I'm selling my Fractal AxeFX 2 XL+ tomorrow and buying my first Kemper... What should I expect?

  • I'm selling my Fractal AxeFX 2 XL+ tomorrow and buying my first Kemper... What should I expect?


    I've been with Fractal ever since around 04 or 05 when they first released the Standard unit and now I'm selling the XL+ with FW quantum 7.2 and buying a Kemper.


    I've never used a Kemper before, all I know is the sounds I've heard on youtube and on Profile sellers websites.


    I plan to buy literally every single Profile that Mbrit, BigHairyProfiles, ChopTones, SinMix, TAF, Guidorist, TopJimi, STLtones, Tonehawkstudios, rigbusters and Stymphalian have available on their websites, literally, every one of them in the next few weeks!


    Let me know if there's any other Profile sellers I should be checking out as well!


    Those BigHairyProfiles impressed me the most from what I heard on the site, I watched every video with my Focal headphones, and they blew me Away! Especially the Profiles for the ADA MP pack and the Lee Jackson ones! Those nailed every tone I been struggling to find in the AxeFx's in the last 10 years and have never came as close to any of them as what I heard in those profiles. And Top Jimi was my 2nd fave with the EVH and Slash tones.


    I use Adam A7X monitors and only use guitar to play at home and record.


    I will be using the Kemper with a Suhr strat that has a Doug Aldrich humbucker in the bridge and a ML Single Coil in the neck. I use Mogami cables.


    I am NOT a Tweaker.


    I -Hate- tweaking the Axe, I absolutley -LOATHE- tweaking the axe.


    I don't care much about effects, Reverb is extremely important to me, and I understand Kemper has better Reverb coming soon. I also like nice Delays, and a touch of Chorus on clean stuff, and I like to be able to do pitch stuff to get 5th and 3rd harmony licks when I want to, and I like to be able to use a Wah, hoping the Kemper has a Wah that sounds like the Bad Horsie.


    On the Axe, yeah you can pretty much throw a good Ownhammer Cab together with a Marshall amp and it sounds good and real.... but that's not good enough for me, that leaves me very, very unsatisfied. I need what I heard in the samples on the BigHairyProfiles page, just listen to the ADA MP ones, he nailed all those famous players tones from the CDs, and especially the Lee Jackson samples he plays, he nailed Zakk Wyldes tone on Crazy Babies.... I think it's a lot to do with the fact that not only is he profiling the amp/cabinet and preamp, but he profiled all the effects etc, so when you use that Profile you are hearing the sum of all those parts.


    When I try to make tones on the Axe they sound OK, but nowhere near as great as any of the profiles bighairy has, and when I am tweaking on the Axe I am always second guessing myself and before it's over I've had so many options and things that are tweakable that the tone I end up with is even worse than the tone I started out with.


    I don't want to Tweak. I simply want to buy a profile that already sounds hopefully 95% of how I want it to and then maybe make a few basic simple fast adjustments on the Kemper panel that will compensate for my guitar/pickups to better match what I heard in the sample that made me buy the profile in the first place.


    I do not care about "amp in the room" tone at all.


    I do not even like amp in the room tone. I don't like the sound of live music.


    I only like the way guitars sound on CD recordings.
    And those are the tones I seek.


    I don't wanna just sound like a Marshall. I wanna sound like the Marshall Randy Rhoads played through on the Tribute CD after it was mixed and mastered, as an example.


    Almost every Profile example I listened to in the above Profile Packs made me go -WOW!- and I've never had that feeling ever in all the ten years owinging Fractal products. In fact, there's only one preset that I really like that came with the XL+ and that was the Mark Day preset. Other than that I like one good preset that I made myself, and even then I second guess that all the time and can't decide if the Mark Day preset actually sounds better than my preset or not. TWO good presets in my Fractal after all these years, I think that's PATHETIC, but I didn't think there was anything else as good or better out there, I thought Fractal was the best there was, because of the hype I guess and never bothereed really researching Kemper until recently.


    With Kemper I feel like I'm going to end up with thousands of mind blowing awesome wow profiles/tones, and I will be able to focus on playing rather than always thinking that my tone is not as good as it could be or that it's what I want it to be.

  • Welcome, YRVV!


    You asked about any good sellers you might have missed - definitely put Bert Meulendijk on that list, mate.


    You also asked about the Kemper wahs. Maybe try the set in my sig and see how you go, as well as the factory presets of course.


    Thank you for sharing your story too, mate.

  • I'm selling my Fractal AxeFX 2 XL+ tomorrow and buying my first Kemper... What should I expect?

    Welcome. Expect tonal bliss provided you find the right profiles FOR YOU.
    I advise to go slow on buying profiles. Don't buy 'literally' everything. Go play with a few profiles and see what you like.
    Play.
    You say you're not a tweaker but a player: But you should to take care to not become a profile hunter.

  • Welcome. Expect tonal bliss provided you find the right profiles FOR YOU.I advise to go slow on buying profiles. Don't buy 'literally' everything. Go play with a few profiles and see what you like.
    Play.
    You say you're not a tweaker but a player: But you should to take care to not become a profile hunter.

    This.


