Real Wah In Front

  • Hello!


    Completely new to the forum and highly interested in / darn close to purchasing a KPA. As an Eleven Rack, POD HD500, tons of plug-in sim's and fairly recent Two Notes Torpedo Live w/Mesa Mark V owner; I realize (especially after the TL) that the low end modelers I have simply aren't getting close to the real deal and am torn between KPA & AFXII - the ol' story, but not digging for any comparison info, just the following:


    How does the KPA handle wahs between the guitar and it?


    The KPA seems to be a better fit for me and my wants to play great sounding amps, as opposed to tweak the crap out of 'em. I do, however, still cling to wah pedals.


    Any response or direction toward an existing discussion would be greatly appreciated.

  • hi brianiac5150,
    and welcome to the forum!


    while the built-in wah pedal of the Profiler has converted many hard-core pedal users, for now you might be glad to hear that the Profiler handles wah/boost/OD/fuzz/etc. pedals in front just fine.


    cheers
    Don

  • Wonderful. I'd be extremely happy to be a "wah" convert, as well, I just have to get past the pedal function hurdle - either with MIDI CC or something along the line of the Mission pedal.


    Thanks for the responses.

  • I love wah....but always hated the tone suck of my wah pedals (standard crybaby stuff...never tried any of the boutique wah pedals that were supposed to compensate for the problem). I actually use a wah more frequently now that I can do it via the KPA with a MIDI foot-controller...zero impact on tone when not engaged...absolutely great wah FX.


    Best advice I can give you is to sell the wah, buy the mission pedal or something ASAP (honestly, even the FCB1010 pedals are fine with me even if the "feel" is different than my old wah...and then you'd have a pedal board) and never look back. You're 'bypassed' tone will thank you (shorter cable run with no pedal in front, no tone suck...ever, complete flexibility between wah sounds).

  • The KPA has the best wah I've heard from a digital unit, including the Axe FX. It's better than most wah pedals I've used too.

  • Best advice I can give you is to sell the wah, buy the mission pedal or something ASAP (honestly, even the FCB1010 pedals are fine with me even if the "feel" is different than my old wah...and then you'd have a pedal board) and never look back. You're 'bypassed' tone will thank you (shorter cable run with no pedal in front, no tone suck...ever, complete flexibility between wah sounds).

    +1


    I also love the fact the the wah turns 'on' as soon as you start rocking the expression pedal, turns 'off' when you stop. Likewise, I use the wah quite a bit more now.

  • the Kemper's guitar input is high impedance - I believe a wah pedal or in general any buffered pedal will reduce the impedance. The main point is that the Kemper's impedance is higher than what is feeding into it, and therefore there is no signal loss.


    I haven't dug into the onboard wah's yet, but there are many different types of wah effects with lots of tweakable parameters. There are posts about settings for emulating other wah pedals, and I'll add more as I see them to the wikpa.org page: http://www.wikpa.org/FX_Settings_%26_Presets#Cry_Baby_Wah I don't think you'd be disappointed ditching the real thing and dialing in the wah sounds you really love.

  • I have a kit-build boutique style wah. Sounds great with the Kemper..... Basically, if your wah sounds good with your amp, it'll sound good with the Kemper.


    As far as tone suck goes, the wah just needs converting to true bypass and you'll be fine.... 10 mins with a decent switch and a soldering iron and you're good.


    Basically, if you've got a *really* traditional wah, the circuit is 'seen' by your guitar pickups even when it's off..... that's why you get tone suck.


    With true bypass pedals, you can still get tone suck (potentially) because of all the cables, switching etc.... Basically, it's the capacitance of 'everything' up until the guitar hits the first buffered pedal OR hits the high impedance amp (or Kemper in this case). So if you have a whole load of true bypass pedals connected with poor quality patch cables you will still get a fair bit of treble loss vs plugging straight in. But a true bypass wah connected with decent cables won't be noticable IMO.

  • I have no doubt it will "work" and hope that is an understood.


    Is there any "tone suck" related to impedance mismatching?


    This is basically what occurs in the 11R and the body is completely lost.


