Kemper Amps Forum

Hi,
after months of lurking around here I've finally took the plunge and bought a black Kemper today. I've been playing for 6 hours straight now and just can't stop, it's THAT good

I live in Wiesbaden (though I'm actually from Siegen) and I've been playing guitar for 30 years. Since I came from a former mining-area in Germany I just love the Kemper logo with the mine head tower, it brings back some memories from my childhood days.
Amp-wise I've come a long way as probably all of you. My first amp was a '68 Plexi Marshall that belonged to my school. I didn't know anything about vintage-amps back then (hey, I was 14 then) but I loved the sound (though the amp was half-broken...). I eventually had to give the amp back when I left school and I went through a lot of amps. When I stopped giging I started recording and writing and built a home studio. I downsized my amp-collection and went with low-powered combos. Later I went through many modellers and though some of them sounded decent to my ears and some even pretty good, they always lacked the feel and most of the time I needed an amp they DIDN'T modell for whatever reason or a cab that just wasn't available...
When the recent crop of 5-Watt-amps came out I got into those and thought it would be great to have one of each flavour and got me a Marshall Class 5 (that I modified heavily accordig to the Lyle-Caldwell-chematics) and a Laney Lionheart. Just when I was contemplating which amp to buy for the Fender flavour I heard about the Kemper. And when the User CSGBand profiled his brownface '62 Deluxe (an amp I loved and foolishly sold years ago) I knew I just had to get a Kemper.

And what can I say, this thing is nothing less than sensational! The last time I was so excited about a piece of gear was when I received a sample of the UAD-1 card for a review for a german magazine or when I beta-tested Cubase VST in 1996. I really think the Kemper KPA is on that level, it is really a game changer.
But I have to confess I'm probably the only guy who doesn't like Tills cabs that much. But I have found the Siggi Mehl profiles from the rig pack 1 feature a beautiful greenback cab that sounds like it's loaded with G12M25s and the Kerosin profiles have a cab with blackbacks that sound like 12H30s to me. So those two cabs are tone nirvana for a vintage-freak like me. I threw those on any Plexi-Marshall profile I find in the KPA or the Rig Exchange and it sounds like a fucking vintage Marshall stack to me Andy44 has some great vintage-sounding Marshall cabs too. There is so much to choose from it's unbelievable.
I also really like the modFX, there are some real gems there, love the 12-stage phaser or the X-over chorus (looks like somebody at Kemper has a Boss SE 70 ). I don't care much about the distortion stomps since I use the pedals I already have and love. And since the Kemper takes pedals like a real amp I think I'll stick to those for now.

Now back to playing and thanks again CSGBand for profiling the brownface Deluxe and thus urging me to buy a Kemper!

Cheers,
Rainer

Quoted from "Stemast"

Welcome and enjoy playing with your KPA!

Just imagine, it's great to play now that the KPA is in its early days, think how many great things are to come next!

The only thing I'm really missing are all the nice amps I could profile now if I hadn't sold them over the years.
Of course there is the tone-stack which doesn't work exactely like an amp but Kemper already stated they would take care of that with a tone-stack-library later to come. But I can live very well without it because I've found many amps are profiled at a sweet spot not too far away from where I would have set up the original amp. That Siggi Mehl amp for example exactely nails the tone I would have dialed in a british-style amplifier.

Quoted from "viabcroce"

Hey Rainer, welcome here


PS: Wonder how come the KPA attracts so many musicians from South-Western Germany... and from Italy. And I feel caught in the middle, since I feel I belong a little to the two worlds

Well I'm born in the middle west of Germany, but I live here in the Mainz/Wiesbaden/Frankfurt area for over 20 years. And I love Italy! My wife and me love Venice it's kind of becoming "our" town. We visited Verona last year and a couple of years ago I spent two great weeks in Lucca. I've never been to Rome however, but it's already on our list for one of the next holidays