How The Neural DSP Nano Cortex Just Changed the Amp Modeling Game

 

 

 

Mason Marangella (Vertex Effects): Ladies and gentlemen of the world, ladies and gentlemen who are purveyors and lovers of good tone. We have a message today that, uh, I think is going to be great for us all. It's, it's a new product, which you've probably even seen just endless YouTube videos, Instagram shorts, and reels, and Tik TOK videos about it's the brand new nano cortex.

I'll, I'll, uh, I'll show mine on screen here. I'm not, I'm not ashamed to say that I have one. Let's see if I can see it. Let's see if I can get, hold on, hold on. Can we get

Grant Klassen (Goodwood Audio): your, um, bicep in cam, in, uh, camera here and shot for, uh, for reference, size reference?

Mason Marangella (Vertex Effects): Uh, size reference, of course, I need to show it here.

Ooh. Oh, there we go. Look at that. There it is. And, you know, interesting thing, um, I've been, I've had this for a little while, I have to admit, I, I got to be one of the, the beta testers. And so I've been playing with this thing for about, I don't know, maybe a month or so previous to the, uh, the release. And, um, You know, I can see that, you know, there's the practical usage of it, which, you know, I've, I've gotten to do.

And then there's, there's, of course, the, the reaction of the internet. People who haven't played it yet or who are evaluating it on the specifications or comparing it against what their expectations may have been for it. Um, and we, we were discussing offline before we started recording that there certainly have been, I, I think maybe some fair comments around things that, that we might have hoped that it would have had, but didn't have equipped.

Uh, I think there was also some, some commentary, um, uh, comparing it to other things in the marketplace. Um, the stereo capabilities of the input and output, things like effects loops. Um, and I think that we will have a dedicated episode in the near future with a representative from Neural, um, likely Ryan Morgan, who's been on the show before.

And, and to talk through some of this stuff, but I think also just practically, I want to talk about, you know, where we kind of feel like these concerns are, are, have merit and then where there may be some, I don't know, illusions, like sometimes just having the option for stereo in practically in the way that this is conceived, maybe it won't make that much of a difference.

Um, or maybe it will, but I'd like to kind of maybe just get everybody's initial thoughts here based on the release of the nano cortex, what your feelings are about kind of what the features are that it actually released with whether you feel like it's, you know, that the concerns that you've heard. Um, are something that you share or whether we can temper some of those, uh, those things with, with kind of the reality of, of what's going to be going on on a pedal board and how this would practically be used.

Either of you can start whoever wants to chime in first. We'll, uh, we'll take it away.

Grant Klassen (Goodwood Audio): Ryan, why don't you regale us, man, just take us there, walk us down, uh, walk us down this path. I'm excited.

Brian Omilion (Omilion Audio): Yeah. I mean, you know, back in January when I went to NAMM, you know, they had their big booth with the soon letters and I, I got to talk to Ryan at NAMM and we were talking about it.

Uh, I didn't, I didn't get a chance to see it, but I, you know, we got to talk through some of the features. So I was really excited about it, you know, he talked about how compact it was going to be. I think that's a big factor. That is really accessible and handy for people because I've, you know, I have, since yesterday, you know, people have asked me like, Oh sweet, this can go on a board or, Oh yeah, this can go in my backpack.

So I think the convenience factor and the size of it is really great. The fact that it can be a DAW for like you to plug into your computer, the headphone with the separate knob, like all the features are really great. I think people, it's, it's one of those things. Like it's there, people are unfortunately judging.

The pedal by the look of it, the book by the cover, in a sense, without diving into the manual to really see it. Because I, I swear I went through the manual. I just I went to look for one thing and I scrolled through like 30 pages of stuff. Like it's. How much stuff is crammed inside this? I mean, if you had to compare, would you say it's a little bit bigger than the King of Tone, but smaller than a Klon like the Centaur?

Mason Marangella (Vertex Effects): Oh yeah. It's slightly bigger than a King than an analog man, King of Tone. Um, yeah, but definitely smaller than a Klon. I would say it's kind of like the size of like A two button amp foot switch or something like that that you would get from to rock or Saldana or whatever.

Brian Omilion (Omilion Audio): Yeah. So like something of that size is amazing.

And I don't think I would ever add a five 49 price point and that size expect this nano core cortex to have everything that the quad cortex has. Like to be completely honest, but I think for what they put into it, I, I, you know, I think there are some things I'm like, Oh yeah, that would have been cool to have, or, Oh, this, but you know, you, you just never know.

I mean, it's like Strymon releasing the Riverside and Sunset and then two years later going, Oh, Hey. Is actually it's mid capable. We just didn't tell you like, you know, 'cause it was a firmware update nowadays with firmware. So, but I think the initial is really great. The reviews are really great. Uh, and the thing is, a lot of these, you know, it's, uh, what's those guys, uh, over in the uk?

