9 months with the Kemper - my impressions

  • Hello fellow Kemperians! Not sure if I picked the right category, feel free to move it.


    So, I wanted to share my impressions of the Kemper after 9 months. I have always owned a tube amp at the same time, right now as well (but not for long). I started out with the unpowered rack, even though the entire idea of the swap was to move away from racks and my Axe FX Standard... I got the Helix at first, but I just could not get it to sound the way I wanted even with 6 hours of tweaking for 7 days.


    I returned it for the Kemper, which they had to get from another store. I was so sick of tweaking that I did not even care for or touched one single parameter for several months, but there was no need to! It sounded great through my Atomic CLR, but running the EVH 5150 through the matching cab or even the Kemper through the poweramp of the 5150 was a much more rewarding experience!


    I quickly figured that I craved for a traditional cabinet setup, sold the CLR and got a Zilla Modern 2x12" as well as a Matrix GT1000FX and a 4U rack case.


    The rig sounded great, all of the thump and push of a cranked tube amp at every volume level! However, after some time I figured that the rack was as big, bulky and almost as heavy as a tube amp head. I could certainly live with it, especially considering all the other benefits, but I wanted every advantage I could of running digital.


    I sold the rack eventually, and bought a PowerHead with the Kemper bag. When I got it and set it up, I just could not believe it! An amp head that clocks in at 6.5kg that blows away a 100w tube amp head regarding volume (at 4 and 8 ohm) with a built in high end pedal board and state of the art DI (studio profile to the FOH)!


    Compared to the Matrix it sounds just as good, and produces a fraction of the heat. The Matrix had a defective fan, which the Powerhead does not require. One less thing that can go wrong! Someone on the forum have stated that the poweramp is made by Bang & Olufsen, but I have never seen Kemper confirm this. It is great nevertheless!


    My last three tube amps and some others in the past have had issues. The EVH 5150III started to produce loud crackling noises out of nowhere. The Fargen Mighty Plex MKII suddenly lost all of its volume, but it came back by itself shortly after and have not occured again. The newest addition, a Marshall Silver Jubilee 2553 which I expected to be a great amp, only sounded good with one particular speaker/cab combination. Very shrill, fizzy and overly bright tones from an amp I was told should be quite dark sounding.


    This is not a tube amp bashing post, at least it is not intended to be. Tube amps sound great and the Kemper would not have a job without them, but I think tube amps are an outdated an unreliable design. The Powerhead running beta firmware is ten times more reliable, never had an issue except the rare beta crash. I would never run a beta version for gigging either, and the 3.3 is rock solid! The Kemper is also much lighter, smaller and sounds great independent of volume.


    One other great thing about the Kemper: if you have a Marshall DSL for instance, which has two channels and two modes per channel. The two modes are not footswitchable on the amp, but if you profile both of them they are on the Kemper!


    One, and the only downside of the Kemper: does it have the mojo of a Marshall stack? Certainly not, but what does? Other than an actual Marshall stack of course! It kinda looks like some NASA space ship stuff from the 70's, which has its own kind of mojo!


    Like I shortly mentioned earlier, I do not consider my Kemper a modeller. I see it as "the amp head of the future"! I highly respect people who still run tube amps, but in my opinion and for my use the Kemper is superior in every way. The Silver Jubilee will soon be for sale, but I will probably buy another amp for profiling causes only, and then sell it :D

  • Welcome to Kemperland! ^^


    Compared to the Matrix it sounds just as good, and produces a fraction of the heat. The Matrix had a defective fan, which the Powerhead does not require. One less thing that can go wrong! Someone on the forum have stated that the poweramp is made by Bang & Olufsen, but I have never seen Kemper confirm this. It is great nevertheless!


    Well, AFAIK this is a modern class D amp. Those all have excellent efficiency and to my taste they sound as clean as can be. I got those in my active JBLs. On the Kemper I am without power amp.