    Let me praise the competition.
    There is no single digital amp ot there that comprizes an impedance mismatch.
    Especially the 11R is very accurate here.
    If there was a tone suck, it was naturally caused by your Wah, as it would happen with every amp, depending of the amp settings.

  • I also love the fact the the wah turns 'on' as soon as you start rocking the expression pedal, turns 'off' when you stop.


    What a minute…explain this, if you will. This could eliminate my concerns altogether.


    Is this just with a particular pedal?


    More info please…

  • Quote

    There is no single digital amp ot there that comprizes an impedance mismatch.


    Likely wrong words, however, when I plug a standard crybaby in front of the 11R it really thins out. A lot more than when through an amp.

  • What a minute…explain this, if you will. This could eliminate my concerns altogether.


    Is this just with a particular pedal?


    More info please…

    All of the Wah effects have a "Pedal Mode" setting that lets you choose how the effect is controlled. You can have it always on at a specific amount, act like an envelope filter, turn on and off when you start and stop moving the pedal, or (my preference) set it to turn off when you've got the pedal either all the way up or down. If you've ever seen the 95Q Crybaby with a spring in it to push the pedal back up and turn it off, you can do the same thing here.

  • On any particular rig where I want a Wah, I have saved the Rig with the Wah effect 'ON', however the effect doesn't actually turn on until I touch the expression pedal. Go into Wah Edit mode and set the Pedal Mode on screen 2 of 3 to "Bypass @ Stop".


    The only other wah pedal that had this 'auto on/off' feature, that I'm aware of is the Ibanez Weeping Demon :)

  • OK. Now that's just absolutely, exactly, insanely, righteously what I wanted in something like this and was completely unaware of. SOLD!


    Thanks for everyone's communication regarding this subject. I hope this helps others looking at the KPA and this feature. I'm really kicking myself for not really digging into Kemper much, much sooner.


    Best Regards!

  • I just started using the spring loaded Mission pedal to control the kemper's wah - feels like a "real" wah and the switchless feature is a must!


    I do have a Berhenger FCB - it has 2 expression pedals, which work OK but are not spring loaded. The settings for a cry baby are posted here: http://www.wikpa.org/FX_Settings_%26_Presets#Cry_Baby_Wah
    I have yet to fully emulate my Moreley Bad Horsie 2 but have come close, just need more time! In the meantime I'm just using the cry baby settings.


    I do the same as yaro, and you can take it one step further if you want, "lock" the wah effect so it's on every preset....


    Welcome - this is an awesome forum!

  • I want to clarify above about impedance and true bypass...


    A pedal true bypass puts no load on your pickups, so all the load would be the amp or in this case the Kemper. Since the Kemper is high-impedance, there is POTENTIALLY no signal loss. Now, if you use 50 ft of cable, there WILL be signal loss - the cable itself is placing a load on your pickups.


    If your pedal has a buffered or active bypass, it will transform the signal to low impedance, which makes it basically impervious to long cable runs. So in some cases a buffered bypass will have less signal loss than a true bypass.


    The reason Wah pedals usually have tone suck is because they themselves are low impedance and place a load on your pickups. This is purposefully done to keep the toe position wah from being too harsh. The problem is that if they do not feature true bypass, they are featuring that signal loss even when the wah is not engaged.


    Most Distortion pedals are high impedance, unlike wah pedals. In this case, true bypass and buffered bypass will sound very similar.


    Of course, this all depends on the buffered bypass circuit design - a poor design can certainly alter the signal.


    So adding a true bypass to a low impedance wah pedal will prevent tone suck when the wah is disengaged; however, this doesn't mean buffered bypass is equivalent to tone suck - only on low impedance devices, and only when those devices are fed a high-impedance load (which in the case of passive guitar pickups is true).

  • "I have yet to fully emulate my Moreley Bad Horsie 2"


    ewrath, doesn't that pedal have a variable contour setting? I'm guessing you're trying to emulate its tone at your favorite setting? I have a Bad Horsie 1 and will end up doing the same thing, but I haven't hooked up any expression pedals yet. Gonna be a fun day!!!!