They did one Yeah. Kings like, oh yeah. Like, um, king Charles, no, like Anderton's, like, they did like a whole video on and they really went through it. I think they capture like an amp or something. So like the initial like watching the videos are really great. So yeah, um, I, I, I think it's a great pedal and I'm excited to

Grant Klassen (Goodwood Audio): get it.

I think the thing that, uh, one of my, when I first saw it very first time I saw it, I was like, Oh, it doesn't have a screen. And then I kept reading and. The screen is actually your phone, and I personally, I love that because the first thing that it throws me back to is the H9 by Eventide. And to this day, I still have no clue how to use the H9 on the pedal.

Not a sweet clue. And I've used it for years. And All I've ever done is have it on my phone, I connect to the app, and everything I could hope for is on my phone via Bluetooth. You can, and this is for the Nano, and Mason, correct me if I'm wrong on any of this from your knowledge, but you can wirelessly update it, obviously control any parameter live, like in real time.

You can, uh, upload and change different sounds from your phone from the cloud straight to the device, like everything that, that you can do the, the screen really is your phone and it's another control panel for it. And so I think that being one of my initial complaints made a whole lot of sense. Once I realized that, you know, you just bring up your smartphone and you're good to go.

And so I think that's a great thing. One of my favorite things, which I did not expect with the nano is that all the hardware is there and in place for you to capture anything and you don't need any external hardware. I think that was a really good call and to make the capturing process really easy, which I On the Quad Cortex, capturing pedals, capturing an amp, is the easiest thing you can possibly do because they've made it very user friendly.

So I love that you can do that on the Nano, and I don't expect that to be, uh, you know, noticeably different from the Quad Cortex as far as hardware and the process. And then sound quality wise, I mean, I don't think anyone is really concerned about sound quality on this because, you know, The infrastructure, uh, the process, everyone is familiar with the Quad Cortex, that is, you know, looking into the Nano.

The Quad Cortex sounds incredible. And so for me, the question has never been sound or sound quality. The question has really been hardware and implementation. And so I think the screen thing for me was a big check. I'm a little still, I'm a little gray and fuzzy on the TRS input. If it exists, if it doesn't, I mean, we've chatted a little bit about this.

Thanks. And so I don't know if you have any more insight into this, Mason, but I'm curious, like, from what we've kind of briefly chatted about, there's, uh, you know, it, it says TRS, I think on the pedal, but it's a month. Is that something you can clarify?

Mason Marangella (Vertex Effects): Yeah. I, my understanding is, yeah, it's a mono input in stereo output.

And, and I think that the thing that, that people similarly to how they, they've gotten hung up on other amp modelers that we've talked about on, on the, on the show is that, you know, I think that the, the, it's definitely overstated. What the stereo input thing can do, especially since the intent on most of these is that you would put your Stereo effects after the amp, you know, so you would, you would come in, this would be like the input to your amp, right?

The input to whatever amp you, you decided that you would, you would use ordinarily. And then, you know, stereo out, you do all your processing, you go into a stereo DI and then that's, that's the sound. Um, there are no, and I think that that people who are used to putting effects in front of an amp or dealing with amps without effects loops, or not used to dealing with.

the mix bus or any sort of studio gear, they have a hard time conceiving of the idea that you would put the effects after the, the amp. And maybe there's a few people, a select few that are just like, I know all that. I just like how pedal X sounds in front of my AC 30. But you know what? This ain't an AC 30.

You know, this is, this is a new age, uh, uh, of, of amplifier. And this is kind of something that's wholly different. And I think that we need to treat it as such, and not try to, you know, put the square peg in the round hole, so to speak. So I didn't find it to be a detriment to what I'm doing. And certainly the effects loop thing also didn't seem to be a detriment.

I know that's another thing that people mentioned again, you're getting the same effect as what you would get from an effects loop, which is really the intent with using effects in the effects loop. is to put them after the preamp. Well, if you put them after the output of the, the nano cortex, it's still after the preamp, after the power amp and the mic as well.

But this is something that you can do. The other thing that I didn't see a lot of people talking about is that you can run this. into a, you can, you can not use the IRS cause you have the ability to separate that speaker cabinet component and you can run it into a power amp and then you can run it in to physical speakers if you wanted to do it that way, you know, like physical guitar speaker or cab.

So I think that that's really cool. Or if you had a product, You know, like, like grants for example, like the long line, you know, you could send, you know, something like, you could have a, a splitter and use the di you know, to, to have, you know, that go to front of house and then you could ha and then you could push it to a power amping cab and have that behind you if you wanted to just feel physical air moving and have the semblance of an amp on stage, which I think is another cool thing.

I don't see a lot of folks talking about, but, uh, I was able to get some really great tones out of it. I'm, I'm doing, um, I'm working on a video, a long, a long form video, um, where I'll be, I'm going to be taking my less Paul, my, my 58 reissue, the R8. Up to the, uh, restoration guru, Joe Regio in Tacoma, Washington.

