P&W/Worship/Church guitarists, what amps/profiles are you using?

  • I PM'd you about this, I've got some questions. I'm assuming your comp is always on? So the first clean boost is to drive the green scream or mouse harder? How do you typically do your gain staging with this setup? And the second clean boost in the effects section is for a solo boost? As far as how you are setting up the remote to control all of this since there are only 4 switches, how are you doing this? I'm asuming you are using 1 switch for both delays and just swapping between the two, so there is one. And then for the two drives, there's two right there, unless you are switching between them on one switch? And then the first clean boost gets its own switch? That could be 3 or 4 switches used right there depending on how you set it up, if the two drives are combined I guess that could give you room for that 2nd effects boost. Just curious how you do it. I'd like to try this setup out but I don't want to have to have a separate slot with the same exact setup to switch different things because I can't fit it all the remote switching in one slot. I hope that makes sense. I guess you could use the tuner and looper buttons to control your boosts as well.
    So when you say that some slots have the delay repeats change as well for a more ambient sound, what exactly are you doing here? Just increasing the number of repeats? Are you going for a wash here or something you can use for swells?


    Sorry for all the questions, I've been struggling how to setup a perfmormance to be able pretty much do anything with it I will need to do instead of setting up one performance or slot per song, I just can't do that for how we do worship which is very free flow, we have a setlist planned, but only rarely do we follow it, more often than not we are pulling songs on the fly as needed, which we can do since we are working from computer screens and PDFs, if the worship leader pulls up a new song or an old one we haven't done in a long time, we play it right then, live with no planning or practice, fun, but requires a lot of flexibility with sounds.

    I PM'd you as well. I left this here because others might be interested. I have been working long and hard to try to do the same thing you are wanting to do. The standard setup I have works pretty good, but to do 'everything' might require maybe 2 performance slots. Before morphing and the delays being able to be assigned to multiple slots, it was pretty much impossible, now it might work. I still have a few songs that I set up specifically and dial those up when we do them, but the way I have this set up, I can get through most things. There is on thing I do really like about the one performance slot per song though, if a song goes from say a really ambient intro, to a quiet picked part then right to a heavily overdriven/distorted part, clicking on the Intro slot, then the verse slot then the chorus part and having those set up with the stomps turned on/off as required is nice (less tap dancing). But this standard layout works kind of like a pedalboard and gives you options for some of that too.


    To answer some of your questions here is what I do: I leave the comp on all the time in stomp slot 1. The pureboost goes in stomp slot 2 and switch I on the remote controls that. The green scream goes in stomp slot 3 and switch II controls that. Mouse goes in stomp slot 4 and switch III controls that, I switch between the 2 different delays (mod slot and delay slot) with switch IV on the remote. I've assigned the tuner button to the 'X' slot for the other pure boost. I use the heel down on my expression pedal for tuner/mute. I use the morph feature to change the delay repeats and the length of reverb (mostly I just have it change the reverb length) so I can go between a more ambient sound vs. a less ambient sound (ie if I am on my 'Verse' slot and I am playing a song that needs a little more reverb, I just hit the 2 button again to morph and have the reverb go to a longer time for a little variation. The difference between reverbs on say the 'verse' slot would be something like a shorter reverb I can strum with without getting blown away to more of a wash type reverb, yes. I have a separate slot setup just for swells.


    Don't worry about the questions, I like answering them! I don't claim to be a worship guitar genius or anything, I'm mostly just a hack with expensive stuff :) But I do know quite a bit about the Kemper and I have been using since 2013 live and love it, so I am pretty comfortable with how I have it set up. I'm glad to offer any help I can.


    We don't do variations on the fly like you guys (brave!) but quite often we change the set list on Sunday morning at soundcheck, and sometimes we do it just before worship or during if need be. I like to have a 'standard' setup to use for that plus it makes it easier for practice when we don't know the set list up front, I don't have to create all the nuances of a song there while everyone is waiting, I just use my standard settings and tweak later.

  • After actually trying your setup out as described I was bummed to remember that controlling two delays from 1 remote button doesn't really work. This will only swap between the two, always leaving one on. So to control 2 overdrives, and 2 delays, that takes up every slot pretty quickly. The only other option is to use my looper and tuner buttons to control two other things. The kemer remote really is limiting for those of us that are trying to use 1 rig for most of what they want to do.

    Just saw your response on the delays. Yes, I just switch between delays using the one switch on the remote. I have one set up as a very typical 1/4 note delay that you can basically have on all the time and not really get in the way. That one is always on, then the .8th (or whatever other time signature delay you use) comes on when you click the switch. Not ideal if you need to completely turn off your delay, but you can always use the 'looper' switch to turn on/off a boost to free up one more slot. I experimented with having a tap tempo switch as the outboard switch to free up a slot, but at this point I was running out of actual effects/stomp slots on the Kemper so I haven't added that, but that is an option. I know you probably don't want to do that though. I do use my looper sometimes so I don't want to lose that switch though.

  • Just to add to this discussion, I have recently started using a Mod Duo pedal that I got on Kickstarter. It's basically a small 2 button pedal that you can assign tons of effects into using a virtual pedalboard web interface. It's pretty amazing. I have essentially created my own Bigsky-esque ambient pedal that has 7 delays (1 multiband delay pedal with 5 delays, 1 modulated delay, and 1 stereo delay), 2 stereo reverbs, and a fractal doubler. On the same pedalboard, I have another path for a tubescreamer boost that cuts through at the high end. I have the Mod Duo connected into the Stereo Effects Loop that is always on in my Kemper and then I just switch either the ambient path or the tubescreamer path on and off. I haven't had to use them both at the same time, but I have that option at any given moment!


    Anyway, here's more info about the Mod Duo:


    https://pedalboards.moddevices…/58d609062564d404af226e47


    Here's a picture of my setup using my Guild Thunderbird. The setup makes it all very compact for me, but is a lot of cables perfectly suited for the space:


    https://www.instagram.com/p/BPlYTWEA3Gy/