What do you use as a backup in case your Kemper fails?

  • A Joyo American Sound with a Fulltone FullDrive II in front of it is my backup rig. I haven't needed to use them yet, but it's a very easy and portable backup. Sounds good and gives me three good sounds. I highly recommend something like it. The Joyo was only $40.

  • I also have an Eleven Rack and two pedals (Digitech Drop and Tech 21 Midi Mouse) as a backup. The main live rig is the Kemper, the Remote, the Misson Engineering pedal and a Line6 Wireless. For rehearsals I use an Engl Blackmore head with some pedals.

  • I think there are 2 types of backup:


    1) The one you take to a gig to get you out of an emergency situation - I have a sansamp but never used it. I might update it but as I said, never had to use it.
    2) When you get an issue at home and you have a gig coming up - I have a Laney VH100L. That is the only reason I retained it, as a backup at home. I use my Kemper for rehearsals and live gigs - its so simple and a main selling point. I got rid of any other maps because as Ingolf said, why retain something that has become redundant.


    I think it also partially depends on the level you are playing. If I was pro playing to a large venue every night then a backup Kemper would make sense. Usually I'm playing in a pub just round the corner from my house so I could dash home if needed :) so I can't justify the cost or the impact on my back. Obviously there are all levels in between but I've been so lucky that I can't remember if I've ever had an amp go down at a gig ( just cursed myself now of course!).

  • As long as you have backup, nothing will fail ;)
    But I'm also looking for some easy solution to have an option if something goes wrong. Most of the times we are not alone at an evening and I could nicely ask someone but it's good to have something I know. I thought about getting a Palmer Pocket Amp. :)
    I really like to have a second Kemper Unit. But there are several problems... the price (and how to tell this at home) and if I have a second Kemper I have to long-time-borrow one of the units to our other guitarist and so I won't have a backup either... He is still on tube but loves the Kemper too.

  • I finally found a Kemper for me, so I am still new to it. But I don't plan on selling my old gear, I never did. A friend of mine and myself try to start up a little semi-pro studio, so we keep all the stuff there, perhaps we can use some of it. For our recordings we (both) use our Kempers, but gear always looks good and perhaps it will pay us some money for retirement when we're old once..

  • Tube amps aren't exactly the benchmark for reliability.


    My entire collection of vintage amps disagree with that statement. Things do wear, tear and break over time, but despite horrible abuse from road-crews at times my experience with tube-amps have been that they are rather reliable. A couple of my amps are more than 50 years old and still going strong, and can still be repaired. I doubt my digital gizmos will last even 1/3 of that time regardless of my love for them, because not so many years from now there will be no spares available. The expense of establishing a production-line for custom ICs makes repairs of old stuff prohibitively expensive even if the circuit-designs had been made public. 30 years from now a working KPA will be as rare as working 1980s digital audio-gear is today. I predict that there never will be a vibrant market for vintage KPAs, unless the term vintage is redefined to include stuff that is less than 10 years old. In the short-term however, digital stuff at least can be made rugged and potentially take more beating than tubes. That said, I have also experienced EMPs that have wiped memories and destroyed VLSI-circuits while having no effect on ancient analog circuitry.

    Edited 7 times, last by heldal ().

  • I've had the exact opposite experience with tube amps as Heldal. I love them, and I still have about a dozen vintage ones kicking around my house, but I would never call them reliable. I actually learned how to service them myself because I was spending foo much money with my tech. When my old band was touring for real, we each had road cases with two to three tube heads for redundancy, and we needed to use our backups frequently. Good thing we had a road crew. It was actually a running joke in the band how much our one guitarist's vintage Orange heads would need emergency repair on the road. It wasn't always a catastrophic failure, bur sometimes it was.

    I hate emojis, but I hate being misunderstood more. :)

  • I've used my KPA for every gig I've done since Feb 2012 and have never had or needed a backup.


    I also upgrade the operating system on the day that a new beta or OS update comes out etc...

  • I recently purchase from Matrix Amplification, their NL-12 cab and VB800 amp.
    I plug my Kemper into the effects return of the VB800, which is 400 watts, with a valve pre section and a Matrix SS power section. If my Kemper fails, all I have to do is take the lead from the Kemper Monitor out and plug in my guitar lead to the amp input on the VB800 and I'm set to continue.
    The Matrix amp and speaker combined weight is only 20 pounds.

  • I've never actually needed a backup as my Kemper has never had an issue that caused me to send it in or not be able to run it live. But, I have a Tech21 Sansamp Liverpool and a couple pedals as a backup just in case. That setup actually sounds pretty darn good. I used to use it live and it worked pretty well.