Into the void aka You moron, you traded away the Kemper

  • There's a major difference and compromise, clarity and high frequencies will be compromised with any attenuator.

    I compared a Suhr ReactiveAl Load vs a real speaker load with one of my amps before buying one and sold my Grossman Isobox becase the Suhr sounds awesome. All reactive loads sound different and they have different impedance curves, but the same happens with different speakers.


    I sold my KPA and now I'm using three tube amps with the Suhr.

  • Load boxes, power brakes and cab emulators are not all created equal, but they all alter the amp's sound somehow. There's nothing like recording a hot amp thru the cab thru a good mic and a good preamp (or using the Kemper) if you know how to place the mic etc. Some amps like Tonekings have internal attenuation options and some people may say they work pretty well, but I think it can never be like the amp at full blast, which is what at home you cannot try unless you live in an isolated farm like Neil Young. I owned once a Mars Anniverssary that had half power settings (pentode or triode tubes mode working) and when you switched it was not the same tone either. Pentode better! After all, the amp was made different, two amps in one really, and the cab was not driven the same way though the amp was damn loud anyway (3dbs less).......Ah, the comfort of recording with Kemper (or even the old bean).

    Never too old for rock'n'roll

  • Here is a demo comparing some passive and reactive loads with the real amp. Goto 16:07. He is using different loads and the chain after the load is the same in all the clips.



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    By the way, the KPA does change the amps sound too...


  • I just gave the example of Slash. Massive guitarist. Massive studio. Made of money. And you're saying he "compromises" his tone (clarity and high frequencies) by using an attenuator. :S


    It's kind of funny, I haven't heard from many Profilers whether they used an attenuator in the signal chain. Did removing that low mid hump sound better? Did killing some of the higher frequencies benefit the tone? Sure it was effected, what makes that less of a great tone? WIth an attenuator, the idea is not to kill the amp tone by creating a massive load just to reduce the volume. It "attenuates" the amp breakup.


    It's a similar argument to saying that an amp needs to be dimed to capture the ultimate profile.


    As far as the argument that the difference between IR and miced cab will be massive: you didn't listen to those comparison clips, did you? Here you go: http://www.sinmix.pl/2017/07/1…s-tse-x50-mix-comparison/


    Let me assure you again, I see no problem with the Kemper. .


    What you see as drawbacks to an amp, I see as something awesome. You'll note that I questioned indeed whether the grass is greener on the other side in my original post. It may well not be. But that doesn't mean the grass is greener here, no siree. I'd call it 50:50, after all, I've read the posts by guys who could not get along with the Kemper and sold it.


    So there's no clearly defined path to creating a great tone, as you rightly mentioned. Some of us have also argued on these very forums that tone is in the fingers, so it's all very moot. In the old days I would ask you, "Do you trust me to dial in your amp?" If you asked me the same thing, I'd say no unless I was paying you.


    As far as settling on the gear and start focusing on the playing and music, if that was the case with the Kemper, I wouldn't be always trying out free profiles handed out by people to determine whether I should splash the cash to buy a commercial pack. Ever notice that most of the people saying, "Wow, these profiles are great, thanks!" are the same people? Like Ingolf, Monkey_Man, me et al? I bet there are even more people who never say "thank you".


    Pretty sure the chances of getting distracted by something would be less with an amp.


    I'm pretty much a one tone a show guy, or at best clean and dirty. Even with the Kemper, more often than not I'd pick my favourite profile and noodle around with it rather than browsing through my collection over and over again.


    So when I saw the chance to own an amp that I've played using the Kemper and liked, it seemed like a good opportunity for me to dive deeper into that amp.


    Now on an amp, there will be sweet spots. And there may be not so sweet spots.


    Now here's the thing about those not so sweet spots. What if I introduce a pedal in front? Or maybe more than one? Some in the loop?


    Surely you need the amp to experiment. Profile it later? Sure, that can be done! But you have to own the amp!


    Sure, I could have bought the amp, profiled it and sold it. Pretty soon I'd have many amps.


    But hey, remember I said that I'm a one tone a show guy? Some of my favourite Mesa Boogie tones were created by djemass based on Petrucci's tone. I play an eight string with odd tunings and very different pickups. How am I to get the same response from those excellent profiles without building something custom from the ground up? And I have a great tube screamer too that I want to use. Should I reduce the gain? Oh great, I killed the real amp tone...


