Jazz Profiles for the KPA?

  • hey world, new(ish) KPA-user here, glad to be on board :)


    with that out of the way, let's get right to the meat and potatoes... i am playing in an organ-trio, and at the moment
    i am either plugging my 335 directly into an AER compact 60 (otherwise known as the "bingo"), which gives me a really beatiful,
    rich, dark-yet-not-muddy sound that i like a lot, not very much unlike jim hall or pat metheny (aside from the playing of course, haha). or
    if i'm in need for some effetcs or distortion, i'm going into an old trusty gt8 and then into said amp or, if ithe situation calls for a bit more punch to my sound,
    an old fender blues deluxe/tweed edition, no hot rod.


    i'm now planning on replacing the gt8 with the KPA in both situations (as you may have guessed), and am looking for some nice rigs which will
    give me THAT tone i am looking for. so far, on the rig exchange i have only found the "DP Piezo AER 60" which, with some fiddling sounds quite nice
    over my (home)studio active nearfield monitors. not QUITE like my own AER, but still nice nonetheless.


    to cut a long story short, question is: do any of you guys who are leaning more on the jazzy side of things have any rigs that you use that you can wholeheartedly recommend for that purpose?
    not necessarily AER only, any ideas are truly welcome. one thing though: i am not a huge fan of the JC 120 or similar amps, for some reason
    never could get used to the sound of it, beit for jazz, pop or whatever. i do realize this amp has quite a lot of fans (probably very rightfully so), but i'm not one of them.


    so, fire away with your recommendations if you have any. thank you for chiming in, and i'm truly curious what's going to be on the table :)

  • I'm mainly a jazz player. I play a Benedetto Benny, which is a chambered/hollow "Les Paul" looking guitar similar in sound to a 335 maybe. I play clean profiles 95% of the time. My favorites are :

    • =4-Deluxe Clean (from the Amp Factory) and many of his others (BS Art15 Clean, Stileto Clean and Clean Fat, Vox AC30 Clean etc.)
    • Princeton Clean
    • Fender Champion 600
    • Henriksen 112extJAZZ

    I can make pretty much any of the clean profiles work for me with some guitar and or Gain adjustments but those listed sound good the way they are and it's interesting to hear the subtle differences. I use my effects settings "Locked" on all of them. That is simply Hall Reverb and some Analog Delay. I'm always after a sound like my favorite players which are more of the modern players and I always have loved Wes Montgomery or Ed Bickert's playing and the KPA gets me there easily just like any good tube amp would. I've always liked the idea of using a "fenderish" preamp, power amp and speakers in the past, so using the Kemper as a preamp (with Cab's turned off) with effects works well with a Mesa 20/20P Poweramp and EV speakers in stereo. I think I actually prefer the sound going through my KRK Rokit 8's FRFR (with Cab's back on) or even my Bose L1 Model 2 (but with the Bose I miss the stereo sound and have thought of buying another, but that is a lot to haul around). Ideally I'd like 2 small powered FRFR speakers but haven't decided which ones. With jazz gigs lighter is better and this is about the best sound I've achieved. I do like the sound of my Lexicon MPX-1 Rich Hall reverb a little better than the KPA reverb, but it's not so different that I have to bring it along.


    I did a few profiles on the Rig Exchange that aren't that great compared to most, but they work too they are of a Blues Junior and then a Blues Junior with a Plimsoul (if you back off on the guitar volume you can get a Scofield thing happening).. Of course using the Amp Factory =-4 Deluxe and the "Mouse" distortion gets you there too with some tweaking.


    Very fun and versatile to use the KPA. I love the convenience of recording too, although I don't do too much at the moment.


    Good luck and have fun with the Organ Trio. Let us hear some of it if you record it with the KPA.


    Dave

  • thx mate, will try these out and let you know how it worked out for me :) oh, and if you'd like to hear some of our music, you can go to www.klangmoebel.org and check us out. much appreciated :) the songs are unfortunately not recorded with the kemper, hadn't had the luxury back then ;) the next bunch of songs are for sure going to be KPA only, as far as gutar goes.