The ultimate portable guitar and bass rig? Neural DSP reveals the Nano Cortex – its portable follow-up to the Quad Cortex

Neural DSP Nano Cortex.

Neural DSP has revealed its ambitious follow-up to the Quad Cortex – the smaller, more affordable Nano Cortex, offering 25 onboard amp captures, IRs and Quad Cortex effects. You can check out our review soon, where we detail the two biggest surprises of this new portable pedal…

The Nano Cortex can capture amps and drive pedals without any external software or the Cortex app you can access over 34,000 captures with. It's also USB-C powered as well as mains – meaning it can be powered by a laptop or power bank.

A pedal amp, recording interface, portable practice tool and capture device, the Nano Cortex's price also sees Neural DSP opening up its hardware tech to more players.

"Having a second hardware unit, it means a lot to us," Neural DSP co-founder Francisco Cresp tells MusicRadar. "Because the first one was such a difficult project that took so many years. Having had the success that we had with that product meant the world to us and encouraged us to do a second one. 

"We want to make our platform available to more people. The entry-level point for our platform is really high and not everybody can afford that. We just wanted to do something simpler with the core essence of the company, which is Neural Capture, in a very small format but with other features."

The Nano Cortex also features onboard effects from the Quad Cortex: a pitch shifter, noise gate, modulation , analogue-style delay and hall reverb  (Image credit: Future)

Amp captures differ from the models the Quad Cortex also offers in a fundamental way, but may pros choose to tour with Neural Captures of their tube amps. A model is a full representation of analogue equipment, and the Neural Capture is a snapshot. It's a picture of the configurations that were set at that time," says Francisco. 

(Image credit: Future)

(Image credit: Future)

(Image credit: Future)

"Neural Capture is one of the most sought after features of Quad Cortex and the Cortex ecosystem," he adds. "Even though full amplifier or pedal models can offer a lot of flexibility and accuracy based on their analogue counterparts, Neural Capture is all about having your own tone. Being able to create and play Neural Captures without the need of an external application or device has not been possible in a small footprint until now. With its simplicity, Nano Cortex is made to be integrated in a pedalboard as the driving engine of your sound." 

The Nano Cortex is priced at  $549 USD / €569 / £499.99 and available from  retailers including Andertons and Sweetwater.