    Otherwise, you will end up with a ton of profiles you might not use at all...

  • Welcome YRVV to the forum,as the guys said take your time with the profile onslaught,
    you will probably end up using only a handful,I hope the Kemper will live up to your
    very high expectations!!! ,it did for me,Unlike yourself i love the sound of a live band
    and the energy live music can put out,give me a live gig by Joe Bonamassa rather than listening to the cd any day of the week,his live sound really does make you salivate,
    ps Bonamassa was the last gig i seen,but same goes for all the tone masters i have heard
    :thumbup:

  • "I will be able to focus on playing rather than always thinking that my tone is not as good as it could be or that it's what I want it to be."


    Exactly this. You will handle it more like a traditional amp, rather than a quirky computer. It is very rewarding IMO. When I got mine, I instantly noticed how I started to play more instead of just fiddling around with bullshit placebo parameters. But unless money is not really a constraint for you, I recommend not buying everything at once. First try the official sample rig packs. You can download those from the official Kemper site. Also try a lot of free profiles from the rig exchange. There are some real gems out there. Do not be discouraged by some horrible ones :)


    Welcome!

  • Welcome and enjoy immediate good tone. I migrated from Fractal too. No tweaking necessary more often than not. You adjust volumes and there you go. I won't discourage you from buying thousands of profiles, but you should download the vendors ' packs first from the Kemper website and check them up and then go for your favourite stuff. Try Bert Meulendjk for sure, as you have been advised already.

    Never too old for rock'n'roll

  • another thing I am looking forward to is no longer having fw updates affect presets as happened with Fractal. Every fractal update meant often times presets had to be changed.


    Speaking of placebo, I recently listened to a video where someone recorded with a looper every fractal fw update over the last few years, and when I listened to it I was blown away by how little of a difference the fractal fw actually sounds today vs two years ago.


    The noiseless/fanless operation sounds like a nice plus of the kemper too, the fractal is quiet, but I sit three to four feet away from it and it is slightly audible when not playing.


    Also I understand kemper has better spillover between preset changes.


    and I can vouch too that its true a lot of censorship goes on at the Fractal forum, and it seems more like a cult there. If the owner dont like what you say its deleted, and if you critizize the Fractal he pretty much just tlls you to go buy something else. People over there go crazy over fw updates and act like fractal is the best thing ever because if so many free updates, but I can't hear a big difference often times, it seems more like a psychological effect on people than anything tangible.

  • "Speaking of placebo, I recently listened to a video where someone recorded with a looper every fractal fw update over the last few years, and when I listened to it I was blown away by how little of a difference the fractal fw actually sounds today vs two years ago"


    Yeah. After all a distorted guitar signal is not really rocket science. :) Just think about it: if you were a Fractal developer, you could globally increase bass and treble... lets say 2%, and call it some cool tech-y name like 'advanced cathode bias plate excursion simulation'... instant success.

  • Welcome to the forum! There are a lot of great guys here that will help you with any of your questions. The lack of tweaking is actually one of the main reasons I decided on Kemper over Axe. I could tell that without tweaking (at least on my end) the profiles sounded spot on. I am ok tweaking, but I'd really rather not. If you purchase a great profile from any of those guys you mentioned (I own lots of profiles from many of them and they are all great). They are basically pre-tweaked for you and you can just play. One of the things I love most about the Profiler. Glad to have you on board!

  • Looks like I have to wait a few more days before I can order the Kemper. Buyer for my Fractal today wasn't able to come up with all the money he had tried to. I don't do PayPal or Ebay. But listed it in the for sale section here for $1,850 and will probably also list it on Reverb.

  • Haha!
    yeah, I'm sure it should sell this week, I lowered the price down to 1800 plus 60 shipping.
    I am so excited though that I will soon have a Kemper, the more I read about all the others positive experiences with it especially the people that also made the switch from Fractal to Kemper the more I can't wait to get the Kemper.
    I will post a review and video as soon as I get the Kemper.
    I will probably become the posterboy/spokesperson of why everyone with a Fractal should switch, haha, I get real passionate about things lol


    I will probably become that guy that trys to persuade everyone with a Fractal to make the switch as I'm doing haha


    I feel puzzeled as to why Steve Vai and Metallica and many others chose to support the Fractal instead of the Kemper. I think it's awesome though that Steve Stevens likes Kemper, he is such an under rated guitarist.

  • You might be surprised how ignorant some of the 'pro' musicians are about gear. Well maybe ignorant is not the right word, but they play whatever sounds in the ballpark. All they really care about is reliability. After all their sound engineers will always make everything sound good in the end. IMO most of the cork sniffers and tone snobs in forums (including me :) ) are hobby guitarists who have too much time on their hands.

  • fractal sold this morning on reverb and has already been paid for and shipped, it will arrive to seller on 11th and thats the day reverb will release the funds to me and the day I will order the kemper... as Ozzy says when the 11th kemper is ordered and arrives to me a few days later, "let the madness begin" haha

  • Yeah I hate tweeting too. Kemper seems to have lots of good moments to turn it on and start playing. Organic-like enough to where you don't feel the need to keep running over and looking at all the fine detail in sub menus.