So I've had my Kemper - nonpowered rack for 22 days. It has sounded really nice and exactly what I was hoping for. Yesterday, my FCB1010 arrived, along with the uno4kemper chip. I did the install, hooked it up, and all was working well, except that there was a weird crackling sound through the input. I switched out everything from guitar to cable to room to outlets, to rig. nothing helped. The crackling goes away when my volume knob on the guitar is all the way down. It is still there when a cord is plugged in even without a guitar - it comes through all of the various outputs and exists despite which input I use. I've searched the forum for answers and haven't found any, but did notice that others have had crackling. I've been playing for 30 years and would've definitely noticed this immediately. I plugged the same cable and guitar into my standard 3rd power amp into the same wall outlet and there is no crackling. Thus, it definitely has something to do with the Kemper. I did a few things at the end of my prior session playing with the kemper that might have caused it or may just be coincidental in time:
- plugged in a new FCB1010
- did a rig back up to the flash drive
- deleted all non-favorite rigs from the kemper
I did the flash init/reset that I read about on these boards. That did not solve the problem. turning the noisegate up to about 7 stops the crackling when I'm not playing, but you can still hear it when I am playing. Plus, I've never needed a noisegate and would hate ot "have" to use one as a workaround as my tones are mostly clean and crunch stuff, but nothing high gain.
I have started a work ticket with Kemper support, but was hoping that maybe someone on here knows of the issue or seen it resolved. Kemper support has already asked me to do a few things and they have been very responsive, but I would like all the help and insight I can get.
I keep thinking that either the FCB1010 somehow shorted/messed up the input (though I'm not sure how that would happen given it gets plugged into the midi connections), or one of these actions noted above caused some sort of software glitch that is causing the problem. Or, I suppose, I might have a faulty input jack, but that seems unlikely since the same crackling occurs with the alternate input on the back.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. I'm still within the window for the next 6 days to return to Guitar Center without issue. If I do that, I'd like it to be because I'm reasonably assured there was a hardware issue and I'd rather have a new unit without the issue than already be fixing this unit. But if it is a simply software glitch, then that'd be great to know so I can avoid all of the return repurchase hassle....