My Cover band Kemper setup (a good set of rigs)

I realize that I am in good company here when I state that I am a tone-a-holic. I like my guitar to sound great at gigs .... and be repeatably good at every gig. I use an American Strat with Lindy Fralin pickups.

Starting out, I tried the built in rigs that come with the Kemper. I still use one of them, but that is it. I have tried litterally every rig that comes with the Kemper, most of the rigs that have been raved about in these forums from the rig exchange, and I have collected a few purchased rigs from TAF to fill in where I couldn't quite get what I wanted.

I rarely left the rigs completely untouched. I frequently increased the clarity on distorted rigs, and I lowered or eliminated the delay on most cleans to taste. Some rigs from the stock rigs and rig exchange needed some equalization as well.

Here is what I ended up with:

Cleans:

Soldano SLO Clean by LasseLammert (Rig Exchange): This rig sound beautiful in every pickup position. It is just impossible to make sound bad no matter what I do. Think goo goo dolls "Slide" tone.

Chorused Surface by Kemper Amps (Shipped with Kemper): It is a little on the warm side of clean, but is really nice for a thick layered clean that fills in the mix nicely. The neck and neck, middle pickup positions are a bit washed out with this one, but everything else sounds great.

A-Goldfinger Clean by from TAF (And44): This rig gives a more natural clean .... a stringey clean if you will. Think something like the guitar line for Incubus "Drive". The rig works great in all pickup positions.

Classic Rock Low Gain

A-TwoRock 35 Clean+ from TAF: I boost the gain a little on this to get a bit more break up, but I love the way this rig barks and quacks depending on what pickup position you use. Think of the tone of the guitar on "Give me three steps".

TAF-TwoRock Jet Clean+ (TAF, but comes with Kemper): It is similar to the one above, but has a bit more bite and is a little clearer.

Classic Rock mid gain

A-TwoRock 35 Cranked (TAF): This is a very versatile rig. Depending on your propensity for heaviness, this may be as heavy as you need to go. It bites and growles very nicely and reacts beautifully to all pickup positions. Full up on the volume knob for "Hard to Handle", and roll off the volume and switch to the neck pickup for some growley blues.

High Gain Rock

JCM 900 HiGain 100W by J450N on the Rig Exchange: This is a very ballsey rig. I have had the best luck with this using pickup position bridge + middle. This gives a great Three Doors Down sound for songs like "Love Me When I'm Gone".

Really high gain Rock (Thick gain)

Boogie MARKIIC+ by Djemass on the Rig Exchange: Just WOW. This is my go to rig for stuff like Metalica "Sandman". If I use the bridge pickup it produces a beautiful bite that slices through the mix. Move back on the middle pickup or bridge+middle and you have a less in-your-face heavy sound. This is one of those rigs that just puts a smile on your face when you thump a palm mute followed by a ringing cord

Anyway, I just wanted to give a little back to the forum since I have gotten so much out of it. Hopefully this helps out a few others working out their performance rig setups. I have spent hundreds of hours getting to where I am now. With my rigs all in performances and volume balanced relative to each other, I can honestly say that I have NEVER had a better sounding rig in my life.

Thanks guys.

I am taking a look at those SinMix free rigs.

Without doing much to them, my initial impression is that these rigs don't come with lots of fluff around them. They have good solid tone and leave it up to you to add in the frills if you want them. Some of them seemed a little bottom heavy ..... but that may be common among metal heads

Thanks for the tip. I think I may well end up with one or more of these on my "go to" list.

Quote from sixtycycle

I hope I didn't miss this somewhere and apologize if I did but what is your stage setup? I see the guitar your using but expand further on the rest of your live gear please.
Thanks in advance.

I use a Behringer FCB1010 with the Uno4Kemper chip as a foot controller. I am the lead singer and play rhythm guitar with only a small amount of lead work. The Kemper is DI into my X32 Rack. We use the Furman wired IEM system for monitoring and have the stereo mix and 4 mono mixes that can be mixed by each band member (4 of us. 2 guitars, bass and drums).

The vocal mics are ND767a's, the lead guitar mic is a Sennheiser e609, the bass and vDrums are DI into the X32 Rack. The lead guitar is the only stage noise. We use a plexiglass shield around the guitar amp to keep the speaker from beaming out into the audience. FOH speakers are DSR112's over PRX618S-XLF's. Mixing is performed from on-stage with an iPad Mini on a stand clip directly in front of me, or out in the audience in a bigger venue when we hire out for a full time sound engineer.

Quote from klassiker

I'm also playing in a rock cover band, but I only use 6 profiles of my ENGL Ironball setup which I profiled at home. They work quite well for me at gigs and rehearsals.Our singer who is an audio engineer (SAE) loves them, too

If someone wants to give them a try, search for "ironball" on rig exchange:
ENGL Ironball E606 1
ENGL Ironball E606 2
ENGL Ironball E606 3
ENGL Ironball E606 4
ENGL Ironball E606 5
ENGL Ironball E606 6

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Thanks! I'll have to give them a try. The only problem I have with the Rig Exchange is that it is hard to sort through the gozillion rigs for the real gems!.

What kind of guitar are you using with these rigs?

klassiker,

Quote

I'm also playing in a rock cover band, but I only use 6 profiles of my ENGL Ironball setup which I profiled at home. They work quite well for me at gigs and rehearsals.Our singer who is an audio engineer (SAE) loves them, too

If someone wants to give them a try, search for "ironball" on rig exchange:
ENGL Ironball E606 1
ENGL Ironball E606 2
ENGL Ironball E606 3
ENGL Ironball E606 4
ENGL Ironball E606 5
ENGL Ironball E606 6

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I did check these out. My favorite after some tweak time was 6!

I found that on my rig, all of them had some harshness up high, but then I am using a strat, so one might expect some brittleness compared to a humbucker.

I did some tweaking and got a really great sound out of that last rig (which I intend to try out in a few songs). Would you mind if I posted my tweaks of your rig #6 back up on the Rig Exchange? I think that anyone with a classic sounding strat would immensely enjoy this rig once it was "tuned" to that kind of a guitar.

I didn't have time to play with any of the other rigs other than giving them a quick listen. I probably spent 20-30 minutes polishing #6 .... and then about 1 hour loving the way it sounded as I noodled

Very nice. Thank you.

Quote from klassiker

OneEng1: Thanks for the feedback. Feel free to upload any rig you created based on my rigs to rig exchange.

In the past I used commercial rigs which sounded ok, but something was missing. Obviously the rigs were ok for the guitars (usually Les Paul, Stratocaster, Telecaster etc.) which were used for setting up the amps to profile, but not with my Ibanez.

After I bought my ENGL Ironman and adjusted the amp sound to my guitar before I profiled it, I finally got the results I need for my band setup.

Thanks!

I am finding that the key to the Kemper is much the same.

I can easily get "good" sound from many rigs ....... but to get a truly inspired tone, it requires time and effort to tweak the rig to work with my guitars and PA setup.

The hallmark of a good rig (for me) isn't necessarily one that sound fantastic out of the gate, but rather that I am able to make sound good on many guitars and guitar setups easily. In specific, I have some rigs that sound great on position 2 of my strat pickup selector switch, but sound like an ice pick on position 1. Other rigs may sound good on 1 and 2 but are pure mud on 4 or 5. My really great rigs sound fantastic on all positions ..... not the same .... great, but different!