwardly having to step on the two bank buttons to change the mode. And it looks like they don't have a looper developed yet anyway and are making the idiotic decision like the Helix of having to make room for the looper as an effect block, instead of it conveniently always being available like it is on the Kemper.
Thank you all for indulging me. Being cured of GAS takes a long time and despite still being quite happy with the KPA, the grass looks greener from time to time. I've had my KPA for 7 years now, I've never owned a single piece of gear that's my primary rig for even half that amount of time and can thankfully FINALLY be able to afford to get the Stage, for which I pounded the table loudly for prior to its announcement. I've done my due-diligence researching the Quad and confident I won't regret buying the Stage.
Another issue is that the Quad foot switches seem way too close together.
This is my main reason for not getting a QC. I'd never be able to use it in a live setting, so therefore I may as well stick to their plugins, if need be.
This is my main reason for not getting a QC. I'd never be able to use it in a live setting, so therefore I may as well stick to their plugins, if need be.
I got the impression spacing would be tighter than the Kemper Remote but similar to something like the HX-FX and probably quite a bit wider than those Boss 500 series things with 3 foot switches on a pedal that is 5 and a bit inches wide.
I silll. Have one on order. But not sure I’m even going to mess with it
I got the impression spacing would be tighter than the Kemper Remote but similar to something like the HX-FX and probably quite a bit wider than those Boss 500 series things with 3 foot switches on a pedal that is 5 and a bit inches wide.
The remote was also slightly too cramped for my plates of meat, which is why I got a Stage.
yes I find the stage more comfortable
I'm actually considering rack mounting the QC and using a RJM mastermind for switching.
Reason being those huge lovely big leds to see patch info, I can protect the QC from animals in the crowd and also don't get poop and urine on the footswitches hahaha