    I mean, sure tube amps sometimes explode. And sometimes the Kemper shuts down in the middle of a gig or the Remote freezes or the singer smashes your Remote screen in (remember that thread?)


    Just because something is harder doesn't mean it's less valid.


    Besides, I have my own reasons as mentioned a couple of posts up.


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  • There's a major difference and compromise, clarity and high frequencies will be compromised with any attenuator.

    Pete Thorn performed a direct A/B comparison of a Suhr SL68 into a mic'd up Suhr 1x12 closed back cabinet without the Suhr Reactive load and then with the Suhr Reactive Load and an IR he captured of the very same mic'd cab. The differences were negligible to the point of irrelevancy:


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  • Have fun man. I'd not have Kemper if I wouldn't have other amps. It's just another amp and everyone knows you can't have just one - this applies to guitars too.


    Unsolicited advice for the future. When you buy your next Kemper, keep the amp :)

  • Pete Thorn performed a direct A/B comparison of a Suhr SL68 into a mic'd up Suhr 1x12 closed back cabinet without the Suhr Reactive load and then with the Suhr Reactive Load and an IR he captured of the very same mic'd cab. The differences were negligible to the point of irrelevancy:

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    Posted the same video 3 posts above. As you say, the differences are irrelevant. The Fryette is very good too.

  • ...I just gave the example of Slash. Massive guitarist. Massive studio. Made of money. And you're saying he "compromises" his tone (clarity and high frequencies) by using an attenuator. :S
    ...

    Slashes endorses the specific brand, have you ever heard of marketing? :wacko: . I have!


    I also tried different attenuators and they all compromise high frequencies, that's the reason why some of them include EQ on-board. It's called science and electric circuits, that's how they react to a dummy load that's faking a real speaker so the amp thinks it's seeing a real speaker, Has nothing to do with Guitar hero. Stick to digital modeling, tube amps are dangerous and have ridiculously high voltages and can easily kill you if you're not careful :D

  • I had the toaster about 4-5 months - loved it but got all squirrely when I saw I could sell it and try the Fractal AX8 because I.... I don't know. But that's what I did. 7 months later that AX8 is sold and I just picked up a Power Rack. I knew I'd be back.


    And FWIW this 600 watt dude is super light. I thought for certain I'd been sent a non-powered version when I was opening it up.

  • Slashes endorses the specific brand, have you ever heard of marketing? . I have!

    Really? ohhh :D 10"05 4 years old video when Kemper sounds really much diff than real amp compared to "new" FW versions. But Hey marketing works when we talk about amps and stop working when we back to Kemper?


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    Stay Metal!

  • Really? ohhh :D 10"05 4 years old video when Kemper sounds really much diff than real amp compared to "new" FW versions. But Hey marketing works when we talk about amps and stop working when we back to Kemper?




    Stay Metal!

    If you think that Kemper is that Bad, how come you sell profiles created by the Kemper? :wacko:


    Maybe you haven't heard of the term marketing yet :D


    or maybe you're a brilliant marketer who's selling one profile with different Impulse responses charging a hundred dollars per pack of Impulse responses :evil:


    I know you said in one of your posts that you can fool everybody by using impulse responses and that's why I never bought any of your profiles, You're marketing tricks didn't work for me :P

  • AJ, thank you for responding a couple o' pages back.


    I still stand by what I said - the mic's sound different to me. I haven't tried a '58 with the grille removed 'though; for my way of thinking it'd be impractical to have to do this when one can purchase a '57 for peanuts.


    Thanks again, man.

  • Andy sneap also uses vst to record quite a bit. Yet I don't see people from here leaving kemper and gravitating towards that vst.


    I find that when a big name come out in favor of kpa they are often mentioned to defend kpa from criticism A or B. But there are plenty of people who don't use kemper, big names too, as well as people who use it but have criticisms as well. It's easy to select only the ones that confirm what we want to believe (either way btw) and not consider the rest.


    In regards to @sinmix using one amp with different cab Sims or whatever.. I can only say I have no reason to think anything like this, having many of his profiles.


    He may call people "noobs" at times, and that is largely part of his sense of humor. But he also has been honest in anything I've had to do with him, straight up, and credible. I don't just like his work with profiles, IRs -- I respect him as a person for the above.


    Now if he said that he could fool people if he wanted.. Yea I don't doubt that. I could also do that. I can profile a vst that's great, an amp Sim, change cabs and sell.