And he is going to be remaking my guitar from ground zero as though it were a real fifties Les Paul. And we're talking everything from, you know, the, the, the proper glues to the proper finishes. To reshaping the top to, you know, getting the logos in the right place on the headstock, all those things that are not consistent, uh, with, with the, the modern Gibson's and making it, uh, exactly the way that it was as a fifties Gibson.

And, uh, if you've seen any of Joe's work, I mean, he's done restorations for a lot of the biggest players in the industry of, you know, vintage Les Pauls. And I'm making him slum it with this, you know, reissue that I think ordinarily, you know, he, he probably wouldn't do so much of. So in essence, it's sort of his interpretation of sort of what a historic makeover would be.

He does beautiful finished jobs and all that stuff. But anyway, where the nanocortex comes in is when we've done these sorts of comparison videos in the past. Um, a lot of folks when we did this with this Clapton strat that I had maybe a year ago, a lot of people were like, well, what if the wall voltage was different on the day that you recorded it, you know, the before versus the after, or how long were the tubes on?

Or what if you didn't set the amp exactly the same? These variables, you know, that, that even if you control for, there is some merit to those things, because if the wall voltage one day is 122 and the day you record it was 117, that can have an influence on the amps. Or if the tubes have been on for 30 minutes versus two hours and they've warmed up, they can also sound different.

These are, these are just things that are part of the high impedance world. Um, whereas in the digital world, I can save a preset and it is the same preset, whether it's day one or day 50 or day 100, whatever it is. So I created captures in presets through the nano cortex. And this is cool cause I can take it up with me to Washington because it's so small, it can fit in my backpack and I just need to be able to get the power supply.

I of course have to bring the guitar cause Joe's going to be working on refinishing a guitar cable. I can have my headphones. I can record stuff. I can do all the things that I would normally do. It's a compact thing, very easy to work with. And I can replicate the exact same settings that I did every single time, whether it's before or after.

So I'm going to show you actually some of the stuff that I came up with. Um, as the before, because I've been recording kind of all these examples, you know, now before I go there next week, so that I kind of have a good reference point to compare to. And on some of these, I use tracks, um, you know, of popular Les Paul songs.

Some of them I'm going to mute just because, you know, some folks like the, the great Don Henley don't like hearing his own music. Um, uh, in, uh, in other places, other, other than, uh, from his own mouth. And I think that that's the real thing. He's, he's upset about it. It's like, he doesn't like hearing his voice.

It's like when you hear yourself on a voice mail. You're like, oh, that's what I sound like. I think that that's what Don has going on. He's like, ah, I don't like how that sounds. Um, But let me, let me share my, my screen here with you. I'll kind of show you what I got going on. Um, let's share logic. So you can see here, I got the big, big logic session open.

And I, and I've started to arrange, I have like my before examples. And, and I, I created another set of before and afters because I thought that maybe on some of these I might double. the guitar. If that's kind of how it was on the original recording. But then I was like, you know what? That's, that's a lot of extra work to double it and all that stuff.

So, so I created those tracks. I'm not going to use them. Um, but I, I, I had a couple of things like I did hotel California. I did all right now my free, I did moving out, which is a great one. The great human cracking on guitar for Billy Joel. Still got the blues. You notice that's the one I haven't recorded because, uh, man, I feel like, you know, every time I try to play Gary more, I sound more like his.

Ugly stepbrother Harrymore. Um, so, so that one I need to, I need to shed a little bit before, before I go and record that one. But, and then I did breakdown Tom Petty. Uh, Mike Campbell has a great little guitar riff in there. And so I kind of was using these as the exemplars. But I'll play a few of them for you.

You know, I want to save some of them for, for when the real video comes out. So you can hear how this last pulse sounds before and after. But, uh, here's a little, uh, Hotel California, you can hear how that sounds, and, uh, I posted actually this on, on Instagram as well a little, a little while ago, and you can watch it there, but let's, let's see how it sounds.

You guys tell me what you think. So this is kind of capturing the essence of a Tweed Deluxe, uh, with an Alnico, um, blue speaker. And just a little kiss of reverb, uh, coming from the quad cortex. Uh, otherwise, and there might be like a tiny bit of slap back echo, not so much to create a delay, but just to create some air, some space there, because that's kind of how that sound is.

And then this is just the less Paul as it was stock before. And so you, you let me know what you think here. This is all again, through the nano cortex. Nothing else being used. Everything you hear is right from the nano cortex. Here we go. Nice. All right.

Very cool. I like it. So, so I thought, I thought as far as like convincing tones, it was, it was, it was pretty dang good. And I think in the context of the track, you know, and obviously you're not hearing it here with the track. It worked very well, um, to kind of nail those tones. Now, any deficit would be more attributed to the plane.

