Nano Cortex One Month Review (Long😔)

[Full Beam]

So…..this is a little follow up to my original very long winded take on the Nano Cortex when I got it. As many of you know, a new 2.0 update was released yesterday, 4/25/25. I updated and tweaked it and used it last night and today on a couple gigs. Let me just say this update was unexpected with zero pre announcements to let us know it was coming. Updates include 47 additional effects and processing item. Additional overdrives, choruses, reverbs, eq's, delays and many others. Also, noise gate was put in its own slot at the beginning to free up a block. One helpful change is the ability to now place effects in different spots instead of specific ones which helps with one of the biggest gripes about this unit. Some things like pitch transpose can still only occupy slot one and certain things are still only available in either pre or post of your captures and IRs but the ability to move many of them around is a huge benefit. I was using the Nano as my basic amp sound having captured a favorite amp of mine and then using my HX Stomp XL for a few effects. I am now going to scale my increasingly bloated pedalboard back and eliminate my HX Stomp XL, my Empress bass compressor and my Broughton HPF (high pass filter). For me, the choruses and addition of the new phaser has allowed me to ditch those other units and reduce my pedalboard significantly. I now use the SSL (solid state comp), the 229 chorus and the phase 95 in my presets and the results these past two gigs have been more than I could have hoped for. I'll cut this short for now and say, like in my original post, this is solely a subjective issue and your application, instrument and configuration can be wildly different but my short time with this unit and new update has allowed it to finally be my all-in-one bass workstation and the free update has opened it up to me getting all the results that I require for my current band and song situation.

Great to hear. I bought one last month and have used it for recording at home, with great success and enjoyment. The new update is tempting me to use it live too – there are certainly sufficient processors, time-based effects, compressors, filters, and so on, and the flexibility in terms of signal path is very welcome. May I ask if you are still bound by the limitation of only 4 presets readily available, with the foot switches at least? – I'd love to be able to even cycle through >4 somehow!

 

[Rockgeezer]

Yes, unfortunately you still only have the four patches from those two foot switches but I have several midi pedals and I am considering looking into their use if I need more preset choices in live situations.

 

[Rockgeezer]

I ended up adding a M-Vave Chocolate midi foot controller for preset switching and it's working perfectly.

 

[meisi]

I am now going to scale my increasingly bloated pedalboard back and eliminate my HX Stomp XL, my Empress bass compressor and my Broughton HPF (high pass filter). For me, the choruses and addition of the new phaser has allowed me to ditch those other units and reduce my pedalboard significantly. I now use the SSL (solid state comp), the 229 chorus and the phase 95 in my presets and the results these past two gigs have been more than I could have hoped for.

are you still liking the onboard SSL compressor over your standalone empress or have you found a reason to go back?

 

[Rockgeezer]

are you still liking the onboard SSL compressor over your standalone empress or have you found a reason to go back?

Yes, I have now had enough time and shows to be perfectly happy with the "solid state"(SSL) onboard Nano compressor. The Empress is a great compressor but I was just simplifying and scaling back my pedalboard as I mentioned previously. I have it set at 4/1 ratio, 30 ms attack and .15s(150ms) release times. 14 db makeup gain and mix at 80% to add a bit of uncompressed signal. The only thing lacking is the visual LED amount of compression and input signal found on the Empress. Only other thing missing on the Nano SSL is the ability to adjust the frequency where it starts compressing like on the Empress. But I find there's really nothing to my ears that I'm missing in terms of tone, punch and overall feel of a compressed bass signal. I just use my ears and it sounds "right". Also, as an added note here, I do have the parametric eq block in use on all my presets mainly for a tiny bit of focused boost or cut on a couple midrange frequencies plus setting a HPF (high pass filter) at 60 Hz and a LPF (low pass filter) at 5KHz. A nice little story here is I recently played one of our tribute band shows up at The Villages Savannah Center auditorium (850 seater) and when I sound checked my bass, the sound engineer asked me right off if I had a compressor in my rig. I told him yes, the SSL type model in the Nano and he responded he could tell right away and complimented on the SSL style choice and he didn't need the typical compression he routinely used on bass for other touring acts. That was a very nice validation to me that it was being effective and doing what I needed to do. All in all, the Nano has been a very satisfying core item to my bass pedalboard especially after this latest large update.

