The NAMM plot thickens.............

  • I would be interested in when the delays are actually arriving (is it in Feb?)- it's really not that clear. Very excited about this feature especially being able to move them about - means I can finally put my modulated reverb pedal in the fx loop and have the delay in front.

  • ... is Morphing basically assigning multiple parameters to a pedal, which will then rise and fall depending on the time limits?


    Place pedal in heel position. Tweak Rig to taste.
    Move pedal to toe position. Tweak Rig to different parameter values (any you like).
    Pedal now morphs Rig between the two sets of parameter values, simultaneously for all parameters.


    ... a large userbase requested more and more powerful delays, so how can their implementation be 'out of touch'? :D


    Easy answer, Don:


    We Kemperites are mostly out of touch. Probably due to the callouses on our fingers...

  • I would be interested in when the delays are actually arriving (is it in Feb?)- it's really not that clear. Very excited about this feature especially being able to move them about - means I can finally put my modulated reverb pedal in the fx loop and have the delay in front.


    this might sound cliché, but the answer here is "when they are ready".


    sorry about any delay... haha...
    ||
    ...I'll show myself out

  • The KPA team will want it all running a perfectly as they can get it before releasing the delays otherwise people will moan saying this FW is £?!@ it keeps crashing or this delay isn't working properly. We all want the new FW now and that's understandable. CK obviously wants the KPA to be the best guitar product on the market. The delays reverbs have to be better than Eventide, The profiles have to sound like the amp, it has to have the best and easiest functions it can have. So waiting for 4.0 means the delays and other features will hopefully be the best there is at the moment, and I for one am happy to wait for that :)

  • The KPA team will want it all running a perfectly as they can get it before releasing the delays otherwise people will moan saying this FW is £?!@ it keeps crashing or this delay isn't working properly. We all want the new FW now and that's understandable. CK obviously wants the KPA to be the best guitar product on the market. The delays reverbs have to be better than Eventide, The profiles have to sound like the amp, it has to have the best and easiest functions it can have. So waiting for 4.0 means the delays and other features will hopefully be the best there is at the moment, and I for one am happy to wait for that :)


    I'm a long-time Eventide user and am currently running two H9s in my KPA loop. If Kemper can rival Eventide's stuff I will be absolutely thrilled, as I will then be able to eliminate the H9s and switch to a Kemper Remote (from a Ground Control Pro) and be done.

  • I don't see the H9's Hall reverb any better than the Kempers. The H9 Room is the bomb, but that's the only Reverb that floats my boat in a "wow" way from that unit. So my respect for KPA's reverbs went up a lot when I did side-by-side on the other reverbs.


    The H9 Tape and Analog delays are something though.

  • The KPA team will want it all running a perfectly as they can get it before releasing the delays otherwise people will moan saying this FW is £?!@ it keeps crashing or this delay isn't working properly. We all want the new FW now and that's understandable. CK obviously wants the KPA to be the best guitar product on the market. The delays reverbs have to be better than Eventide, The profiles have to sound like the amp, it has to have the best and easiest functions it can have. So waiting for 4.0 means the delays and other features will hopefully be the best there is at the moment, and I for one am happy to wait for that :)


    Absolutely!!!

  • ... a large userbase requested more and more powerful delays, so how can their implementation be 'out of touch'?


    From what I've read, (which is plenty of late!!!) - the Kemper Community is split between extremely thrilled and inspired by the company's brilliant additions and responsiveness to user requests; and by those disappointed some things are slower coming to us than they (and I) would like. It's not all perfect, but I appreciate what brilliance the Kemper team imparts to all of us.


    Monkey_Man, I agree the delay on delays is a bummer, I'm with you there, but I'm still grateful for what's coming. My apologies that this came out as a knock on you personally, it certainly was not intended as such. I shouldn't write late at night!


    You know I love you, Nicky :)

    Gary ô¿ô

    Edited once, last by prsgary ().

  • Every single time I fire up my KPA, I am reminded that it is one of the very best decisions I ever made in my long history of guitar equipment acquisitions. I have been through all sorts of tube amps, from budget to high end. I also was fortunate to begin guitar in the era that witnessed the emergence of dedicated digital guitar effects and amp modeling. I owned one of the first, the Digitech GSP21, and then the subsequent, much more advanced GSP2112. Then a Peavey TubeFex. Technically, those were pre- "digital modelers" age, and prefigured the arrival of the Line 6 AX2-212, which really was the first true digital amp modeler. I owned the AX2-212 for a few years, and ended up selling it to my good friend (who still has it). From there I jumped between tube amps and digital modelers. My last serious tube amp was a Marshall Vintage Modern 100 watt head. Prior to my Kemper, the best digital modeler I have owned is a Vox AD120VTH Valvetronix original "Blue" head. By the way, it is still an amazing amp, and the standard bearer for the Vox modelers. Vox seemed to take a step back with every subsequent generation of their Valvetronix line. Nothing compared to the original "blue" series. I also have a Digitech GSP1101.