Not so much to, to the tone. I think the tone of it is like actually very emblematic of what you would have heard Don Felder use on that record, you know, and, and, um, and I spent some time kind of going back and forth and like listening to the Hotel California. So let me, Oh, it kind of sounds a little honkier there.

And so let me, let me do this with the mids and stuff like that. Everything's pretty dialable on this. And I think the cool thing about, about it is again, the capture aspect is great. I mean, you can basically say, okay, I'm going to take all my amplifiers, my favorite settings based on whatever instrument it is that I like to use with it.

And I can put it in here and take that with me. And I think on that merit, it's really cool. I think that the way I would envision using this for myself. would be if I want to have a super compact amp situation, like instead of taking, let's say a UA dream or a Ruby or, uh, uh, what's the other one? The lion.

You can in essence have all those in here because even if you don't personally capture them, like I saw Pete Thorne put out his captures for a top hat, which is in essence a Ruby, it's an AC 30 style circuit. And he put out his 72 Marshall. So you got your Marshall, you got your line. Um, There's tons of people that are, that are providing free, um, captures in everything that I capture from, from what you saw there, you know, all those different sounds.

The Billy Joel one's kind of a martial thing. Rebel Rebel is a more, it's kind of a, I think I had it done to him. Well, actually, you know, I think I might've been a Vox thing that I did there. Um, And, um, what's it, uh, the, the, the free piece that I did the, uh, all right now that's a Marshall. I think there's a fender one on one of those.

I can't remember which one it was, but in any case, I'm going to publish all those as free captures that people can put on there. And there's lots of other people that are doing it. So you can, in essence, have all those here, preset. Ready to go. And that's like your amp. Now you could say, well, the Ruby's got stereo in all that, all that stuff.

And yeah, that's true. It does have all that stuff, but realistically I would say most people should be running all their effects, their, their processing effects after anyway, and those are going to be where the stereo effects live. Generally, we're not going to run our stereo effects into the inputs. I don't think that's that big of a deal.

I don't think the effects loop is a big deal cause you'd run it after. Um, those things just don't concern me. Um, I don't know if you guys have any, any thoughts on that. Um, like maybe we, we start to tackle the effects loop thing first. Does that, does that really bug you guys? Do you feel like from the customer standpoint practically is, is it, is it going to turn into like, you know, is there a sound that they're getting with using an effects loop version of something like this now they're not going to be getting because they have to put it after the, the nano cortex.

Grant Klassen (Goodwood Audio): I don't think so. I think the, I think the effects loop thing for me has never bugged me, uh, because of exactly what you just said. You can just run more effects in stereo after the unit if you need to. I think where, depending on your situation though, the, uh, stereo input, For certain people is going to be a little bit frustrating, but I mean, at the same time, there is, there is no one product out there that is going to be able to tick every box for every person.

And I think that's where you have to take this as what it is. It's a product. It fits in a spot on your pedal board and it does a great job in that spot on your pedal board, but are you going to be able to put it everywhere, come up with a solution for everything? And I know as a product designer myself, and you would be similar Mason, you, you have to, at some point, like, what are most people going to make the use for?

I can't accommodate for every everyone or else it's going to be the most confusing product out there because there's too much that it can do. So. And at the same time, you know, you just have to draw the line, uh, somewhere. You have to draw the line in the sand. So the Nano Cortex is a great unit. Again, in my opinion, I haven't had it in my hands yet.

I have one on the way, but it's a great unit. If you want to implement it in a bigger system on a pedal board with other pedals, you put it after your dry effects, your mono dry effects, maybe even after a mono, uh, modulation effects. Uh, and then you go into the quad cortex, run all your stuff, and then leave your pedal board or run more effects after it.

But I think, uh, you know, from what I'm hearing and what I've seen online, I've seen Pete Thorne's demo or the vast majority of Pete Thorne's demo is one example. People are making this thing sound incredible and they're making it work in their rig. And the hardware that it does have, the dedicated headphone out, MIDI, I think it can be bus powered as well over USB.

Um, like the blocks, the effects blocks in it. And then the, for me, the thing I absolutely love again, I'll say it again, is the, uh, iPhone app that is, uh, in real time. You can use it in real time. You know, like it takes a lot of major boxes. It's

Mason Marangella (Vertex Effects): super easy. It's so easy because basically you just hold like the exit and the capture button.

It connects it to the Bluetooth. You've got your menu there. You can assign all your presets. You can say, okay, you know, for, for bank one, you know, I want these five amps to just be taught you toggle between, you know, Vox, Fender, Marshall. Um, and then you got, and then you can also cycle through cabinets on the other foot switch.

If you want to like change different speaker cabinets and stuff like that. And, and, um, you know, the captures that I'm doing, I'm kind of capturing the whole thing. So I'm capturing like, My amp, my speaker, my microphone, my mic pre, you know, so like when you're getting my stuff, you're getting, you know, great river mic pre 57, um, you know, in the, in the case of the tweet deluxe, it's a, I don't have an original speaker in there, even though it's a 58 deluxe, I blew that speaker long ago and, and, and I tried to have a recone, but it never really sounded right.