    I think there still would be people who would think the profiles are great. It's largely a matter of taste. My rhythm guitarist prefers some profiles I've done of pod xt spinal puppet amp model dialed in how it should be dialed, with some special EQ-ing, not even using external amp simulation, to many profiles of real amps and cabs.


    I am not saying pod xt is better than kemper, mind you. Saying something quite specific.


    But just because something is possible doesn't mean one does it. The point of sinmix with what he said, if he said so, I believe was that cab emulation matters a lot. And it does. Just check out his latest test and you see just how much it matters.


    Which again, I honestly don't think there's anything new about that. If you work with these things you know how important real cabs and also cab sims are.

    This thread is not about Sinmix, but since it came to be about a rather serious issue, I felt the need to comment on that with my view.

    Cheerios

    Edited 3 times, last by Dimi84 ().

  • I think the problem with most IRs are that they are static, whereas the Kemper used some kind of dynamic process. I've also heard tell that the feel of the Kemper is much better than other digital devices.

    I think Kemper is more "immediate" than my amp sims through my set up because latency is lower. But my amp, unless far enough from cab, is also more "immediate" than kemper I would say. But I don't have a problem with either KPA or amp.


    About the IRs: you can make an IR of a kemper cab and have it be super close. You can also do the same with real cabs. So I don't really think there's some "mojo" with kemper in that regard that you can't get elsewhere. It's just that due to the nature of how KPA works, the concept, the focus that I think you end up with some great cab simulations; I don't think Axe Fx, for example, did as good of a job overall with the sims that come with Axe.


    You need to look around a bit more to get better sims for that.


    But as said it's definitely possible to "copy" and turn a kemper "cab" into an "IR" and be super super close. Meaninglessly close. Or where are as you would make a profile, make an IR of the cab... (also possible to amp match/tone match -- name the specific marketing term -- the whole tone quite well). Plenty of possibilities, whether with real amp plus load box, modellers, ect, ect.


    Then about "feel" -- that's such a personal matter. There are differences. I can be happy with Helix, Axe, S Gear, Kemper, you name it; in fact, S Gear, a vst, has a plexi that is bloody amazing in terms of feel. Feel free to download the trial and try it out if you are into Plexi tones.


    My issue is often latency, but not considering that so much in the above para. Taking about "feel" in other ways. And you can definitely get very low latency with the right set up too. My current one is a very portable pc that I use for politics work and also music, and also watching NBA games in tablet mode... :) So not the best for this.


    Ah, and I find Helix and Kemper to have worse latency than something like an Axe fx. Axe Fx feels more "immediate" than any of these devices imho. I have not conducted tests. I just go by "feel" in this case and can of course be mistaken. Maybe there's something else that has me think what I perceive is a difference in latency, but that can be meaningful in itself even if not "latency" per se, but other factors creating some impression of "immediacy".


    Cheerios

    Edited 7 times, last by Dimi84 ().

  • Reading through and noticed you said you use 1 tone per show, maybe 2.


    I can't imagine why you'd need a Kemper for 1 sound. That's what tube amps are for. I think you've made the right choice on the amp.


    Curious as to what genre enables that?!?

  • Ah and also @nightlight I found torpedo to be comparable to kemper in terms of latency (well, "immediacy"). Kemper probably had a slightly less "immediate" response to my perception, whether this is latency or not. . Again, no real tests, and I may well be wrong about latency itself.

    Edited 2 times, last by Dimi84 ().

  • Slashes endorses the specific brand, have you ever heard of marketing? :wacko: . I have!
    I also tried different attenuators and they all compromise high frequencies, that's the reason why some of them include EQ on-board. It's called science and electric circuits, that's how they react to a dummy load that's faking a real speaker so the amp thinks it's seeing a real speaker, Has nothing to do with Guitar hero. Stick to digital modeling, tube amps are dangerous and have ridiculously high voltages and can easily kill you if you're not careful :D

    Yes, it is quite possible that Slash didn't use an attenuator :D I've also heard he didn't use a Gibson on Appetite, just a cheap clone because he sold his own guitar to survive. That lyin' Slash.


    At the same time, you discredit the results of Pete Thorn as well, so I'm not sure whether that is a reflection of their intent to deceive. On the other hand, perhaps it is a reflection of your own skills, just something you should think about. Not saying that you couldn't do it right, but it's a little difficult when someone says this and someone says that and I have no experience with either to believe either party. In such a situation, best to have an open mind and a healthy sense of scepticism.