Global Stacks (Global amp and cab combos)

  • I believe this simple to implement idea could revolutionize the acceptance of all-in-one devices like the Kemper in live situations. Lack of this simple feature is a reason why some guitarist that honestly love the sound for of the Kemper profiles and effects have gone back to their traditional pedal board, even if they still use the Kemper for amp sounds only. They just want to be able to bend down and adjust the tone or gain or volume on their OD pedal and/or amp once and be done with it. They don't want to have to think about al the places that they have one of their core tones (edge of break up for example) saved in various slots and performances.


    Here's my suggestion: Press the "Quick" button (which you can currently personalize) Up comes menu with the following choices: Global Stacks, global delay blocks, global, reverb blocks.... (and whatever else).
    You select "Global Stacks" The screen shows the following list: "global stack 1, global stack 2, global stack 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 8, 9, etc. are listed. If you select "Global stack 1", for example, you can now scroll through all your rigs (technically just the amp and cabs) You select a Vox AC profile that is on the edge of break up. You make your tweaks to the amp and cabs and save it. Exit out. You plan on using that Vox AC stack in numerous rigs located in different performances because you use it with various combinations of different delay, mod, and reverb effects for different songs. So you go to all of those rigs that you'd like that Vox AC edge of breakup profile with the tweaks you made. Instead of choosing "Vox AC" in the stack, you choose "Global stack 1." A month from now you get fickle and decide you'd like to use a different edge of break up profile or would like to tweak the same profile. What do you do? Go to your "global stack 1 preset" and either select a different profile or tweak the same one and hit save. Now all the profiles that had "Global stack 1" selected in the amp block change with it! No need to worry about all the rigs located in different slots and performances that contain that stack to make the changes to each and every one. If tomorrow you decide you'd like to swap out the twin reverb clean profile you'd been using for a roland Jazz chorus, you can do so and change it back just as quickly.


    This feature request gives the guitarist the ability to make last minute changes on the fly during a sound check even if they use many performances. At the moment the only "on the fly" thing you can do is adjust the output EQ and volume, as you'd never have time to go through all your performances and tweak when your sound man says "you'd edge of break up tone sounds off tonight" I can tweak it quickly and be done with it, not do it 10-20 times. Best of yet, you can use this feature as much or as little as you'd like. You still retain the ability to assign Rig specific amps and cabs like we do now, which will be unaffected by the changes you make to the global presets. In other words, it's a feature that could be completely ignored and even unassigned to the Quick button for those that see no personal benefit from this feature.


    Here's a common scenario for Kemper users and in fact users of every digital modeling all-in-one device ever made.
    Just like traditional guitarists using tube amps and pedal boards, you have a few gain stages that you use in a live setting. Perhaps Clean, edge of break up, Crunch, and Lead. However, you like to use them with different combinations of other effects including reverbs, delays, modulation, etc. One of the benefits of a Kemper or other digital all-in-one is that you aren't limited and can save multiple banks of combinations of sounds. However, if you're like me, regardless of how many delays or reverbs you use, you probably use only four or so combinations of your basic gain stages. In other words, you'll have identical amp blocks in many different slots and performances. (I particularly use a lot because I sing and lead worship which includes talking between most songs and I can't worry about doing tap tempo. Therefore I need a couple rigs or so with the tempo saved for each song in a set)


    So what's the problem with the current Kemper capabilities? I'll invariably have a dozen banks of rigs for various effect combinations for different songs, even though there's only four different amp block/OD effect combinations in these 60 or so rigs. In a live situation, if I want to make a tweak to my edge of break up sound for example, I need to do some combination of either locking the amp block and hitting "amp block, save, save, save" over and over again after selecting each of the rigs containing my edge of break up amp block and OD effect block. Or I can just manually tweak the ones I need at that moment and hit "save save save" for each rig. Or I could do the copy paste thing and hit save save save for each rig.


