Kempers Effects Good Enough for You?

I'll be recording dry for the most part, but IMHO they're very natural, organic and musical-sounding.

They are good enough for "normal" playing.
But i personally don't play just normal.
I totally shut down the Kemper effects.
I recently got the 3 big Strymons and the fun never ends.

I play around with full instrumental and ambient sometimes.
I am not sure these pedals can be beat for this stuff.

They may be matched when the big-ass, new-fangled, fancy-schmancy Kemper delays come our way, whenever that might be, ITTO.

Quote from ScaryGroove

Just curious if you all found the Kemper effects to be good enough to use in your rig or if you kept your current arsenal of pedals and do not use Kemper's effects.

Thanks

Honestly, i wanted to ask this question, too. Is there ANY pro out there, any video on you tube that proves that the upper buttons are en par with
the rest of the Kemper????? because i do not think so, until someone proves it to me, best case with a good tutorial. No joking here, because as is, i say:

• Kemper Pedals - never used them - worst thing in the KPA
• Reverb - okay, but i always use reverb from cubase when i can
• Delay - good, but c'mon there is more possible sounds flat, no room, just flat
• Chorus - artifacts, unusable, flat, i always use my cubase chorus
• in case i am just too stupid to dial in a tone, okay @meambobbo , please do a tutorial, because i know you are good.

Quote from Monkey_Man

They may be matched when the big-ass, new-fangled, fancy-schmancy Kemper delays come our way, whenever that might be, ITTO.

Not even a drop in the bucket close.
I use the Mobious, Big Sky and the Timeline.
There is a LOT going on in these things.

Even if the Kemper could match them, I would still use them.
They are SO much easier to adjust and manipulate. Knobs are so much more user friendly and MUCH faster than menu diving.

I'm using my Klon OD in front and an Eventide H9+LabSeries 5 preamp in the loop. Sometimes the Wah or phaser as stomp. If I need chorus/flanger/delay/univibe, I use separate boxes. If push comes to shove, I can always dial in my UAD effects, which are amazing truthful.
I hope the upcoming Blue Nebula will solve all my delay needs.

Excellent for my use. I have the Fulltone Dejavibe and Strymon El Capistan and leave them home. The chorus is thick, the ring modulator sounds better than anything else I have, the rotovibe rules, etc. YMMV.
The only short coming are the distortion stomps but why bother when you can use the appropriate sweet spot profile?

I use the reverb for a light, always on reverb to make my sound not so dry.

Run a compressor and a couple Od's in front of the Kemper, and a Timefactor and big sky in the loop. This lets me have a lot of live flexibility without having to preset set lists.

I also have have a midi controller that turns on and off different effects that I have preset and locked on all the slots on the Kemper. This way the Kemper functions as a virtual pedalboard for sounds that I use often, but don't need separate pedals for, and I don't have to lug around a bunch of different expensive pedals for sounds that I use once a night.

Are they good enough for me? Absolutely.

I would still be using my TC Electronic G-System for effects, if they weren't.

I've played hundreds of gigs with my KPA. When they added Pitch effects, It completely replaced the FX in my G-System, and more. My main gig is playing '80s music, so there are a lot of song-specific sounds that I use. My FX usage for gigs are delays (big, long sustaining delays, as well as slap backs and tempo-based delays), Reverbs (subtle to huge), pitch FX (harmony leads, Eb flat tuning) Choruses, Univibe, tremolo, fuzzes. I also use a combination of Fuzzes and Pitch for synth-style sounds. And, I use Acoustic Sim Rigs

The only hardware effect I still use is a Talkbox. The vowel wah in the KPA works really well, but, I use the talkbox to form actual words, in a "call and response" with our vocalist.

There is a link in my signature to some of the more radical FX sounds I've come up with (pedal steel guitar, ambient and shimmer sounds, etc)

All FX aside, my primary reason for using the KPA is that it sounds and feels like a Marshall/Fender/Vox/whatever at ANY volume. Although stage volume is rarely an issue for us, we occasionally play a gig where we need to be more conscious of that. Nothing else I have tried has ever sounded as good as the KPA does in that kind of situation. It can sound great with no effects.

I think most of them are quite good. Sometimes I do have issues with the drive pedals, but I do have issues with real drive pedals as well. I always had a timeline in the loop that has now been substituted by a Source Audio Nemesis (man this thing sounds good, much prefer it over the Timeline) - that's not because the Kemper delays are bad, but because I usually lock all the effects in my performance and use the FX like a virtual pedal board. That would leave me with one delay setting - but as a delay junkie I use 8 presets on the Nemesis

i don't play live, and i don't spend a ton of time in effects tbh. for me, the kemper effects are really really good. i think the weakest spot is the reverb. delay is due an upgrade, probably fairly soon - we'll see how well they stack up then, but it sounds like they were shooting for a large feature set from some of the NAMM vids. delay will improve the reverb, as i found you can get quite lush reverb sounds by using high delay/reverb mix settings in the reverb, applying modulation to the delay trails. with new delay effects, those possibilities open up more. i definitely think the reverb tones i've dialed in to be sufficient for me, but yes, they are more difficult to tweak than a stellar dedicated unit. i really like the mod effects. the EQ's are great, most of the Distortion are good, maybe not as good as some real pedals but mostly great. Noise gates are great. Pitch effects are great. I don't feel a need to buy anything or integrate an fx processor into my rig...

