Hi from Germany - new Kemper user from Bavaria

  • Hi all,


    been an active lurker for these past few months gathering as much information as possible to help me with my decision process. Seriously, the wealth of information and also friendliness in this forum was one of the reasons to take the plunge.


    Yeah - the Kemper arrived:
    And now it's here, arrived last Saturday. I hadn't expected it to arrive before early April, but hey, I won't complain. I didn't have time to really dive into the finer details and configurations as yet, just scratching the surface, going through the standard profiles. Even that blew my head away. I have to say, I don't know when sound impressed me the last time as much as Kemper's output has been doing since I started using it. I can't remember ever having produced a better sound on real amps, but then I never had access to propper high end amps or the rooms to crank them up so they actually sounded really great. I played a few songs at a gig last Friday and the sound on stage was really bad, I presume it wasn't that much better off stage. Had we all played Kempers, it would have been so much better - but even so we still had a lot of fun :D


    A little bit about myself:
    I'm a fairly acient non-professional, non-gigging musician, concentrating mostly on recording in my little studios. I'm a multi-dilettante, i.e. I play many instruments, but not very well. I started first on piano then turned to guitar, making the switch to electric guitars within one year. My guitar teacher thought I needed rhythm, so he taught me the basics of drum and bass playing first. From the mid 80s to the mid 90s I fronted a few bands, played guitar and in my last band switched to bass.
    Even before I started my first band, I mixed some friends gigs and continued doing so, getting into (4-track) recording fairly quickly. After my last band folded I worked as a sound and also lighting engineer, mostly in a theatre setting, but also small tours with local bands here in Bavaria, Germany.
    In 2000 I switched started working in IT and only recorded songs, first switching to a Yamaha AW16G for hard disk recording. I then discovered Reaper in 2012 and never looked back. The only thing missing was something that would get me the guitar sound I needed. Which brings us to the present and my new Kemper!


    My recordings:
    I write mostly rock/pop songs, but have always dabbled in electronic music as well. Currently I have 3 projects, two of which active. One is a solo downtempo electronica project, the other one is a virtual band project collaborating with people all over the globe. The third one, a solo project re-recording really old songs of mine the way I always thought they should have sounded, just finished with the release of two albums:
    Ancient Gems - full band setup (apart from drums on a couple of songs all instruments played by me)


    Ancient Gems Acoustic Versions - as the name says, the acoustic versions of some of the songs


    Now I need to get back to my toaster and coax a few more secrets out of it (like how do I get rigs created there into the rig manager ...)

  • Welcome Nowo! Being able to play bass and drum as well is definitely an advantage. Cool recording project by the way! To answer your question, when you connect the profiler to our computer via USB, it will show up in Rig Manager. From there, you can click on " my profiler " where you will access all of your rigs. If you wish to import them into Rig Manager, you can create a folder and Drag them into that new folder or copy paste them.


    If you'd like more profiles than what comes available in the profiler, go visit my website by clicking here and get my Free pack!


    -Max

  • Welcome!!!


    I don't play out much (any more) and play/record in my little studio too.


    Using ToonTrack's Superior Drummer 3 and a bass track and Im having fun!!!

    If you use FRFR the benefit of a merged profile is that the cabinet is totally separated in the profile.


    For my edification only... ;) Kemper/Axe-FX III/ Quad Cortex user

  • Welcome!


    Great intro. I'm fairly new to Kemper too. In a matter of a few days I was comfortable with all the controls and saving my "tweaked" alterations in memory. After a couple of weeks I discovered using different cab profiles and everything expanded exponentially. Now I'm in constant tone heaven. If you think the stock profiles are good, wait until you get a good cab collection stored and download some profiles that catch your ear. It's pure sonic satisfaction! Got so many custom "tweaked" amps saved in "Favorites" now that it's a question of what I feel like playing out of the LARGE room full of amps and cabs! So many choices!!!


    You gotta love this technology! :thumbup:


    Rock on!


