I think I've found my go-to cab

For those of you who don't know me, I'm a metal guy. I don't discriminate - Dokken, Maiden, Periphery, or Hatebreed. Anyway, I haven't demo'ed a huge amount of cabs yet, but after doing a good shoot-out with a few different cabs last night, including Till's Recto (not sure which version), one cab emerged the clear winner.

From Lasse Lammert's recent rig pack, the Mesa Rectifier cab on the LL ChugChug rig is head and heels above all the others I demo'ed.

Try it out and let me know what you think. Seems very balanced - I EQ'ed things a few different ways and it never exposed any "problem" areas. You always get a clean, high-quality tone.

EDIT: I can't tell if I'm liking Lasse's cabs or TillS more at the moment. see post 12 for more info on TillS Rectifier cabs.

Yes, indeed. I've actually been kind of avoiding some of the Pod HD circles since I got this thing. I don't want to dog the Pod, but I'm afraid there is no other conclusion at this point. I haven't turned the Pod on since I got the Kemper. I eventually want to use it as a midi controller and possibly for some effects the Kemper doesn't have or I can't fit on the Kemper. But my first priority is to get some good sounding Kemper rigs and A/B Kemper vs. Pod HD. Gonna be a sad day for L6 fanboys.

Good to see your name again as well. I remember you talking about the Kemper I guess about a year or so ago. Your satisfaction spoke a lot to me, especially since you, like me, aren't the type of guy that's going to dump a ton of money on gear that doesn't absolutely blow you away.

Now we can fight about EQ'ing the crap out of your rigs! Hehe, actually, the Kemper is much, much, much simpler in that regards. It is not limited by crappy cabinet simulations that have to be used in parallel, but also adjusted for phasing issues via EQ block latency. LMAO - what a disgusting little hack that was. So now, you just find the right cabinet, make some small tweaks using the BMTP tonestack, and maybe add a Studio EQ to lop off the extremes and tame any problem areas or get just the right emphasis on some part of the mids.

I know I'm a total KPA noob, but I already feel like I have a dozen or so rigs that could satisfy me for the next year. With the Pod I was never satisfied. I was proud of how nice I could get it to sound...but I never stopped tweaking in the 2+ years I've had it.

Saving cabs off of a rig is a slight pain, and I actually need a bit more info on it. I've heard you can use copy/paste with the name. I know there is a feature request for the cab name to automatically populate from the rig's cabinet tag instead of whatever the last cab preset you saved.

Also, when I save a cab preset, am I actually saving the cab somewhere onto the KPA, or is my cab preset simply pointing to the rig that has that cabinet. IOW, if I delete the LL ChugChug rig from my KPA, will I no longer be able to use the cab preset I saved from that rig?

I have played with most of the DEP's on the amp and cabs. I found the cab ones can very quickly get to WTF territory. I haven't messed with the low/high shift at all, but I have found some rigs where these values were adjusted. After 0'ing them out, I found that the original author's tweaks actually did improve the sound. But I have found staying with +/- 1 from 0 is a good way to start. I have yet to start to really get a good feel of "ok, this cabinet needs some low shift", etc. Usually I can hear a tone for a few seconds before I can feel where I should tweak.

Will, I know you're a fan of the "character" parameter, and I have also had good success bumping this up, although I never go past +2.

With the LL ChugChug cabinet, though, I find keeping everything at 0 is pretty much a perfect cab/mic tone for me.

Little update - I explored TillS cabs more in-depth for the Rectifier cabs. I think I like the ones where you get more of the SM 57 in the mix - little brighter and crispier. I found 55, 56, 59, 63, and 66 were my favorites. Some of them can still sound a little round on the low mids, like there's a resonance that kind of dominates the tone. It's not necessarily bad - in many contexts I like it, and it's true to the cab's tone. But I find it can make the tone too dull sometimes, so what I like to do is set Low Shift around -0.2 to -0.4. This seems to push that resonance lower than what shows up in the cabinet tone - basically just gets rid of it. Now the cabinet sounds crispy again. I also found increasing High Shift between +0.1 to +0.4 could add some sizzle to the tone. And the result is still a very natural sound. Really starting to appreciate those parameters.

I bought my first amp factory single last night - the Mark V. But I was clearing out room to import those rigs and ended up staying up until 2:00 AM because I kept getting side-tracked and never even imported it. Seriously my chops are getting ridiculously good due to this thing - I can't stop playing. I'll let yall know how the cabinet on these sound.

yeah the cabinet sounds amazing. This is the Amp Factory's Mark V pack. The amp profile is freakin awesome too. I think this is my new favorite. Compared to most profiles, it's very midsy, but everything is very organic. It really sounds A LOT like a REAL AMP AND CAB IN THE FREAKIN ROOM. I of course use a Studio EQ to cut right at 750 HZ a la Petrucci. You can probably get by without it using the EQ block. I encourage you to cough up the ~$8.50 on this pack. The cleans and crunchs are nice too.

My only caveat is that the amp profiles are not dialed in like I like - I made a Graphic EQ preset called "bright" (EDIT: I put this in the stomp section) that cuts bass and boosts treble, which each band having more and more volume, so like a diagonal line. This dials in that searing, crisp, tight sound that I prefer on the Mark V.

i didn't feel like digging it out of a backup, but here's a picture of it - real simple to set up, just a progressively larger amount of gain on each band, but I back off when I get to the last 2 bands:

[Blocked Image: http://www.foobazaar.com/kemper/eq/bright_settings.JPG]

Just start at mix 0% and move up until you hit the sweet spot where the amp isn't muddy but is still fat.

yes it is pre-stack and I rarely get close to 100% Mix.

I would advise to first adjust the amp's Definition parameter so that the tone isn't too thin or too fat, then add this in.