Kemper powerhead with cab, some advice please...considering going frfr

    Hi there,


    I have had my kemper for a year now and for most of that time I have been using it at home for recording or playing with my 1960a cab. I did a show with it a few weeks after I got it and it was a baptism of fire of sorts, had difficulty with cutting through the mix and getting a satisfactory onstage tone. Tone to FOH was great but onstage was a disaster. I have spent alot of time since then getting familiar with the kemper and recently started rehearing with a new band and have been using it with a cab for rehearsals I play in a metal band so have been using high gain profiles mainly, i have bought packs from all the big players and have a few profiles i like to use with the band. My biggest problem is achieving a satisfactory tone at high volumes. I find with the cab it can be a very harsh experience, very high top ends and sharp character to the distortion and obviously losing the character of the profiles due to the cab colouring it. My first question is are there any tips to setting up high gain at high volumes with the kemper while using a cab? Perhaps there are a few profiles that excel with a cab that someone could recommend? Secondly, for the reasons above, I have started to seriously consider an active frfr monitor/cab and ditching the 1960a permanently. How does the like of the dxr10/12 handle high gain at high volumes? As this is the direction i am leaning towards.


    Thanks in advance.

    Im a total newb so hopefully someone jumps in....
    This might be total BS and maybe you've already done this, but I thought you could turn the cab SIM option off on the Kemper?
    Since it sounded good through FOH, maybe someone knows how to turn "off" the Kemper cab sims on the output to your cab, but keep the cab sims "on" as they have been through a second output to FOH.


    Hopefully I didn't just make that up :whistling: ... I don't own a Kemper and I kind of have a similar question.

    I am also quite new but I read here a lot :)


    When you played through your cab, did you make sure you disabled the cab-sim at the kemper for the amp output? Otherwise do it or try using a DI-Profile (Amp without speaker) instead.
    You should always define your livetone at the excact volume your using it afterwards. It's the way to make sure it sounds as you want it.
    And for the tone with the cab: SinMix (user here) has a good video where you can see, that almost any highgain amp sounds the sam through the same cab. So if your cab has a certain color it will be applied to every amp that your Kemper simulates. So if you cannot find your sound through that cab you maybe got the wrong cab for your ears / taste. A neutral monitoring-system could surely be a soluition in that case.


    There are quite some people strugling with this it seams.

    Thanks for the replies.


    I have had the kemper for a year now so I know it pretty well at this stage. Cab sims are always off and always have been when using it with a cab.


    Would be good to hear from someone who has made the transition from cab to frfr and uses high gain as this is where I think I need to go.


    Cheers

    I am using my PowerHead through a 1x12 most of the time (rehearsals and on stage).
    Sometimes i just use an frfr monitor on stage.


    I never had any problem with the sound through my cab.
    When the profile itself sounded good to me, the sound through the cab was always very good as well.
    Of course, as Nightwish2 already said, you have to make shure that the FOH gets the sound WITH Cabsim and the Monitor/Speaker-Out gets it WITHOUT the cab sim.
    Did you check if you have tweaked the equalizer of the monitor output? Maybe there is something wrong there?


    Regarding high gain and high volume: The Kemper basically works like a normal tube way in this regard. Like with a tube amp, tones sound different at different volumes. But if you select a good profile (maybe of an amp that you know) and turn it up to stage volume, you should be able to adjust the tone to you liking by using the equalizer like on a tube amp. Additionally you have some more parameters in the amp menu.


    Regarding the cab: Did you already use this cab before you got the kemper? Did you like the sound of it?


    If you like the sound of a profile WITH Cabsim through frfr speakers (PA, Stage-Monitor, Studio monitors, etc.) but you do not like it WITHOUT cabsim through your cab, then i would say the cab is the problem.