Andertons video: Kemper vs tube amp blind test

I am a subscriber to andertons as well as the chappers channel.

Thats why I am aware of their blind tests of Gibson/Epiphone as well as Fender/Squier/Custom US/mexican/korean strats. In some of those tests they sometimes liked the much cheaper guitars better than the expensive. This is truely harming andertons business, isnt it? For sure he makes much more when selling one expensive guitar compared to $150 Squier.

Thats partly why I do think that they are honest. Which is true for their Kemper videos as well.

well, some one can tell where we can find these rigs?

Quote from Lokasenna

One Kemper is a lot cheaper to tour with than two heads and a bunch of effects, so there's that.

What I mean is why question a Kemper? It does its job good enough. Any tiny little nuances are pointless. The benefits far outweigh any little grumbling. I have my Diezel really for tube nostalgia, the Kemper and the like are the future so there is no need to compare IMHO.

Well, I'm sure you tried the Kemper yourself as well at one point before you bought? I did at least. It wouldn't have been the first product not to deliver on its claims. We're lucky it does deliver.

Quote from Laurens

Well, I'm sure you tried the Kemper yourself as well at one point before you bought? I did at least. It wouldn't have been the first product not to deliver on its claims. We're lucky it does deliver.

Actually no, I didn't try it before hand. If it would have sucked I would have just sent it back. I didn't have too high of hopes for it, since there has been a trail of disappointment from other gear, but there was such a buzz about it I thought what the hell. After lots of comparisons and ear scrutiny, I decided the future is finally upon us guitar players. My thing is comparison are too hard to do because everyone hears it differently. You have to get your hands on one and try it out. I'm a tube snob, but that is fading fast, haha... My tube amps I still have are just for the nostalgia of the tube. Kemper has an easy layout which reminds me of the easy TC Electronic layouts, just easy to navigate, so that is a huge plus.

I personally found the film huge fun to watch and it made me come away feeling like I'd made a wise choice investing in the Kemper (as if I even needed that reassurance). I've met Chappers and he's one of the most down to earth people you could meet. He also uses a lot of gear live; therefore I can imagine he's genuinely now considering using a Kemper for touring, based on those tones they hammered out in the film. The fact they were practically stealing the guitar off each other at the end speaks volumes!

Aaaand the profiles are up - see the description for the video, the link is in there

Quote from DAMZ88

I personally found the film huge fun to watch and it made me come away feeling like I'd made a wise choice investing in the Kemper (as if I even needed that reassurance). I've met Chappers and he's one of the most down to earth people you could meet. He also uses a lot of gear live; therefore I can imagine he's genuinely now considering using a Kemper for touring, based on those tones they hammered out in the film. The fact they were practically stealing the guitar off each other at the end speaks volumes!

This is exactly how I felt too! I enjoyed watching the video.

Part two :

They can justify selling tune amps again

And, as an aside, tweaking the Amp Compression parameter of the Morgan profile would provide that "natural compression" when digging into notes.

This is just guessing which is which for hours!

I guess right on the Marshall, wrong on the Morgan.

In this case the real Marshall was just that little bit less brittle with more mids and a slightly less fizzy treble and it seemed to descend into a harmonic closer to the fretted note on feedback. If this is from Cabdriver rather than a direct, then that might be why although the separation was damn impressive.

On the Morgan I was expecting the Kemper to be the slightly less dynamic one and assumed it would be the one that sounded more like it had a limiter on it (which turned out to be the real amp). As SheldonCooper mentions though just raise the amp block compression a little to even those things out.

Usually it's only when a profile is from something higher gain that I find I'm craving some missing compression with the gain is dialed back either at the guitar or Kemper end, it would be nice if there were an algorithm that could behave like a compressor with lots of makeup placed after the amp block but sidechaned to before the amp block so it wouldn't drive the amp into gain (or ideally wouldn't compress at all at fuller volume/digging in so no adjustment to gainy sounds), sort of like input sens (sensitivity) settings, but for compression with clean and dirty.

@Per that's exactly what the compressor in the amp block does!

Quote from Per

As SheldonCooper mentions though just raise the amp block compression a little to even those things out.

You mean paults

Quote from sambrox

@Per that's exactly what the compressor in the amp block does!

Are you sure? Here it sounds like it's simply a compressor applied post amp/pre cab with no sidechain. Also it's applied equally to high and low gain (whereas I'd want the behavior to be more prominent on low gain/low input).

Quote from SheldonCooper

You mean paults

Oops, yes, sorry!

Quote from paults

And, as an aside, tweaking the Amp Compression parameter of the Morgan profile would provide that "natural compression" when digging into notes.

My thought exactly when Lee said that, Paul.

I thought, "You should know the product you sell, buddy!".

Quote from Per

Are you sure? Here it sounds like it's simply a compressor applied post amp/pre cab with no sidechain. Also it's applied equally to high and low gain (whereas I'd want the behavior to be more prominent on low gain/low input).

Oops, yes, sorry!

According to the manual, Per, yes.

The more interesting test would be to mic the real amp and di the Kemper. I now realise the cabinet is the harder part to get right and has more influence on the final sound than many tube amps.

I can hear quite a big difference when they switch Kemper/Amp on the second video. That's something that shouldn't happen if the profiling process was made correctly. I think that's due to the mic placement of the cabs in the room (which I assume is the source that we hear in the video). If these sounds were as different in the room as in the video, something was wrong in the process.

They don't specify this but the difference in sound could be because they performed a Studio profiling as opposed to a Direct Input one. I really believe that not even some of the best producers in the world could tell the difference between the KPA and the real thing with a good profile.