Our Kempers both caught fire tonight

  • " Smoooooke on the Kemper, and fire under sky "


    it will be interesting to see the outcome ...god luck :D

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  • Sad to hear this BUT The most impressive thing to me is whatever the cause Mr. Kemper wasted no time in getting to the bottom of this. I had a similar situation with a piece of equipment and it was a nightmare to even get the company to even attempt to help me. This is customer service at its best. Kudos to Kemper.

  • Sad to hear this BUT The most impressive thing to me is whatever the cause Mr. Kemper wasted no time in getting to the bottom of this. I had a similar situation with a piece of equipment and it was a nightmare to even get the company to even attempt to help me. This is customer service at its best. Kudos to Kemper.

    Yeah, the Kemper company was on this before I had a chance to finish a cup of tea. I had PMs from the powers that be with concerns immediately. They really do care about their name and the equipment. I'm happy that none of you have experienced this. One thing I want to stress is I'm not pointing the finger at anyone and it's absolutely not from poor quality or bad service. It's electronics, it can fail. You can buy a Ferrari and have an O2 sensor fart out on you. Going forward I'm not sure what we will do as a band and what gear we'll use but it's no reflection on the KPA as a quality unit. It's more that if one piece of gear goes down then the whole rig is down. We were playing without backups which was partly my fault. We were able to borrow amps from our space and get through rehearsals. I went out today and bought an amp as a "Just in case" measure. Regardless, it's good to know the problem is localized. Just so everyone knows, we use both the XLR outs and the Monitor out at the same time. There was potentially some kind of arc'ing or something going on. I don't want to speculate as I'm not an electrician and to give the Kemper folks time to figure it out and fix it. I also don't want anyone to worry.

  • I'll be waiting to hear the circumstances surrounding this event. Since these are rack units, they would certainly they are under warranty. Is it being addressed at a Kemper warranty station?

  • Yep, this is why I still bring my RP355 (and a backup guitar, and extra cables) to every gig.


    LOL My backup for years was an RP250 and Crate Power Block.

    PRS Singlecuts
    Kemper PowerHead/Remote



    Quote from skoczy

    When you turn the knob on KPA, you wake up the captured souls of tube amps living inside.

  • Where did you get your kemper from in Vancouver?
    Rockspace is rehersal only now isn't it? I thought it got gutted from the little mountain studio days
    Hope you get the issue sorted, I almost went down to demo mine there thru a PA.

  • Where did you get your kemper from in Vancouver?
    Rockspace is rehersal only now isn't it? I thought it got gutted from the little mountain studio days
    Hope you get the issue sorted, I almost went down to demo mine there thru a PA.

    Long and McQuade is a Kemper dealer. We got ours at the Terminal Drive location.


    Garth Richardson bought both Rockspace and the studio next door and completely remodelled them. He sold his studio on the island known as The Farm and relocated it to the old studio location next to Rockspace. The whole complex is now called Fader Mountain Sound. The Farm is his studio which is the old main room next door. He added a 72 channel SSL he got from Danny Elfman. Actually we were the first band he produced on that board too! The place is awesome now and completely renovated from the way it was. There are actually 6 recording studios in the building now, 4 rehearsal rooms, 1 of which is also a pre-production studio, and bedrooms for visiting bands etc... We've been rehearsing there since finishing our album since it was an easy move in being only a few feet away.

  • Didn't know they did the switch there, they did call me a while ago to update my contact info.
    I went to L&M but they said it would be a month wait so I got one at steves.
    I'm an electrician and it sounds a bit suspicious with the power there , but regardless hope it gets worked out! Were you putting the kemper direct to PA that's what I was going to do there and maybe rent some amps and do some profiles lol

  • Didn't know they did the switch there, they did call me a while ago to update my contact info.
    I went to L&M but they said it would be a month wait so I got one at steves.
    I'm an electrician and it sounds a bit suspicious with the power there , but regardless hope it gets worked out! Were you putting the kemper direct to PA that's what I was going to do there and maybe rent some amps and do some profiles lol

    Where the damage is, has nothing to do with bad power. The back of the unit was taken off in my presence and I saw first hand where it was.


    Here is a photo from the tech... This is no where near the power section. This is between the monitor and XLR outs. Also we do NOT use phantom power. Even if we did however the unit is stated to be protected from that. Just to put to bed the "Bad Power" issue, which is a non issue.


    Also we don't use the PA at the space. We have our own IEM system. The board is an Allen and Heath WZ3 M12. Not a cheap board known to fail.


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  • Message from our hardware engineer, who designed the circuit board. He watched the pictures you have posted and could give a first analysis.


    A transistor and probably an adjaced diode have been toasted by a high voltage coming from outside into the Monitor input. The voltage might be caused by a big voltage difference between the Profilers electrical ground and the ground of the connected device.


    Such damage cannot be caused by the Profiler itself. The said transistor is about the last component right before the monitor jack, thus with most electrical distance to the rest of the inner circuit, but the most close to the connected device.


    It is the first time that such a case was reported to us.


    What was connected to the monitor outs?

  • The monitor out went to the input of a Class D power amp, and then to my 4X12. The first thing I did was make sure it was hooked up properly though, which it was. It was working for a few minutes before the issue. The same thing happened to our other guitarist and his KPA about 10 minutes later. Unless the power amps burped on us I don't know where the power reversal would have come from.

  • Have you checked the amp of the fuse used in the kettle plug? I know from my own setup that power amps can use different fuses. My alto ts112a uses 13amp fuse, but, my JBL PRX612M uses 5amp fuses for it's kettle lead. It's very easy to use the wrong one which is why I label my kettle leads.

  • ]The monitor out went to the input of a Class D power amp, and then to my 4X12. The first thing I did was make sure it was hooked up properly though, which it was. It was working for a few minutes before the issue. The same thing happened to our other guitarist and his KPA about 10 minutes later. Unless the power amps burped on us I don't know where the power reversal would have come from.


    You didn't connect the power amp out to the monitor out accidently, did you? That would explain the error, I did that once to my 11 rack back in the days... buffer was gone - luckily it was an easy replaceable SO-08 housing.
    Besides: as it is not the power section - the failure must have been in the power amp - there's no way a DA converter (or buffer) can burn a transistor.
    It is weird though that both your kemper went down, as unlikely it is that both Kempers had a failure at the same time it is with the power amps...

    MJT Strats / PRS Guitars / Many DIY Guitars -- Kemper Profiler Rack / Kemper Remote / InEar

  • Quote

    This is no where near the power section. This is between the monitor and XLR outs. Also we do NOT use phantom power. Even if we did however the unit is stated to be protected from that. Just to put to bed the "Bad Power" issue, which is a non issue.


    "Bad power" can come from many places!


    That A&H mixer wouldn't be immune to earth/over voltage/short circuit possibilities being sent down the XLR and frying nearby components.