    One, and the only downside of the Kemper: does it have the mojo of a Marshall stack? Certainly not, but what does? Other than an actual Marshall stack of course! It kinda looks like some NASA space ship stuff from the 70's, which has its own kind of mojo!


    Thats why there are those hollow stacks :D Look like Marshall walls but nothing behind. You can hide your AXE or POD behind it and more and more actually do. Hiding the Kemper would NOT be an option for me, though... :D

    Ne travaillez jamais.

  • Your Jubilee may have poorly biased tubes, worn out tubes, etc. They can be quite warm and creamy, when set up to sound that way.


    But, there's no need to mess around with the tubes. If you want Jubilee sounds, there are plenty of available free and commercial rigs. :)


    The Jubilee got new tubes and rebias a few months ago, and the guy I bought it from claimed that it sounded great and just as good as his 2555SL. It is being serviced at the moment, but the "amp tech" is not a full time amp tech so he has not even opened the amp after more than a week... If he finds something and it sounds great afterwards I might keep it, but it is worth quite a lot (I have the half stack 2553 + 2556A (2x12")).

    Edited once, last by Alfi27 ().

  • Ah, cool! Really cool looking "mini" stack, and I bet it sounds as good as it looks when it works as it should. I have two sets of speakers and two cabs, which makes a total of four combinations. The amp sounds quite good with only one of the combinations, and horrible with the same speakers in another cab or other speakers in the same cab... And the Kemper sounds great with all four combinations :P

  • Really? I find the amp very fizzy, shrill and it has some really strange stuff going on in the highs. I thought it was due to the low volume, but even when I profiled it with volume at 6 it sounds pretty much identical. Certainly not useable with V30s, which are praised as «the ultimate speaker» for the Jubilee.. It gets worse the higher the gain though, and for some reason it gets much more fizzy at 50 watts compared to the 25w-mode.


    But I guess whether an amp is dark or bright is very subjective. It might be dark compared to a JCM800. Slash loves a bright amp so I don't think the Jubilee would be his weapon of choice for so many years if it was very dark :P That being said, Top Jimi's profiles of his 2555 sounds much better and less shrill than my 2553.

  • its much brighter than JCM800...but i still like that one more with V30 than G12T75


    Check the Slash setting..you find them with google...those are also my favourite settings of that amp


    The secret is the micing..not the Amp on its own or the used speaker....Setting in the room can be bright shrill....but still captured warm and smooth :)


    because the Silver Jubilee is a very bright amp - Slash likes that one ;) (i own 10 heads..this is the brightest one)

  • Yeah you are absolutely right about that one, I tried to record the amp to show the guy I bought it from how it sounded. But it sounded completely different; much, much better...! The DI profile + IR sounded quite a lot better as well, but with the DI-profile through a real cab in the room: awful... But from what you are saying here, there might be nothing wrong with the amp after all! Then I can put it out for sale with good conscience :D


    Unfortunately not an amp for me. I would love a Tim Caswell modded 2204 though! But that would be very expensive and not to mention completely unnecessary when I have quite a few profiles of a Caswell-modded Plexi. Being such a Marshall-fan like me it would be nice to have a (fully working) Marshall stack just for the sake of owning it :P

  • I used to own a JVM410H a few years ago, but I had issues with that one also... Some strange noises that resulted in a complete retube and another fix that I cannot quite remember. Costed me about 150€. I really do not need all those bells and whistles of the JVM either, a JCM800 or another single channel Marshall head would be ideal for me. I mostly use Les Pauls with the neck pickup rolled down for clean, bridge at full for crunch and a boost pedal for those screaming leads! That is actually how I use the Kemper as well, I have the Remote but I haven't used it even once with the Powerhead :P

  • A little update for fellow 2553 owners: the amp tech decided not to open the amp up, simply because he thought there was absolutely nothing wrong with the amp. Testing the amp on his 4x12" loaded with 40 years old Greenbacks I totally agreed, but coming home to my own cabs the tones were the same as before...