 

[meisi]

Yes, I have now had enough time and shows to be perfectly happy with the "solid state"(SSL) onboard Nano compressor. The Empress is a great compressor but I was just simplifying and scaling back my pedalboard as I mentioned previously. I have it set at 4/1 ratio, 30 ms attack and .15s(150ms) release times. 14 db makeup gain and mix at 80% to add a bit of uncompressed signal. The only thing lacking is the visual LED amount of compression and input signal found on the Empress. Only other thing missing on the Nano SSL is the ability to adjust the frequency where it starts compressing like on the Empress. But I find there's really nothing to my ears that I'm missing in terms of tone, punch and overall feel of a compressed bass signal. I just use my ears and it sounds "right". Also, as an added note here, I do have the parametric eq block in use on all my presets mainly for a tiny bit of focused boost or cut on a couple midrange frequencies plus setting a HPF (high pass filter) at 60 Hz and a LPF (low pass filter) at 5KHz. A nice little story here is I recently played one of our tribute band shows up at The Villages Savannah Center auditorium (850 seater) and when I sound checked my bass, the sound engineer asked me right off if I had a compressor in my rig. I told him yes, the SSL type model in the Nano and he responded he could tell right away and complimented on the SSL style choice and he didn't need the typical compression he routinely used on bass for other touring acts. That was a very nice validation to me that it was being effective and doing what I needed to do. All in all, the Nano has been a very satisfying core item to my bass pedalboard especially after this latest large update.

Awesome, really appreciate the thorough reply.

I'm not much of a compressor user but given the opportunity to knob fiddle I most certainly will. Mostly have used the 1176 but will check out the SSL with your settings next chance I get!

 

[meisi]

NanOS 2.1.0 is now available

We’re excited to announce the release of NanOS 2.1.0. This update introduces several highly requested features.

neuraldsp.com

Pretty decent update with new features considering 2.0 just came out.

I think I'm going to have to splurge on a midi foot switch now that CC are in the cards.

 

[Rockgeezer]

Nice….2.0 update was huge and took care of all my bass needs. This latest 2.1 incorporates several items that users have been asking for including midi cc, tap tempo, bug fixes, etc. I really didn't need much additional for my needs but the ability to bypass cabinet IR's now on either output instead of only global is nice and allows me to send IR-included preset to FOH and IR-bypassed signal to my GR Bass AT2x12 Active cab onstage. Nice to see updates rolled out sooner rather than later. The Nano has been a workhorse for me now with well over 100 shows in use and I'm very satisfied with it.

 

[krispn]

Gonna have an opportunity to try one of these at the weekend under the guise of helping my guitarist set up some tones. Heard the Heritage SVT on a demo online and liked it. Plus I may capture my pedal board on there too



What midi controllers are folk using as I've a feeling he's gonna ask. To be fair the 4 available slots should work well for him as clean drive and maybe a chorus clean should cover his needs.

I'm not gonna lie I'm setting up a bank solely for bass tones as he's gonna A/B it on an upcoming gig against the HX stomp XL and I may ask to try it during a set he's using the HX XL.

Any good tips/advice?
I normally run into a Basswitch compressor>Simone (DI out into a Cab M+ to FOH with the Mesa PH410 IR).
I then have some drive on the 1/4" out from Simone going to the amp via a Four On The Floor, Rodenberg LDP and a Pork and Pickle.

 

[MrDinsdale]

I put a few captures of the Shifline SLO mk3 that I really loved. They were great for stacking drives too.

No advice regarding midi controllers but one thing I would say is definitely experiment with the gain settings on captures. There were a few I wrote off pretty quickly which were obviously captured with very different input gain to my setup.

 

[_Tay_]

Do the amp captures have a good response, say when you dig in?? I was looking at the new origin b15 pedal that sounds awesome but have since heard a neural capture at a friends house that sounds pretty damn good. To me there are bonuses to getting the nano instead (as it is a similar price)

Would love to hear any opinions on this. I am interested in how the captures "feel" when you play, more than anything. Cheers!

 

[Mr. voodoobass]

Do the amp captures have a good response, say when you dig in?? I was looking at the new origin b15 pedal that sounds awesome but have since heard a neural capture at a friends house that sounds pretty damn good. To me there are bonuses to getting the nano instead (as it is a similar price)

Would love to hear any opinions on this. I am interested in how the captures "feel" when you play, more than anything. Cheers!

Yes i think they do. I did a few captures of my dcx bass and hudson broadcast, and they came out rather dynamic.
Each became a bit dirtier than expected, but can be dialed down after. And when you gain them up after, it sounds and feels pretty much like the pedals themselves.

 

[_Tay_]

Yes i think they do. I did a few captures of my dcx bass and hudson broadcast, and they came out rather dynamic.
Each became a bit dirtier than expected, but can be dialed down after. And when you gain them up after, it sounds and feels pretty much like the pedals themselves.

Thanks I'll have to check them out. Bought the nano and really blown away by how good it is. Relegated most of my board to the shelf now. Only have 2 pedals, a sushi box going into the nano. Sounds awesome!

 

[KontraBoss]

hi there. As a quad cortex owner I'd like to ask all nano cortex owner: don't you miss the DI-out in on-stage-situations? or at least do the sound guys miss the DI-out?

 

[Mr. voodoobass]

It's balanced out, just like on the hx stomp. So no problem at all.

 

[meisi]

Yep, TRS to XLR adapters are a pin to pin adapter. No funny stuff.

TS to XLR are the bad bunnies.