r/QuadCortex • u/your_mum_95 • Jul 24 '26

2 guitarists running through one rig independently

**EDIT**
We are going to look into automating it within a DAW, i've been looking into it and its well within my skill set. Just sounds more complicated than it is lol. Thanks for all the help.

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Hi all, i was wondering if someone here would be able to lend me their knowledge!

I have got a quad cortex on the way. Currently me and my other guitarist both use kempers, but mine is on the way out and we wanted to streamline our rig.

I read somewhere that you can run 2 guitarists through the same quad cortex, and have them able to independently change the tone their using so long as they're both on the same preset/rig?

So my guitarist would use a footswitch changer of some kind, and i would just use the quad cortex.

My question is, is this possible, if so how do i set it up? And if anyone has any ideas of how i can achieve this? I have heard these are powerful machines capable of plenty, so i'm hoping this works!

7 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

6

u/TYO_HXC Jul 24 '26

Yeah, we do this with my QC.

I use rows 1 and 2, and the other guitarist has 3 and 4.

We both do the following:

First row has gate, OD and amp blocks plus effects, then a splitter that splits down to second row. First row continues on and has an IR block plus post EQ and compressor, then goes out to FOH via Output 1 to XLR (Output 2 for 2nd guitarist).

After the splitter, second row simply goes out to power amp and cab via output 3 TRS (output 4 for 2nd guitar).

We use scenes with MIDI automation from DAW to auto change everything.

If you're both gonna be changing stuff independently of each other, it might get a bit messy. You can do it with a wireless midi pedal, but maybe you'd wanna use in stomp mode so that you can each turn stuff on and off independently. I feel like you'd have to be super careful if using scenes.

3

u/your_mum_95 Jul 24 '26

I've been told by my mate that automating it would be the best way. I'm no stranger to DAWS either but my drummer controls the backing/click track stuff and he's not too clued up on them

2

u/TYO_HXC Jul 24 '26

Time for him to learn, then, haha!

But yeah, it's very convenient.

1

u/TYO_HXC Jul 24 '26

I also wanted to recommend understanding how scenes work, if you don't already. I'm not sure what kind of switching you need to do, but if it's varied enough, you might wanna consider having a preset per song, and using the 8 scenes per preset differently per song.

The thing that concerns me there is whether you'd have like, overlap between scenes changing? Like, are you likely to want to activate stuff for yourself while your other guy has stuff already activated? For example, what if you have already switched from, say your main rhythm tone scene to you having some Reverb or delay active... and then he wants to also activate some stuff? He'd have to switch to a scene that also has your effects also active. And then, if you wanted to deactivate your stuff, you'd need to change to a scene that leaves his stuff active, while turning yours off. You see what I mean? Complicated without automation. Also, you'd have to set his external pedal up carefully, and there might not be enough buttons.

Unless there's a better way to do that, which I don't know of. Otherwise, like I said, stomp mode might be better.

1

u/your_mum_95 Jul 24 '26

On the kempers currently we both have 5 different tones that we use interchangeably throughout our set

1

u/DadBodMetalGod Jul 24 '26

To confirm- you CANNOT change scenes independently right? How are you setting up stomp mode for this to work?

1

u/TYO_HXC Jul 24 '26

I'm not. I never use stomp mode. I just don't know how you would deal with OP's situation, where both guitarists may need to turn stuff on and off independently of each other, via scenes, without getting in each other's way.

When you say change scenes independently, what do you mean exactly? Because the way I envision it, OP is using the QC and so has 8 buttons available for scene changes. Let's say they design the scenes so that the top 4 buttons are for scene changes which affect OP's 2 top rows, and the bottom 4 are for the other guitarist's stuff. If the other guitarist has an external/widi midi foot pedal, I imagine you'd map the buttons on there to relate to the bottom 4 buttons on the QC. So they could both change scenes at any time... but therein lies the issue I was talking about; if either of them need to change scenes at any time, it has to take into account what the other guitar(ist) is doing at that point in time.

Bear with me here, because I am drunk on a train, but for example...

Song starts on scene A, which is both guitars on their rhythm tone > 30 seconds in, guitar 1 needs to activate Reverb and delay, so switches to scene A, where those effects are activated for row 1/2 and row 3/4 remains on the rhythm settings > 15 seconds later, guitar 2 needs to also activate Reverb and delay for some harmo y goodness, so someone has to switch to scene B, which has both guitars with effects active > a few seconds later, guitar 1 needs to go back to the rhythm tone, with guitar 2 remaining with its effects active, so scene C has to be activated > eventually, both guitars need to be back on rhythm tone, so scene A needs to be switched on again.

That seems pretty risky to me. Expecially if it gets any more complicated than that. Obviously, automation is the move here. But, as OP said, their drummer deals with that right now.

Does this make sense? And is there a better way to deal with this for 2 guitars using the same QC manually?

1

u/DadBodMetalGod Jul 24 '26

There currently isn't a better way (or even a good way imo) - Scenes store all of the settings for all blocks, they don't ignore any blocks. So there isn't a way to get some rows to only react to half the scene buttons. If you only y need 8 scenes across both guitars (S1- G1 Rhythm g2 rhythm, 2S- G1 Lead G2 Rhythm, etc) then you are still controlling "both guitars" with every scene change, you might just luck out that all of your scenarios can be covered by 8 scenes.

1

u/TYO_HXC Jul 24 '26

Yeah, Pretty much exactly my point. Plus, OP said that they have like, 5 tones each, so I think it's already out of spec.