    However, absolutely none of the aforementioned equipment, whether all tube or pro-class digital amp/modeler, holds a candle to my KPA. I had a love / hate relationship with my tube amps. Some days, they sounded great, especially when I could crank them up. However, sometimes they seemed as capricious as the New England weather. I would fire up one of my tube amps, and it literally would not sound or play as well as it did just the day before. Yet the following day it would be back to "normal". Now, to some, these would be subtle differences...but the point was that I could feel and hear them. It wasn't in my head. I also have no reasonable explanation for the vagaries and inconsistency of their behavior. So, there was that.


    As far as the digital modelers, the good ones could be quite good, such as the Vox AD120VTH. But I still had not discovered a device that provided all the benefits of the tube amp experience, with the consistency and flexibility of a digital amp. That was, until I discovered the Kemper.


    I can honestly say that my Kemper is the best amp I have ever owned, tube or digital. For me, the single most important quality of the KPA was the total fidelity in recreating the tube amp experience, e.g. responsiveness, guitar/amp interaction, sensitivity to playing dynamics, natural sustain and compression, articulation, feedback, etc. But most importantly, I could achieve these results at ANY playing volume. Furthermore, I can rely on the KPA to maintain rock solid consistency from one day to the next. Now, I no longer have to worry about external factors that might have affected my tube amps, such as barometric pressure, ambient humidity, phases of the moon, planetary alignments, the fluctuating prices of soybean futures, etc. :P:D


    I guess this post is a bit of a love letter to Kemper GmbH. <3

  • I'm very excited about the update, probably more for the new delay options than morphing (though I'll use that too).


    Anyone that's seen the morphing setup: can you set the morph time in beats/measures?

  • Yes you can. CK shows it in one of the videos here. You can set it to let's say 4 bars, push the button, take your time to walk to the front of the stage and play your solo with this fat, highgain-, fx-loaded leadsound, your Kemper has magically morphed your crunchy, dry rhythmsound to.

  • Eventide IMO our the bench mark for things like reverb and delays and I'm sure CK knows that he has to compete with these guys to make the KPA have what I would class as industry standard effects etc so I'm sure this day will come as the KPA is gain strength every new FW release


    I went head to head with the Eventide Space vs. the Strymon BigSky, and the Eventide Timefactor vs. the Strymon Timeline. In both situations, the Strymon's were better. Not by much, but they had a little more tweakability/range, and their algorithms seemed a little more "smooth" whereas Eventide's seemed a bit "over the top."


    Otherwise, Strymon has some algorithms that Eventide doesn't have, and vice versa. Eventide certainly excels in the harmonizer department, better than anything else out there, even to this day. I'd certainly go for an H9 if I needed an all-in-one box for the guitarist that doesn't use a lot of delay or reverb, but, for the Reverb or Delay heavy guitarist, I'd choose Strymon over Eventide any day.


    Of course, it's all my personal opinion, and it makes me really, really excited to see what Kemper's doing with the delays. I'd love to see how they compare to the Timeline (and, for that matter, to the Timefactor).

    Guitars: Parker Fly Mojo Flame, Ibanez RG7620 7-string, Legator Ninja 8-string, Fender Strat & Tele, Breedlove Pro C25
    Pedalboard: Templeboards Trio 43, Mission VM-1, Morley Bad Horsie, RJM Mini Effect Gizmo, 6 Degrees FX Sally Drive, Foxpedals The City, Addrock Ol' Yeller, RJM MMGT/22, Mission RJM EP-1, Strymon Timeline + BigSky
    Stack: Furman PL-Plus C, Kemper Rack

  • I love my kemper, love the philosophy of the company in giving free updates and pushing the boundaries of their technology, not just releasing new versions of the hardware. I am excited about the morph ability, although not being a heavy effects user may not use it as much as some, and same is true for the delays.


    I'm interested in whether the morphing can be stored and exported in rigs and whether we'll be able to then DL them from the RE (on non commercial profiles ofc). This could be interesting as then we could end up with some really inspiring profiles that maybe we wouldn't have even thought of making ourselves. Like @meambobbo with the reverbs and delays.


    Anyway, as ever, great job Kemper!!!

  • Anyone that's seen the morphing setup: can you set the morph time in beats/measures?


    That's an interesting thought. someone said it can be controlled via midi, so that might be one method, but i'm guessing a tap feature would not be that hard to implement. It looks like you can sort of toggle it with a foot switch now, so set rise and fade time to zero, and tap it out while playing. not ideal, but would be better than nothing if you needed it for something. Once this gets out into the wild, more ideas like this will pop up and ppl will start to use it in all sorts of ways. Or not, impossible to predict such things 100%. But with the amount of ppl already interested in whats on the menu, and looking at Kemper's history of not releasing gimmicky things, it is far more likely that it will be used in some really new and interesting ways.


