Commercial profiles overload

    Hey guys , I'm just wondering how many of you settled with profiles free or commercial and never looked back ? There are so many sellers , so many great profiles , but hot water doesn't need to be invented anymore ...
    Has it all been done ? do we need more profiles and people who want a slice of the pie ? Didn't they miss the boat ?


    Just things I've been thinking about lately ...


    In my case I bought only a handful of profiles and i'm perfectly happy !


    The first days of owning the kemper (about 2 months) I was scrolling thru the rig exchange , reading all posts in the profiles sections , hunting on youtube ...


    The I realized it was just madness , so looked for the things I needed (which was , clean , classic , crunch , rock and heavy sounds to play the variety of songs we play in our coverband)


    Do you guys share the same feeling ?


    grtz


    Raf

    Kemper stage with 2 mission pedals (in a Thon line 6 FBV case) and a Zilla 212 (K-100/V30) , SD powerstage 700 poweramp

    You can find a lot of great profiles on the exchange and elsewhere. I have MBritt, Top Jimi, TAF, and a number of other commercial profiles, and while they're fantastic, I still end up using freebies for most of what I do.


    The increase in profiles and commercial sellers show how much Kemper has grown in its short time around. It may lead to a bit of paralysis, but not the worst kind.

    Some of us will never satisfied in that eternal search for a slight improvement in tone. That is part of the enjoyment for me in playing guitar. Whether using a real amp, or buying and creating new profiles, I love it. The perfect tone is just around the corner.

    Karl


    Kemper Rack OS 9.0.5 - Mac OS X 12.6.7

    The market has been saturated for a long time.
    I have almost stopped to visit RE, I think the last time I checked rigs was 16 months ago.
    I have bought a variation of high quality profiles that cover all the ground I could possibly need.


    My personal opinion is that selling profiles won't be a valid business model for much longer, like the OP said: you can't re-invent the same thing again and again.
    Still it's worthwhile for a professional profiler to keep going, because all the work is done but the Kemper user base is continuing to expand.

    Same thing with plugins...drum samples...etc but every profile seller has it's own "sound" so even if there's 100000 Dual Rectifier profiles, they will all sound different. So, I don't think it's overloaded. More like a huge variety of sound available!

    I have bought (almost) all profiles from Choptones (here alone nearly 6000 profiles), CiliLab, TAF, Top Jimi, Pete's Profiles, Sinmix, MBritt and many of other sellers like the great Reampzone. Do i really need that much of an overkill? NO!! No way! Bought them just for fun :)


    Truth is, you can record a whole album with 4-5 different profiles (including bass). Maybe you will need even less.


    But for me it is really a pleasure and neverending fun to try the profiles available. Further I am surprised and amazed again and again about different approach and cool profiles from all the guys out there. If I want screwing knobs and playing around I go with soundside, if I want a big selection of a specific amp in all settings or ready to play profiles I look at Choptones. Want some cool rack / preamp stuff? I have Big Hairy profiles. Heavy Stuff? Today Tonehammer, maybe tomorrow sinmix again...want your Kemper to explode: CiliLab's Victoria 20112 is the way to go... Pure luxury... I love it :D


    But maybe one day I will wake up and the obsession is gone, who knows...

    Yes and no in my opinion. The beauty of the Kemper and what makes it so versatile is in the design itself: you can move a mic around 2000 times on a 4x12 v30 loaded cab with a 5150 and not change the settings and get 2000 different sounds alone just from that. I've said it since day one, the kemper lives and dies by the profiles you make, which generally means how well you Mic an amp: that's really what this comes down to here. And there are plenty of people who do not mic an amp right at all, and many that do here. And those that do, they offer tons of different flavors of the same cabs, with different mic techniques etc. much like in the real world with producers having their own signature sound, many of the " commercial" profilers do here as well. Will the Kemper profiles continually get exponentially better like they started to around 2 years ago? That part I think will slow down yes: until some of the worlds top engineers begin making profiles available, and even then in my opinion they still won't get exponentially better. There is no " better" in reality anyways, what profile sits in the mix or live mix right for one person and one studio session may not work for someone else: even that same person again in the same
    Environment. How many times do bands use the same gear album to album yet get consistently different tones? All the time. And the beauty of the Kemper is you can capture all those minor nuance differences in every session. It really is a thing of beauty. So yes and no in my opinion. People keep moving those mics around on a cab and trying new things and marketing things a certain way etc, the commercial profiler will continue to live on for the foreseeable future.

    Yes, we'll get a lot of new profiles in the last time.


    I was the first profile seller, then Andy - after that a long time nothing more - but in the last month or so - so many new profile sellers - it can be confusing.


    But why not - we get more and more options - and the customers will know what they like or not.


    I'll still sell a lot of profiles -- many of them to returning customers - and I'll continue to buy and profile great amps.


    Here are still 3 amps waiting to be profiled - but now it's Christmas time - so more amps will be available next year.


    Enjoy!

    (All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners, which are in no way associated or affiliated with soundside.de)


    Great Profiles --> soundside.de

    As the bar gets set higher and higher with respect to quality, commercial profilers are now kind of expected to be like "producers" by giving their own twist to the profiling process. Just like when using the rig exchange, I try to stick to the ones who I know share a similar conception of tone. Once you find the one whose ears you can consistently trust; then half the battle is already won.


    However, it could sometimes also be eye-opening to step out of the comfort zone and check out the ones who seem to release stuff that feels completely unuseable at first sight.

    And then you have guys selling a "6 month refined" single direct profile (no cab) for $40 by telling you it's of a custom Marshall mod and the guy who made the mod helped refine it with a "special proprietary" profiling technique… I guess the allure of it being expensive coupled with a unique selling point is a new approach that will get at least some old tired and weary Kemperites looking for something different to sink their teeth into.


    I even recently encountered STL Tones whose approach seems to be geared more towards having "artist crafted profile packs".


    Recently I've been most satisfied with Guidorist's profiles. Some of them have given me what other profiles I've had seemed to have lacked and tempered my enthusiasm for the Kemper. Top notch stuff and some of the best high gain profiles available for the Kemper (which I've come to realize is a challenge to replicate much like other modelers). I just need something that fits the tone in my brain, not having to reinvent the wheel over and over again. I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on thousands of profiles I will never use. This past week I've gone through 1,500 profiles and kept only 160. The other commercial profiles I have are mainly just for fun, like playing Top Jimi's iconic '68 Marshall Super Lead.

    Quote from MCVA444

    The problem (at least for me) is that you can't truely know if you'll like a commercial pack until after you've bought it and tried it.

    True, there are many i immediately know i won't use, despite having thought the clips sounded pretty good. Either they don't sound the same with my gear or they don't "feel" right, or whatever.

    I personally think these sellers asking for " pre orders" for profiles is simply a joke and should be banned... you are not a legitimate company, I am not giving you " pre order" money for a non tangible product in the first place, that is not even released yet. Multiple multiple multiple packs up for " pre sale"; brought to you by " commercial profilers" who could just not exist the next day... anyone else think this is ridiculous?

    Well, I think the people taking pre-orders have released freebies or teased sound samples, they just don't have everything refined yet. I don't object to that. Plus, they tend to be sellers with a long track record whom the pre-order customers are likely to purchase after its release anyway. I assume the buyers just want it sitting in their inbox to audition the moment it comes out.