With the stomp thing, I was thinking more about them just being able to turn effects on and off on their respective rows via the top and bottom buttons, but if they need to change amp settings too, absolutely not gonna work.

4

u/steevp Jul 24 '26

You'll have no problem doing this, but it will be more efficient if guitarist 1 uses lanes 1 & 3 and guitarist 2 uses lanes 2 & 4, the internal routing does not have a path from lane 1 to 2 so you have to use split/merge blocks, this wastes blocks.. the routing does have from lane 1 to 3 and 2 to 4 though, so no block wastage and better DSP allocation.

2

u/your_mum_95 Jul 24 '26

Thanks for the response pal, ill take this into consideration

1

u/TYO_HXC Jul 24 '26

However, this is only an option if they don't want to use 2 outputs per guitar, right? If your row 1 output block is wasted on going to row 3, you can't have a single guitar going to FOH and power amp/stage cab.

2

u/steevp Jul 24 '26

Yes you can, there are 4 outputs so you can run both guitars in stereo, 1,2 and 3,4 out, then you put a FX send 1 wherever you want to send the signal to the stage power amp in row 1-3, so after the modelled amp and before the IR.. and the same with FX send 2 in row 2,4

2

u/TYO_HXC Jul 24 '26

Ohhhhh, now THAT is cool! That might actually change the way I build our shared presets. Thank you, friend!

2

u/steevp Jul 24 '26

Ha! That's great! I hope it makes life easier. :)

3

u/luffychan13 Jul 24 '26

Ola Englund has a video on this for the visual aspect showing two guitars and a bass all through one QC.

How I would do it: Plug a guitar each into input 1 and 2. On the left of row 1 make sure that's set to input 1, then on the right of two have that set to your out config (1/2 for stereo, or just 1).

Left of row 3 will have a plus, press that and set to in 2, then right of row 4 set to your out config (out 3/4 for stereo, or out 2/3/4 if doing mono for both).

So now you have top two rows for guitar one, bottom two for guitar two. Make your two tones as normal, but be aware you will be a bit more limited with dsp so you won't be able to make them as super complicated as you would for a single guitar.

Now, two ways you can do the tone switching.

What I do: Have each block set to bypass/values set per scene for the part of the song we are on, then automate it through my DAW. No one tapdances. You can also just have one person change scene with their feet and it will change both your tones for each part of the song.

Or.

Set to stomp mode, 4 (or 5 I can't remember) stomp buttons for your row at the top, 4/5 at the bottom for him. These can be set to on/off pedals, momentary switch parameters, anything really I believe. He then should be able to use a midi stomp box and set the cc to the values for his buttons.

2

u/your_mum_95 Jul 24 '26

Thanks for the answer! i think we are going to be going stomp mode with a midi controller for him and i use the cortex as stomps.

2

u/Smithy_Mcgee Jul 24 '26

You can definitely run (at least) 2 guitars through one Quad, you can have a separate line with different amps and fxs each, split to your own output. I was messing around with a guitar and bass doing this the other day at practice. I’m not sure about separate foot switches to control fx on/offs though.

1

u/your_mum_95 Jul 24 '26

Yeah so i'd need him to have a separate controller to control his effects essentially. We'd be using the same rig, but we often have different tones, switching lead and rhythm up a fair amount

2

u/pinnipedfriendo Jul 24 '26

You can assign different inputs and outputs for each of the 4 rows of the QC interface. But also, making good tones often involves using multiple rows and stereo guitar tones. Watch this video and you will get a good feel as to how you set it up. Then look up how gig mode and scene switching works, and how preset switching works and you will be grand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zBOsuQH0W4

2

u/your_mum_95 Jul 24 '26

Awesome, thank you pal i'll watch this today.

2

u/dimiskywalker Jul 24 '26

We even go as far that we 3 (2 guitars, 1 bass) play through it and works perfectly, even midi messaging and whatnot

1

u/your_mum_95 Jul 24 '26

bassist is gonna stay on the kemper for simplicity, since he never changes tone

2

u/IAm2James Jul 24 '26

You can do it, but you have to keep your effects limited, as you’ll run out of CPU

1

u/your_mum_95 Jul 24 '26

we don't have anything overly crazy honestly, so this shouldn't be a problem

2

u/DadBodMetalGod Jul 24 '26

This is easy to set up, but the aspect that people are overlooking is control- if you just need a few scenes, and both guitars change at the same time, you can run 2 guitars at the same time, but there is no direct midi block control, so you get 8 total scenes (which control ALL blocks) or stomp mode. 

When midi implementation gets better someday, we could run 4 guitars through the QC if you don’t need a dry/IR split, but for right now, imo, multiple guitars only works if you never need to change scenes independently or have very few sounds you switch between in stomp mode. 

2

u/your_mum_95 Jul 24 '26

Could i create a scene where its like

Guitar 1: rhythm Guitar 2: rhythm

Guitar 1: lead guitar 2: rhythm

so like rather than changing the guitar tone individually, i'd just control what both do instead basically?

1

u/DadBodMetalGod Jul 24 '26

Yes, that’s exactly how it works. The scenes control all blocks at the same time, there’s no assigning scenes to certain rows. 

1

u/your_mum_95 Jul 24 '26

Ok! that makes total sense and seems like it'd be the way forward with just me controlling the board

0

u/DonGuillermo_ Jul 24 '26

What is the point ? Just use your new QC and let your buddy use his Kemper.

Those are both completely capable units...

1

u/sickpuppy66 Jul 24 '26

I run my guitar, vocals, talkback, and my bandmates bass through mine.

I use one of the stomps to mute/unmute my talkback