    There does seem to be a bit of a wide array of opinions on whats coming out lately. In a way this is a good thing because it shows the diversity of the KPA and the ppl that use them, from jazz cats to metal heads. This should not be a cause for argument, or concern, it is a very good thing.


    I think some of the comments that are pointed or favor one thing over another can sometimes be unproductive, even limiting, such as old is better than new, or the other way around.


    There are artists, musicians, and critics, all of various quality, those 3 are not the same, but a person can be 1 or all 3. To limit your own point of view to what is useful or not etc. is limiting yourself. You may not be interested in something, but you should be able to understand and appreciate art in any genre or form. This will only make you a better artist... was reading some very interesting thoughts in Kempermainaics thread about modes, and some good comments from Nikos about scales, their emotions and students. He mentioned that some of them could play well solo, or technically, but were underdeveloped when it comes to jamming etc. Why is this? Because they are under developed as artists. Music is art, and all art is the same in some basic ways, regardless of the medium. Both are very old. The best musicians are always artists and critics also. Simply put, artists create, new or even a different statement on something old, proper critics (not the payola/ratty journalist review kind) look to what is done how, why, how it works. Objectivity is needed here, especially when it comes to unfamiliar or uninteresting things. Instead of looking at something as not useful etc. a better way would be to ask a question like what's in it for me? Doing this gives the ability to take more ideas, and gives more material for creativity, something that can only be learned, not taught. Ideas are not limited to genres, and genres are only generalizations to describe something in a vague sense, because there will always be people that push and redefine them. A death metal worship band? why not? Call them memento mori, lately a popular term, from a very obscure place.


    All the gear in the world won't help either, you can write an epic work of art with a free pen from a hotel, and some napkins from mcdonald's.
    However music is different, since the tools used to make it are also works of art, especially the better ones that take a lot of skill to create. But being snobbish about gear, like gibsons own/suck as a guitarist example, or which standalone ad/da's are the best in the pro audio field can also be limiting. Great art has been done with bad gear to be sure, but decent gear is essential from day 1 to learn music well. And for day 1 guitar, I think C maj is not as bad as Nikos thinks. High E, F, G, A, B, to C .. From here you can play 2 complete C scales from high to low E. All within 4 frets, teaching hand placement, proper fretting, a delicate touch, and avoiding sharps or flats, use that to focus on metronome and basic picking, down down, then up down. The idea is not too much at once. But everyone learns differently, some by reading, others by hearing, or touch, infants by taste, and Hendrix played some licks with his tongue...makes me wonder...


    What is happening with the KPA and various debates right now makes me think of a very clever quipp titled : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Medium_Is_the_Massage


    The wiki is a decent summary of the general concepts that describe and predicted some complex things happening that help clarify art in our age. An oversimplified statement from there reads :


    "By playing on words and utilizing the term "massage," McLuhan is suggesting that modern audiences have found current media to be soothing, enjoyable, and relaxing; however, the pleasure we find in new media is deceiving, as the changes between society and technology are incongruent and are perpetuating an Age of Anxiety."


    This relates to what is happening here, and many other places, along with something predicted as the global village, a worldwide product, with folks from very different places with different ideas. A lot of ideas are exchanged here, and there is some worthwhile debate on them. I don't see argument or anxiety as a very big deal, and there is not that much of it
    here anyway. This place has that rare vibe of something new is happening, which for me is cool to watch, for some it may be an uneasy feeling. Different tastes? Who knows? The wiki link is worth reading, McLuhan was a genius.


    It should however go into more detail of The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, (not just delays or verbs ;) which is a picture book as a response to criticisms of his ideas being hard to comprehend. The most relevant parts of it to this are a series of statements that follow a path, the wheel being an extension of the foot, the book an extension of the eye, electrical circuitry an extension of the central nervous system.


    That last one... ever hear ppl talk about how an amp feels when playing it?


    If the last statement is true, it would follow that software is an extension of the mind, a relatively new and not fully understood media...


    What I am still wondering is if this means the KPA is "morphing" into an instrument or work of art in its own right? I am curious to see what ppl think of this idea, because to look at it as a digital tool, or an automation system is too simple and incomplete...it has a feel, and increasingly interacts with the player...



    here is a link to the book, it is a cool read:


    https://godsaveprint.files.wor…hemediumisthemassage2.pdf


    (and mankey mon, if you are reading this.. not sure if you use them, but there is a part about clothing being an extension of the skin--and yes McLuhan included a set of tatas--just for you ;)