Quad Cortex with Amps? Rabea Massaad Talks Hybrid Sound & Live Performance

Neural DSP debuted the Quad Cortex to critical acclaim, instantly illustrating to the diverse worlds of tone crafting and sound design that a groundbreaking new way to sculpt and refine your guitar’s sonic profile had emerged. But how might you go about blending your Quad Cortex sounds with physical amps? Following the realization that his mother-ship pedalboard was too large and unwieldly to keep shipping around the world, Rabea Massaad envisioned a new avenue that blended control, sound, and form factor into a backpack-friendly arrangement. Rabea drops by Sweetwater to show you firsthand how to merge the two worlds into a hybrid sound setup greater than the sum of its parts, including MIDI control of his Victory amp via the Quad Cortex, advanced tone crafting, and more. Check it out!

00:00 — Play-in
01:02 — The Backstory: What This Video Is & Why
02:32 — Preset #1: Pre-effects & Post-effects
03:01 — The 4-cable Method Becomes the 12-cable Method!
03:58 — Clean Channel Setup
04:41 — Crunch Channel Setup
05:43 — Overdrive Channel Setup
06:08 — Solo Boost Setup
06:52 — Hybrid Mode for Extra Flexibility
09:21 — Preset #2: MIDI Control & More
09:36 — Backstory: Preset #2
10:35 — Routing Breakdown
11:33 — Sounds: Miked Cabs vs. IRs to FOH
11:41 — Clean
12:07 — Crunch
12:44 — Overdrive
13:13 — Solo Boost
13:51 — Recap & Summary
14:43 — Sign-off & Play-out

For more from Sweetwater, follow us:

#Sweetwater #NeuralDSP #QuadCortex #RabeaMassaad #VictoryAmlification #TheKrakenMkII

[jonnychrist]

This is a great video and gives me ideas to use with my QC but while you break it down on the QC screen I want you guys to show us how you actually plug it in to use the 4 cable and 7 cable method

[ze_german_kraut_alfda]

God I miss him and his friend Matt making the "Without Busting the Bank" Videos. Love how you look and changed! Much Love to Sweetwater and him❤️

[enochtimothy]

8:43 the tone wow im sold im buying this tonight

[EricSabag]

Is it possible to share these presets?
Inspired by Rabea, I'm using both analogs and digital too, and trying out these presets can be very useful 🙏

[tombasha]

Awesome video! With the Super Krakens only having one midi in and the Quad Cortex having one midi out, how are you controlling both amps? Follow up to this, if I wanted to use say a JVM410 and a Super Kraken, can you control both amps via QC?

[DiamondLifer]

Would have been nice to see the wire routing for all of this.

Does anyone know of a good video showing how to route this to use just the power section? Just a single amp also.

[leifwavetv]

Almost same set up a 4 cable method on my legacy amp through my kemper, sounds phenomenal probably my last rig i will use

[KoaCharvel]

I am in the process of setting up stereo tube and amp sim.

[jasonnaranjo]

Hello, I find the video very instructive; Something that would be very nice is to know if there are plans for a QC mini/stomp/player in a friendlier size and price? It's a dream, but a very sweet one!

[legzalez]

I use it both with my real deluxe reverb, and a capture of the same amp. on the same patch, works great!

[sixtyguitars]

I think this may have unlocked my I like my amps but I also like the flexibility of the QC, gonna build a preset.

[SimonsBand]

Is there a way to use the qc preamps like Rabea does with his Kraken but also use external pre and post fx, so real pedal distortions, real reverb pedals, but be able to use just the poweramp of the amp, maybe even being able to switch between the real amp and qc preamp?

I feel like im asking for a little too much but it would be epic to be able to essentially have a normal pedal board rig with real amp but be able to switch the preamp out on the fly. Rab has a video where he does something similar with two qc lonestars but no external fx pedals.

[vidaljuanes]

Hola seria muy especial poder ver el diagrama unilineal del sistema. saludos desde Chile

[seangillen]

If your amp isn't midi capable, what extra gear do you need for the QC to be able to switch amp channels? My Helix has external amp control with tip/ring switching without the need for midi, and can integrate it into snapshots.

[AlternateUniverse]

Geez, those Music Man's are starting to turn my head like they did in 1992...gawd dayum!

[stephankrohn]

Great setup. How do you set the levels on the FX loop? I want to run the same setup, but it seems to be really fiddly to get the levels right, so that the amps sound the same as running the without the quad cortex in the fx loop. Even if I get the levels about right (according to meters on qc and perceived volume) it seems that the amp has a bit more "punch" if i remove the qc.

[BeachJazzMusic]

I use my QC with my Quilters in stereo. That way I'm using a real amp. I don't use the effects loop in the amp as I don't see the need. I tried the 4CM method and I didn't like it. Quilters take pedals really well and the QC is no exception. I also use IR's with it as well. I look at the IR's as a type of EQ rather than trying to make a 12" speaker sound like a 4X12. A lot of people use FRFR cabs but the reality of it is that there's no way an electric guitar is going to produce the high end frequencies that a 1-2" high frequency driver is going to reproduce. At string 1 (high E) fret 22 (as high as my guitars go) the frequency is 1, 1780 HZ ( that's 1.18kHz give or take a few cents for string vibration.) An Electro Voice EV12L's (for example) frequency response is 80Hz-7kHz (-10dB) which is more than enough to get all of an electric guitar's frequencies.

[smellytele]

Wait, are you changing channels on your Kraken amps (with midi) within the preset? How are you doing that?

[ericpinson]

HELLO I want to buy a quad cortex and use, as in this video, the preamp of my EVH5150 or the preamp of the QC. Please let me know the wiring. THANKS a lot

[musicmore]

is it true that it does not have pre-amps in it, you would have to capture one ?