So I have just like a UK made Celestian blue in there and it sounds pretty good. Um, and, and so that's what's in, uh, That's, well, you know what, that's a lie that is in there, but I did use my ISO cab and what's in there as a Alnico gold. So it's a, it's a little bit higher headroom, um, but it's still going through the great river and all that stuff, but it's still an Alnico speaker and, and I feel like the tone is there.

If you listen to it, it's very akin to what you would have heard on the ISO track. And I've listened to that ISO track plenty of times. So you're getting that whole thing in my capture and kind of getting my studio set up. Uh, and that's how a lot of them are because for me, like if, if there's like a signature sound that I want, I don't want to disaggregate it where it's like, it's this cabinet and this, you know, like, I'm just like, it works together as an ensemble separating.

It probably doesn't work as well, you know, for other stuff anyway, just, just, just a disclaimer on that.

Brian Omilion (Omilion Audio): Yeah, no, I, I would say that this unit, I think without the effects loop, I think it's fine because. Even if it had one effects loop, what are you going to do? Put like an overdrive in it. If that's the case, just do the capture, like just capture it.

That, and I, I remember before, before a couple of weeks ago, I had been emailing with Ryan, uh, Ryan Morgan. And I had asked, cause you know, he had asked. You know, it sent us like the, the link to video links for the, um, dealers, the, like the Porter walkthrough, like of the unit. I think that was my first question.

It was like, well, and there's no effects loop, you know, what, like looking at like, you know, like, how am I going to do this? And he goes, man, just capture it. Like if that's the case, like if you find your drive, you'd really like, you know, you can do it. And for me seeing the fixed, like seeing the signal chain where, you know, it's input compression, a block of.

An overdrive or capture your amp and cab modulation, delay, reverb. That's. That's, that's me. That's all I use. Like, I don't use seven different overdrive blocks. I don't use boost or EQ. Like, I just But imagine if you did,

Mason Marangella (Vertex Effects): Brian, how your life would be better. I think you should.

Brian Omilion (Omilion Audio): I just don't know. I just don't, I don't see the, I, I, like, I just don't because I, like, the first time I saw the unit, and I'll share a photo of it, because it's, it's, It is, it's a beautiful unit, like looking at it, like the unit, the back, all the, the top shows you, as we talked about, Grant talked about the instrument input, the TRS output, which correct me if I'm wrong fellas, but you could definitely use a TRS to XLR cable strapped into a PA bypassing your direct box since it has a ground lift switch.

Am I wrong? I don't know.

Mason Marangella (Vertex Effects): I can't, I can't question. It depends

Grant Klassen (Goodwood Audio): on a few things, like I think if it's TRS designed for stereo left and right out, that's different than a balanced signal. I don't know because I haven't gone into the manual. Yeah. And that's,

Brian Omilion (Omilion Audio): that's one thing I'm going to dive into is the manual, but I'm pretty sure the manual said I have it here.

I have it somewhere in here. Um, yes, there's just TRS out. I'd have to go look, looking through it all, but like, quarter

Mason Marangella (Vertex Effects): inch TRS outputs or something like that. Yeah.

Grant Klassen (Goodwood Audio): TRS left and TRS right output. Then you could, um, I'd be curious on the, uh, A couple of the specs on that, but yeah, so number two, it's

Mason Marangella (Vertex Effects): a stereo outputs for connecting studio monitors, PA systems, uh, FR, FR cabs.

Brian Omilion (Omilion Audio): Yeah. So like I, you know, if it can, yeah, obviously what I, what I pair this with a, maybe a long line. Or Daiso or something that if you really wanted XLR outs, but I'm saying a long line, maybe mashing the neural gray could be cool. Grant just saying, never, but, but what I'm saying is like putting this on a thing I didn't know about the built in tuner.

At first, like, I didn't know that was a thing until the video and I was like, Oh, that, that's, that's even better to know. So like seeing this going into a, you know, into a back, like they actually had, you know, they have that, that photo of the unit, you know, going in the backpack, you know, in a backpack with headphones, like how small it is.

And. Like just the whole execution of it is really great. I don't think the FX loop thing is going to be that big of a deal. I think people, you know, it's the thing like going to the grocery store while you're hungry. So you buy all this food and you do, you want all this stuff because of this. But like, when you think about like, you know, if you think about the necessities of what you're needing for this pedal and the size, I really think it's going to be fine.

Like I've even considered pairing, Getting, when I get this in, putting it on a little, like, 18 7, like, creation aero board or something with, um, the bridge 4 from our friends with PirateMidi. And like, pairing those together and using the PirateMidi controller to do, you know, have clean, dirty, whatever, stepping on those and then having the other folks, the other switches on the nano do something else.