    To be fair, one other solution is to change my approach to organization. That is, instead of creating separate rigs for songs, is to create presets of single effects or a preset containing the four post amp block effects . However, even this is limited to either the left group of four or right group of four. Plus it doesn't allow me to save a tempo!!! That value is saved as part of the Rig. If I create the perfect combo of Mod, delay, and Reverb for a particular song and save it to an effects block preset, it's still more complicated than just calling it up. Once I do call up the effect preset, I still have to go into "Rig" and change the tempo to match the song. This then still requires me to have copies of rigs with all the gain stages needed for each song in their own Slot. Thus again still giving my multiple versions of the same amp block spread out over several performances needed to cover the songs in a set and all the pre gig organization that goes with it. Once again, limiting my ability to do last minute tweaks to my core tone. I have about 60+ rigs spread out over 12+ performances. They currently possess one of four basic profiles from clean to lead. I sometimes want to swap out those four profiles for a different set. I never seem able to make up my mind about which set I like best. Sometimes I feel like my MBritt Guytones, sometimes my Amp Factory Evil Robots, sometimes I even want to tweak them a bit. I change my mind a lot and it's a hassle when I do.


    Ways to expand the features of this idea:
    1) On rigs that are currently assigned to "Global stack 1" for example, give an option "MAKE LOCAL." When this option is chosen the amp block screen no longer shows "Global stack 1" as the amp, but the name of the amp that was assigned to be the global amp. In my example above, it now shows "Vox AC" This rig can now be saved and it's amp block won't change when you change the global amp block preset as it is now a permanent part of the Rig just like the Kemper currently functions.
    2) Give the ability to assign some or all of the A,B,C, or D blocks as part of the Global stack preset. for example if you like to keep the Screamer Overdrive effect in the "A" block you could make this as part of the global stack preset. In other words, when you select "global stack 1" you could also link "effect block A" to it. Then you could make changes to both the overdrive and amp and cab settings that you use to craft your edge of break up tone at the same time. Then when you hit save, al the rigs that have Amp stack preset 1 as their selected Stack would be changed along with slot A. In additional the ability to link the Noise gate to it would be helpful as well, as the noise gate is the sort of thing you like to adjust while adjusting your amps. Perhaps a warning pops up if you select "amp stack 1" that says, "this also overwrites slot A. noise gate. Of course, you'd have to hit save afterwards anyway.
    3) You can have Global delay presets or other effects. For example if you're the sort that like to use a go to sound for delay all the time like you would on a traditional analog delay, you could have the ability to the same thing with your delay block as you do the amp blocks. just assign all the rigs that you want to access a global delay block to "Global Delay 1." Same thing could be done for all 8 blocks. So you're at your gig and your like, "my go to reverb seems a little muddy in this room." Just make the tweak once!
    4) Possibly give the ability to group global amp stack presets together. For example, 1,2,3,4,5, be replaced with 6,7,8,9,10. Thus 1's become 6's and so on. This way you could select a group which contains five stacks from clean to lead if you like and swap them out with another five. For example, if you primarily rely on one guitar for a rig say a Strat and like a different set of core tones (or the same ones tweaked a bit different) for your Gretch on another night. I'm not so sure how this last part would be implemented though.
    5) ability to remain them: For example instead of the screen showing "Global Stack 1" it could show GS 1 plus another word. Such as "GS 1 Clean" Obviously this wouldn't force me to put a clean profile in. This of course, would be renaming done globally when editing through the Quick button, not rig specific.

  • That's great news, CitizenGain!!


    I had no idea they were planning on rolling out such a feature. I thinktheir calling it an alias is a good way to describe it. I had personally requested this type of feature 3 years ago, but couldn't find where I wrote it. If they implement this feature right, I think it could be a ground breaking feature and I don't know of anyone else in the modeling/digital market that's rolled out such a thing. But in my opinion there's three things that have traditionally kept many guitarists away from the digital all-in-one systems.


    1) tone and feel (Kemper solved this completely with profiling, others have improved drastically Line 6 and axe)
    2) Breaking free from the global/preset paradigm, emulating the hybrid systems of traditional pedal boards and amps whose knobs are fixed and controlled with switching systems with audio loops and midi messages.
    3) No desire to change

  • Apparently there are only like five of us in the guitar playing community that find this frustrating. And it isn't a kemper problem. it is the same problem that has plagued every modeling amp/pedal device going back to the 90's digitech multieffect era, and the fender cyber-twin of the early 2000's. No matter how good they sound or feel, at the end of the day, you only need 3-5 core tones based with different levels of gain for live use. Even if you use a bunch of time-based effects and create song specific patches, they're all going to be based on one of your core gain stages, which you'll likely want to adjust from time to time. And you always want to retain the ability to just make quick tweaks during sound checks. That's why over the years I kept going back to real amp/pedal set-ups, was because I missed the simplicity of just tweaking an overdrive pedal and/or my amp when these sounds needed tweaking.