    BTW - Love the beer that comes from your region of the world. :thumbup:


  • If you think the stock profiles are good, wait until you get a good cab collection stored and download some profiles that catch your ear. It's pure sonic satisfaction! Got so many custom "tweaked" amps saved in "Favorites" now that it's a question of what I feel like playing out of the LARGE room full of amps and cabs! So many choices!!!

    I haven't had so much fun with my guitars in a long time.


    Still need to get my head round the fact that the same rigs sound and feel so very different depending on the guitars used. I have to admit, when I gigged a lifetime ago, I used to play fairly clean (with distortion via stomp boxes) and the only amp I own is a Roland JC 120. For recordings, I've used mainly NI Guitar Rig and Scuffham S-Gear during the past few years. Of course, I noticed the differences in guitars and pickups there as well, but it was never as pronounced as with the Kemper. I have created a rig that morphes from a low gain clean chorus delay sound to one which has high gain with a little reverb and practically no delay. On on my strat with Seymour Duncan Hot Rods both sounds and the morphing between them sound great. On my Ibanez Artist the high gain sound drops in volume and seems to be pretty thin. So now I start labelling the rigs depending on the guitar I use them with.

  • I haven't had so much fun with my guitars in a long time.
    Still need to get my head round the fact that the same rigs sound and feel so very different depending on the guitars used. I have to admit, when I gigged a lifetime ago, I used to play fairly clean (with distortion via stomp boxes) and the only amp I own is a Roland JC 120. For recordings, I've used mainly NI Guitar Rig and Scuffham S-Gear during the past few years. Of course, I noticed the differences in guitars and pickups there as well, but it was never as pronounced as with the Kemper. I have created a rig that morphes from a low gain clean chorus delay sound to one which has high gain with a little reverb and practically no delay. On on my strat with Seymour Duncan Hot Rods both sounds and the morphing between them sound great. On my Ibanez Artist the high gain sound drops in volume and seems to be pretty thin. So now I start labelling the rigs depending on the guitar I use them with.

    Having a critical ear, the Kemper is the only device that sounds and feels like real tube amps and cabs to me...especially on the high-end harmonics and low-end thump. Once I get my sound dialed in, I can't tell I'm not playing an actual tube amp/cab. The only difference is the gain and tone controls were dialed in by someone else. That makes it a "snapshot" of those settings, so you have to find amps that work for your situation. Being mostly a mid to high gain player, I listen for amp profiles that sound like they are close to the gain and tone settings I would dial in myself. That opens the door to using all my guitars on the same amp/cab profiles, as I shape my own personal amp sound to do just that. It's the approach taken at the profile stage that can either limit guitar choice, or open up options. The only limitation I experience with profiles I like is gain saturation limits, but most profilers offer several gain level profiles to work with your guitar output. I pick the one that works best and "gain down" from there...meaning you can dial back and get better response than if you try to dial up. It hits the wall at some point. On a real amp it would "mush out". On the profile it gets a weird pick attack effect. With so many choices, I can live with that. I usually find plenty of profiles that work. Let your ears be your guide.


    I resurrected two fantastic "free" profiles from either the stock profiles that come with the Kemper, or the free packs I downloaded off Kemper's downloads web page. One was called "KM Bog People" (Bogner amp I'm guessing...fantastic with the right cabinet), and the other "KM Sea Nymph" (also very cool). The "Nymph" profile does something to my Strat that makes my single coils sound like real humbuckers. OK, so that's a limited profile, but a cool option if I was using a Strat on stage and just wanted to change the "pickup sound" instead of the guitar. There are so many QUALITY options.


    The Remote foot controller is also very well designed. I wish two pedals were already built into it, but can manage with two Mission Engineering pedals plugged in. Had some custom length right-angle stereo "pancake plug" cables made to order so everything fits nice and snug. Now I just need a tight fitting case to put everything in so I can transport it.


    Enjoy! I know you will.


    PS - "Copy and Paste" is a powerful feature that allows you to move and change stomps, effects, cabs, amps and a bunch of stuff around. Once you start building your own custom rigs, you will find it a snap with those tools.

    Phil 8)

    Edited 2 times, last by PHILBERT ().