So like, I've thought stuff like that, but that's still backpackable. Like that's small. Or this is really accessible for a bass player, or this is really accessible for an acoustic player. So when, like I was talking to seal, we were talking about this coming out and I was like, man, this could be really simple set up for you.

Cause we're traveling, you know, in hotels, you can't always like the cortex, the cord quad, right? Cortex is very small unit, but like, if you're someone that can only carry on a backpack for a quick gig or something, this fits in your mana creators guitar back and you can put it in the head sock spot. Like I'm, I'm just hitting all the sponsors, all the people, but it's, it's really, that's the funny thing about it is that.

All of these sponsors that we have, this thing can fit in and work with all these people and it only runs on a 9 or 12 volt, 600 milliamp, like power input. It's not the crazy power that it needs. You don't need the quad cortex cable that, you know, Any of us grant or I or bestronics or anyone makes, it's another one.

Just all these people that like that you can get this stuff from. It's so compact and it's the DAW. You can power it from your computer if you need. Like, it's just, I think it's a great unit. I got super sidetracked to say, I don't think the FX loop is. It's going to be an issue. I think it's one of those things that people just want so much stuff out of it, but it's so compact.

Like there's only so much you can do personally.

Grant Klassen (Goodwood Audio): And the only sponsor that you didn't talk about is the Guitar Sanctuary. So I'm going to do it for you. Thank you. But you can get it. And you can get the nano cortex at the Guitar Sanctuary, along with many other things, Brian. And so, uh, yes, this is a transition into an ad break, but we're going with it.

TheGuitarSanctuary. com in McKinney, Texas. If you want to show up in person. And try out a Nano Cortex while you're in the store with a Les Paul and maybe even, I don't know, I don't even know if they sell FRFRs at the Guitar Sanctuary. They do. I'm getting a nod from Brian. That's actually something that doesn't often come up with guitar players, especially a few years previous to now.

Uh, but these days, I mean, FRFRs are becoming more and more popular with us guitar players with the advent of the more in depth. amp and cab sim and now with the Nano Cortex, but I wanted to tell you guys about the Guitar Sanctuary. Check them out. They have incredible gear, great customer service, and you can check them out online as well at guitarsanctuary.

com. I also want to tell you, or maybe just keep talking about, Neural DSP, the creators of the Nano Cortex, the Quad Cortex, a whole bunch of online profiles as well for your guitar pedalboard. They have also recently come out with, for the QC, the Core OS 3. 0, which allows you, on your Quad Cortex, the big brother to the Nano Cortex, to upload these profiles.

Uh, they're starting with a couple of the profiles and then working their way from there, straight onto your Quad Cortex. You can use a code Chairman, C H A I R M E N to buy profiles at 30 percent off, 70 percent away from free, for any profile that is 90 days or older. Chairman, C H A I R M E N. And, of course, the NanoCortex is on their website now as well.

Very recently, uh, newly released, sorry. And, uh, we're gonna just keep chatting about it here today. Mason, I'll throw it back to you. And we can keep going on the nano cortex.

Mason Marangella (Vertex Effects): Yeah. So the, so we talked about the effects loop and I was looking up some, some specs here as we were, as we were going. Um, so the effects loop, I think is, is one concern I think.

A legitimate concern is like, if you do only like running stuff in front of the amp, you know, like there's some people that like, they like the way a delay sounds in front of an AC30 cause they like the edge or whatever and they want, and they want that sound. He runs his effects in front of the amp. I think that obviously that's one thing you can't do in, in, in, in no matter what you do in terms of moving it after, it's never going to recreate the exact same dynamic of Right.

a certain effect hitting the preamp section or if you, you know, like surf music or something like that, and love the sound of a reverb hitting the front end of a, of, of a fender amp, arguably though, those are both mono effects, uh, the, and I actually think the edge is all in mono too, which was the crazy thing, a realization that, that, uh, you know.

Many of us had when, when, you know, his tech talked about some of his rig rundowns, cause it sounds so lush and spacious to find out that it's. It's still a mono setup, kind of a, uh, an interesting thing, but yeah, I think, um, some of the other commentary that, that I had seen, I think was like people wish they had the screen, you know, having something like a screen on the unit itself.

for me. I don't think there's much that can be done at that, at that point. I, I think you would be increasing the size in order to have that format. And I think the idea here is that you basically just have like one line of effects. Like if you were looking at the quad cortex and you had, you know, the multiple different, you know, uh, single paths that can be existing concurrently, this is basically just like a single signal path.

So the need to be able to manipulate that and the fact that there are limited effects that, that are, that are built in that you can either activate or deactivate as far as like Pitch, modulation, delay, reverb. I don't know how valuable that is. Um, I think that the idea is, is that you're supplementing with either full rig captures where you're capturing your distortion effects and all that stuff, and you're sort of printing that into your, the preset that you've created, or the way I would envision doing it for myself in, in, in kind of putting together a rig with this is like, I'm supplementing with my overdrives and distortion pedals of choice going into the front end of it.