  • Apparently there are only like five of us in the guitar playing community that find this frustrating. And it isn't a kemper problem. it is the same problem that has plagued every modeling amp/pedal device going back to the 90's digitech multieffect era, and the fender cyber-twin of the early 2000's. No matter how good they sound or feel, at the end of the day, you only need 3-5 core tones based with different levels of gain for live use. Even if you use a bunch of time-based effects and create song specific patches, they're all going to be based on one of your core gain stages, which you'll likely want to adjust from time to time. And you always want to retain the ability to just make quick tweaks during sound checks. That's why over the years I kept going back to real amp/pedal set-ups, was because I missed the simplicity of just tweaking an overdrive pedal and/or my amp when these sounds needed tweaking.

    Word.


    An additional idea to this feature would be such that there would be a mode where the profiler would remember the changes without hitting Store. Then it would be almost as convenient as a real amp. Meaning that when you adjust something for example in the middle of a song, the changes would be remembered the next time you switch to that sound.

  • That would be cool to not even hit save. However, only if you had the option of having to hit save if you wanted to! For me, I wouldn't mind having to hit "Save save save" one time, as long as all the rigs that have the amp blocks linked are changed at the same time. This also prevents all my rigs from changing just because of an accidental twist of a knob.

  • BTW, I had considered getting a Line6 Helix and won't. I thought their whole snapshot thing was pretty cool, it's like having 8 morphs with the ability to toggle effects completely as well. . I don't need the in-between state of morphings anyway. I use morph feature with the switches on the remote to give me a couple options that I can change at the same time. However, the main reason I use morphing for this is because of the current inconvenience of having so many rigs. Using morph for this gives me the ability to not need as many song specific rigs, since in many cases I can get two sounds I need for a particular song with one rig by using morphing, as opposed to needing two rigs to accomplish the same thing. (the more rigs you have, made up of the same core sounds, the more rigs you have to go and edit every time you want to make a minor tweak to your amp block settings, unless you don't mind slightly different versions of the same thing floating around in all your performance banks with no way of remembering quickly which ones you tweaked the clarity feature and which ones you didn't get around to yet, or vice versa which ones you wished you hadn't changed the clarity setting on when you desire to go back to the original. )
    But with the Helix the existence of snapshots makes this problem even worse. Suppose you create a single Helix preset for each song and make use of the up to 8 snapshots per preset? you end up making 50 presets for 50 different songs. Now when you want to edit your "clean amps" you not only have to go to however many of the 50 presets have that clean amp, but to each of the snapshots that have that amp. What a hassle! (although if I were rich I'd consider getting a Helix and using the Kemper in one of its four effect loops. Then just send a midi message to the Kemper to dial up which ever rig I want. Since I'd only need four, opting to get most of my effects from the Helix, I could tweak them to my hearts content in the Kemper, and the Helix would simply call up the tweaked version of the Kemper rigs and I wouldn't have to go through all the Helix presets and make changes, as the same midi message it sent would be the same.

  • Apparently there are only like five of us in the guitar playing community that find this frustrating.

    I think we are the only ones that recognised the problem for what it is.


    That said: all the guys with a midi controller controlling a rack of gear are doing exactly this; reusing patches from different units to compose a sound. You don't set up 90 patches on your preamp and delay unit if you have 90 songs, you set up your tones and use them where you like.


    It is an abstraction layer though so the UX of the feature should be thought out and tested well. There's many ways to make it confusing (which is why I opted for the "inheriting whole slots" route instead of globals that create more cognetive load)

  • That said: all the guys with a midi controller controlling a rack of gear are doing exactly this; reusing patches from different units to compose a sound. You don't set up 90 patches on your preamp and delay unit if you have 90 songs, you set up your tones and use them where you like.


    It is an abstraction layer though so the UX of the feature should be thought out and tested well. There's many ways to make it confusing (which is why I opted for the "inheriting whole slots" route instead of globals that create more cognetive load)

    I think some of the guys using the Kemper with a midi controller and a rack of gear may be doing that for specifically this reason. The issue isn't the quality of the Kemper effects. It's the inability to have quick access, like you said, to your tones, be able to edit them, and then access them across all your combinations of effects you have laid out for your set list. While some prefer certain pedals and brands to others, most that use the KPA's effects find them musical, even if they bemoan the lack of certain effects, such as spring reverb.