Yep I mostly use KPA's FXes , I rarely gig, but I record lots of stuff. I don't want to spoil the great signal chain with external FXes and the internal FX are largely enough to me, and a single box solution is so comfortable.

They are quite underrated to me and people here are maybe a bit lazy/uncomfortable when it comes to tweaking / editing FX : there is a great arsenal of pedals and some combinations do marvels in terms of dist ( recti shaper + dist , octaver + fuzz an so on) . The wahs are really great , and I managed to get a great univibe setting with the new morph feature with a few experiments : check this example

I really dig the multivoice octaver, it's a fantastic tool, I constantly use it to record my bass lines ( with a squier strat) but also for harmonized parts, it does not track perfectly but It's a major tool when it comes to writing songs with unusual chords : check another example here with harmonizer used to mimic a fender rhodes (on the intro)

another clip with a clavinet sim I dig a while ago : :

it takes a bit of time to experiment, but they are really worth it to me. I wish there was an editor on the PC to edit and manage the FXes , the menus are not that great when it comes to choosing the right FX.

I really miss some spring verbs and some reverse delays , but they will come in a near future

Quote from Inthrutheout

Even if the Kemper could match them, I would still use them.
They are SO much easier to adjust and manipulate. Knobs are so much more user friendly and MUCH faster than menu diving.

For me its the other way round!

Its so much easier to change the whole guitar sound (slot in a performance) and having all the stomps / FX setup as intended without the need to touch any knobs...

From the producers point of view I would not like to get a guitar sound with any reverb involved. No matter how good the guitar might sound with it when played alone. The different reverbs are delicate for the overall sound of a mix and should be added in the context of the song. Same with many delays. The exception is - of course - when the delay is such an important part of the guitar playing as in The-Edgy-Sounds.

Playing just my guitar: I like the FX! Very musical and convincing. I just do struggle with my WahWah - but that is more that I still have been too lazy to adjust it to my pedal. At least thats my hoping...

Live I don't use anything other than the Kemper any more. Recording is a different story. I have an El Capistan and my recording buddy has all manner of fun stomps, delays and effects, so depending on the song and the mood, they can get used in conjunction with KPA effects or on their own. Recently I bought a Klondike Carnival (very authentic Klon Centaur clone) that I envision getting some use, too. Contrary to popular consensus, I actually really like a lot of the distortion/overdrive Stomps in the KPA, however.

For an important GIG I use only a Tc electronic "Hall of fame" additional.
Normal it stays at home.
Im waiting for a good spring reverb than the KPA will play always naked.

Quote from Sharry

Im waiting for a good spring reverb than the KPA will play always naked.

So Kemperteam, please bring the Spring Reverb as soon as possible. I'd like to see Sharry play naked!

The Kemper effects are similar in quality to TC G-system, which is what I owned prior to the Kemper. They are also similar to the extent that they are more traditional effects, as opposed to the wild stuff by Eventide and Strymon. If you like the TC stuff, you should like the Kemper effects. This is why I own an H9 max. It can do all of the wild stuff in a small single pedal, but I can rely on the Kemper for all the basic stuff, as they are musical.

That being said, part of the value of external effects is that they can be set independently of rigs. In other words, if I tweak a preset on my H9, all of my rigs that access that preset via midi don't need to be adjusted. Whereas if you use a Kemper delay or other effect and have a particular delay setting you use across multiple rigs in various slots and performance banks, to tweak it, you have to go to each and every rig you use it and save over it. (This is why I feature requested aliasing-being able to adjust an amp block or effect block that's the mother preset and have all the aliases adjusted with it in the various rigs that use them. )

The effects in the KPA are good enough for me.

I only use the Kemper for live playing, I don't use reverb live at all, never have done - personal preference.

I've never used distortion pedals, always using the amp gain so whilst I don't rate the distortion pedals in the KPA, I don't rate the real ones either.

I think the wah is good enough - certainly as good as my crybaby, with less noise and sound colouration/tone suck.

The whammy/pitch shift tracks as good as a digitech and is far more flexible.

I bought it so I could ditch my pedal board and at present I see no need for outboard effects. I can understand why they might not be up to standard for recording but then typically you'd record dry anyway.

For someone who is really into effects, I can understand they might seem flat or limited but I don't hear that at all. Having said that I'm not creating rich soundscapes, my sound is not that sophisticated...and neither am I

Meh, they are so-so.