And then I'm doing whatever delay and reverb processing I want after it. I probably not that there's anything wrong with the delays and reverbs that I hear in here. I think that they sound fine. But I would just want the control that I'm used to having in the understanding that I have of my own reverbs and delays and how they interact with these sounds and creating settings accordingly.

It is again all MIDI capable, so I can set these all up to change through MIDI. Um, I could see something just like a really abbreviated MIDI switcher, you know, Morningstar or something like that with this, a few drives, a delay and reverb, a long line, you know, or the DI of your choice. And you could have a super compact.

Super powerful rig that I mean, I would challenge anybody to figure out a flight eight that you couldn't do with this because you could literally capture all the amps you would ordinarily use in your studio or that you would use in your life set up when you have cartage or whatever it is. You capture all that, you capture the cabinets or however it is, and you're, you're feeding, you know, Um, your studio sound directly to the front of house.

And of course there's limitations. It's not the same as a tube amp, you know, and, and I'll be the first to say that and I own a ton of tube amps, but this is a great problem solver for, for a lot of things. And I think in some ways in a live performance can get you closer to a studio sound than you could.

You know, just miking your Marshall with the 57 and, and, and maybe that's not what you want. Maybe you want the feel of a live amp and you like it, you know, behind you. And that's great. But I do think that, that neural, and I we've said this before, is getting closer and closer to bridging that gap for the people that are the pure tannical, You know, tube amp evangelists and getting them closer and closer to that sound because the stuff that I was getting, you know, again, capturing classic Les Paul recordings that we would all know, I was getting some really close results, you know, like I was dialing in my sound on my real amp.

Trying to capture whatever it was that was in the original recording, then hooking it up to the nano cortex, creating the, the capture, and then recording that, that piece, and getting some really great results. I'll show you another one that I did, uh, which is a, a song I, I, I really dig, uh, from, from the, the great Billy Joel.

Um, a song called moving out and, uh, and I think it, it sounds really good. It's a, it's a drop D surprisingly. You wouldn't really, Billy Joel be a drop D guy. Um, but, uh, it's got a drop D get less Paul guitar in there and it's, and it sounds heavy. It sounds great. Um, I'm going to play it with the track.

Hopefully, uh, we don't get in trouble from the Joel estate here. Um, but, uh, you know, we'll give it a try and let's see what it sounds like

should have been. It should have been the majority of it there. Um, so that was, yeah, so it's, it's, it's, that was, uh, I think I did, I think on that one I did my, I think I started with the JMP and it was too heavy cause it's, it's more like a JCM 800, but from like the late seventies. And it was a 50 watt vertical input.

And then I ended up going with the Marshall, um, the 69 Marshall that I have, uh, super lead 100. And that kind of got me, I don't know, it seemed to be a little tighter with the, you know, the low end with the drop D it could get a little sloppier with the, if it's too much gain. Um, yeah. Again, I think it sounded consistent with what you would have heard on that record.

Again, all these, when I, when I published the video of the refinish and we're showing the before and afters, you know, using these songs, I'll be rerecording the same part, the same track. I'll make them all available. So everybody will be able to have My processing, exactly how I did it. And you can basically have my rig, um, as you heard there.

But man, I, I, I'm, I was in, I was, I was in, I mean, I already knew about the captures cause it's really the same concept with the quad cortex. But the thing that I'm really impressed with is, is, um, how well I'm able to capture a moment in time. Now I know that there are some flexibility concerns of like, okay, well what if you want to shape the mid range this way you want to do?

And, and I think. You know, it can do it to a degree. I think that that's where it gets further divorced from sort of the truth of the original sound. But if you got a sound that, you know, is like the way you like it, that's where this is like really, really great. Where have you like, like, I know, I know I have this AC 30 setting.

It works great with all my gear. And I know this is my go to thing. And it always, you know, delivers, delivers on the tone. That's where I feel like it's, it's really great. I feel like if you're like a, if you're a tweaker and every song has got different settings and stuff, I mean, you can capture that of course, but I feel like that's, that's like, you know, a little more complicated and probably not as this doesn't do that as well.

If you're going to get really tweaky, unless you want to like capture every single variation of the same thing, but if you've got like a, kind of a sound on a certain amp that, you know, works like that's great. Like if you're in a cover band. And you know that there's certain amps that just work great for certain songs and you're able to cash out.

Like this will, this will be a dream for you because you'll just be able to dial up everything that you know works and be able to just put that right through the PA and from an in ear mix perspective and stuff like that. Like this, this is just so friendly to that. Like it, it just really works well for that sort of thing.

So yeah. Um, I, I really love it. I, I really love the size because sometimes for me like I, it's hard for me to keep a quad cortex like on my, on my, my, my desk here. This is super small. And as my library gets evolves and gets larger and larger, you know, I can, from a workflow standpoint, I really like using this, especially just to like test stuff out, get things kind of dialed in.