    The cleans are good, AC/DC type overdrive is good but turning the gain knob past ten o'clock sounds plain awful imo. It does not help boosting it with a pedal either, sounds just as bad. The amp has to go, and I can say with absolute certainty that this was my last tube amp for a really long time.

  • New update: I decided to try the Jubilee yesterday once again. Figured that I have become waaayy too comfortable with the Kemper, and have practically forgotten how to tweak an amp... Backing of the treble and presence quite a bit (treble at 9 o'clock and presence at 12) the amp sounded amazing! Actually, it is maybe one of the best tones I have ever gotten from a valve amp! Quite funny stuff, a few tweaks made the amp go from "not worth profiling" to one of the best tones I've ever heard. So I think that after all I will bring the Jubilee with me to music school/college, to make sure I can master a screaming valve amp before I "retire" with the Kemper :D

  • Not quite sure what you mean, I haven't gotten around to profile it just yet. Top Jimi's Jubilee profiles sound so great that I have no hurry, although I have found some great sounds on the amp he didn't profile: clean channel with rhythm clip engaged, and gain at 9 o'clock = epic classic rock (AC/DC) tone! Not the biggest fan of the rhythm clip on the lead channel, sounds like a Tubescreamer in front (loss of bottom end) kind of but minimal to zero added gain. The lead channel is so great, it has the classic Marshall bite and crunch but sounds much more full bodied and thick! I could also easily pull off a rock gig with my guitar just plugged into the amp. It has significantly more gain than a JCM800 for instance. 8)

  • Not quite sure what you mean, I haven't gotten around to profile it just yet. Top Jimi's Jubilee profiles sound so great that I have no hurry, although I have found some great sounds on the amp he didn't profile: clean channel with rhythm clip engaged, and gain at 9 o'clock = epic classic rock (AC/DC) tone! Not the biggest fan of the rhythm clip on the lead channel, sounds like a Tubescreamer in front (loss of bottom end) kind of but minimal to zero added gain. The lead channel is so great, it has the classic Marshall bite and crunch but sounds much more full bodied and thick! I could also easily pull off a rock gig with my guitar just plugged into the amp. It has significantly more gain than a JCM800 for instance. 8)



    Ooh, sounds nice! IF you profile it (and care to share), I'd love to try a profile with that AC/DC setting... Haven't found something that rocks my socks off yet in that department - mostly too high gain, or not enough oomph :) But it might not be the settings but rather how they're mic'ed that (as far as MY ears are concerned) doesn't capture the sound right. I seem to remember something about their amps (or maybe just one of the guys) being mic'ed with both a condenser and a dynamic.

  • New update: I decided to try the Jubilee yesterday once again. Figured that I have become waaayy too comfortable with the Kemper, and have practically forgotten how to tweak an amp... Backing of the treble and presence quite a bit (treble at 9 o'clock and presence at 12) the amp sounded amazing! Actually, it is maybe one of the best tones I have ever gotten from a valve amp! Quite funny stuff, a few tweaks made the amp go from "not worth profiling" to one of the best tones I've ever heard. So I think that after all I will bring the Jubilee with me to music school/college, to make sure I can master a screaming valve amp before I "retire" with the Kemper :D


    HAH!!! Sometimes we stop the tweaking too early, because "there's no WAY this knob should be turned any further now... the amp must simply not be my cup of tea" :D

  • I wish the powered Kemper would come with a stereo amp with the option of bridging it for mono operation. I like running in stereo.

    Friedman BE100, Suhr PT100SE, Mesa Boogie Dual Recto,EVH 5150 iii S, 68' Metro/Friedman Plexi, Vox AC30 (2) Marshall 1960B, Port City 2 x 12 OS Wave, Scumback speakers (4)BH75,(4)M75,(4)H75,(1)H55(1)Celestion V30 Fryette PS attenuator, Mesa Boogie 2 90, Kemper Profiler amp and tons of rack and fx pedals
    ProTools 10.3.5 HD5 , Logic Pro 10.1,Ableton 9 Live. Dynaudio BM6a with BM9S sub and Focals Alpha 80