Neural DSP Nano Cortex

To start with the positives, I tried capturing two of my amps yesterday and the results were genuinly incredible... I've never heard any other digital unit, whether its technology was based on modelling, profiling/capturing or whatever, reproducing the detail and clarity of a real mic'd up amp as accurately as the Nano Cortex. I haven't tried the ToneX, but I don't really see the need to - it physically can't get a hell of a lot better than this. The NDSP capture process is relatively fast and painless as well, more so than the ToneX process from my understanding. A couple minutes of ghastly noises that would make any priest worth his salt immediately go fetch his bottle of holy water, followed by a couple minutes of number crunching in silence, and you're left with an impressively accurate capture.

On the negative side, it's very unfortunate that Neural DSP decided to dumb this unit down as much as they did. It's simply not going to be a comprehensive rig for the vast majority of players. Myself included, who admittedly don't have the biggest demands or need the most complex rig, but having a little bit of "headroom" feature wise in a unit like this is never a bad thing. The fact that they did include some effects makes it a somewhat "neither fish nor fowl" kind of product, and thus a bit unclear what exact purpose it's intended to serve. The way I see it, it's pretty expensive for a pure capturing device, and they probably realised that and decided to add a couple of extremely limited, half baked effects to make it seem like a decent deal compared to something like the Kemper Player.

I've dreamt of something like this for a long time, a tiny unit that fits in a gig bag pocket and sounds killer. And while it certainly does fit that description, it still leaves a lot to be desired. I'll have to either expand it with something like a Line 6 HX Stomp, or simply swap it for a Quad Cortex to make it cover everything I need. Which, again, isn't all that much.

Excellent and easy to use device, pairs quickly with phone , no drop outs so far , the cloud is easy to use .The sound is really really good , works well with gtr volume knob , same as a amp. delay, modulation, reverb are all excellent.if you need more effects just add some, they work very well with this pedal. I have a Timmy type overdrive and it sounds amazing with this.
559 for all these amp sounds + reverb + mod+ delay, ir's etc, is a good bang for the buck. the lack of a screen makes it easier to use and less prone to option nuttiness which is a good thing , you play it more often. I 've had the boss gt1000 core , Headrush MX5 and these needed a lot of work to get a good sound ,this is just so good sounding out of the box its unreal and then you so many sounds on the cloud as well as the neural capture thing , whats not to like. Some people seem to think the fixed line of effects is limiting , but you can add delay, reverbs etc at the end and the mods ,distortion ,wah etc at the start just like an amp. So whats not to like , yeh the price isn't fun but you get a lot for it and is easy to use, as say an ordinary distortion pedal .
Avery good exercise in ergonomics.

The unit fits my needs exactly. I am a simple tube amp user - rarely go over 3 presets: clean, rhythm, lead that are dialed in and stay intact forever. I do not use many effects with my amps, go straight guitar-amp-cab. Sometimes throw in an old TC Booser+ and a delay. I used to carry around a Kemper rack in a box that had my amps profiled, and was looking to get a smaller hi-end unit that could replace it. My frustration is over. To be honest, I was looking at the Kemper player as well (since I mostly profile/capture my own tube amps), but I have chosen the Nanocortex because for its superior pitch shifter and ability to profile my amps with a booster engaged spot on. It is known that the Kemper struggles with profiling amps with multiple gain stages, also, with an overdrive added (I know there are many in Kemper, but they don't come close to the one I have). Often, for me, after refining the end result is not consistent, multiple attempts all sounded differently. The Nanocortex did it for me perfectly from the first try. I was able to reproduce the same capture sound over again. The cloud "thing" of Neural that is available from mobile devices is inferior to Kemper's own rig manager, in my opinion. There is definitely a room for improvement. It is quite annoying to upload IRs via the cloud and use on smaller mobile devices. Pity it doesn't have a desktop app. The pitch shifter works better than Kemper's version and has better latency than a standalone Digitech Drop pedal (that still has better note tracking).