And then if I want to use my amps and set that up or the video calls for me using a real app, I got that. But I also have everything kind of here. And having some reverb and stuff like that. I don't have to open up plugins and things like that. So I really like that. Um, other thoughts? Go ahead, Brian.

Brian Omilion (Omilion Audio): Yeah, sorry, I didn't want to cut you off.

I think two other things to kind of chat about that I'm really, because I've seen it a lot is how does it compare with like the Tone X, the large one? Like I remember like someone was like, basically they created a tone X and I was like, well, you know, it could, it was this and this and this. And someone, you know, it was like, I could buy four tone X ones for the same price of this or whatever.

And I'm like, it's a completely like the argument, I think the guy, Jerry, whatever his face name was, 87. Um, That was actually his username, actually. So, um, he, you know, he was like arguing about it. And I was like, I don't know why you're trying to argue about it. It's a brand new, it literally came out 40 seconds ago.

Like, and you're making these blanket statements. I think people will compare it to the large Tonex because they're both mono input. The one, I had one guy, he was like, aha, like I got you. And I was like, well, it's not really, I got you. Like the Tonex, the large one is. Dual mono, where this is stereo out. So like, and it, you know, this also has delay and reverb and modulation and other blocks in it.

Built in capture. You, you know, it has the capture on the side and the boost switch. Like it has all these, like it has a lot of great, I can't apples to oranges compare them because they're not the same, but I'm curious to you guys. Like how, like, are they even in the same category? Because I think a lot of people are going to go, Oh, well, I'm just going to buy, you know, I'm going to stick with my tone Xs.

But like two tone Xs to do true stereo is like what? A thousand dollars, right? Two of them together. Ninety

Grant Klassen (Goodwood Audio): nine each. Are they three ninety nine? OK, I think eight hundred dollars.

Brian Omilion (Omilion Audio): So 800, but you're taking up a 19 by sevenths worth of space on your pedal board. So I'm curious what you guys think, because I know people are going to be like, Oh, is this whole episode about us?

You know, just praising neural and they are a sponsor. They didn't ask us to do this episode. This is just our thoughts on the episode on the episode, um, the unit before, you know, we get Ryan on or something, but I'm curious, do you guys even compare the tone X with this? Like, is it?

Grant Klassen (Goodwood Audio): I think it, I think it would be in the same category.

Absolutely. I think, um, I think it's two different takes on a similar product in the sense that it fits that spot in your signal chain of amp and cab sim, additional effects, complementary effects. They both have apps. I don't believe Tonex has anything to do with Bluetooth yet on a phone. I could be wrong, but I've, I've never seen that.

Um, so I think it's more like, are you an Apple or a PC user? And I won't say which one I think is Apple or PC in this regard, but it's just, they're two different companies that are, you know, they're trying to do their spot. They hold value. I am still, and I don't know if Neuro will like me saying this or not, I'm still of the belief that if you have something on your board that's working for you, Don't look for a reason to change.

Don't try and fix a problem that's not there. If you have ToneXs on your board and you love the sound of your rig, then keep using your ToneXs. Like, why would you go out and try and, and, uh, mix that up if you're already happy with your rig? And so that's where I would say, uh, if this is something that's going to simplify your workflow, then it's something to consider.

And if you already have a Quad Cortex, you love the sound of the Quad Cortex and the, you know, blocks and the options that it gives you. And you need a smaller form factor, something again, that's going to help your fly dates or it's going to help your secondary pedal board or whatever it is that you're using, then you can go into a product like this with confidence, knowing that it's, it's going to have the same kind of quality and, and user experience that the larger quad cortex already does.

So I think they're definitely in the same category. They both have their pros and cons as any product will. Uh, but I think, uh, the NanoCortex, they, again, they tick a few really big boxes for me. Excited to get into and dive deeper into and have maybe more of a first hand experience and opinion once that lands here and see if I can confirm some of my assumptions.

Brian Omilion (Omilion Audio): Yeah.

Mason Marangella (Vertex Effects): Well, I want to go into final thoughts here, but before we do, I want to talk about our final set of sponsors that make the podcast possible every week.

Brian Omilion (Omilion Audio): Yeah, absolutely. So our final set of sponsors are going to be, um, the guys at BTPA, Bestronics, as we have already talked about. Brad and them, they, you know, they, they have the Cortex, you know, cables that you can plug in with your, um, your chalks, power supply of all sorts of different adapters that you could use, uh, cabling, plugs, everything, audio looms.

I'm in the middle of wiring a multi pin rack panel connection with a channel snake that I got from Brad. So go check them out at btpa. com. Use the discount code deadchairs, D A C H A R S and get 10 percent off. If you can save, why not? So go do it. Uh, and the final are going to be, uh, guys, we've alread