I just bought some ChopTones profiles...

  • I've had my Kemper now for ~2 weeks.
    Most of this honeymoon has been spent digging through the Rig Exchange to find the perfect tone.
    I was able to find a handful of really great rigs for free, and even made a few decent recordings with them - but honestly, none of these profiles really hit the spot for me.


    I have done a lot of research over the past week on commercial rigs.
    I demo'd most of the free rigs from the popular names that you hear about in the forums - some of them were good, some not.
    One of the names that had a couple really nice profiles was ChopTones - so I decided to check out their site and see what else they had to offer.


    To give a little back story - I primarily play heavier music, so finding a good high gain amp has been a priority for me.
    I do occasionally dabble with some more mellow / ambient writing, so having a nice clean tone would be a 'nice to have'.


    After listening to a bunch of their demo tracks / videos, I decided to pick up the following profiles:


    Mesa Boogie - IIC+
    Mesa Boogie - Mk IV
    Mesa Boogie - Mk V
    Mesa Boogie - Dual Rectifier
    Fender - Bassman
    Fender - Twin


    On the above list, I have only owned the Dual Rectifier, and have played through the Fenders in person.
    The rest of the amps, are ones that I've heard of, or seen, but never had a chance to play.
    With that said, I would not be able to give a side-by-side comparison and comment on the accuracy of these profiles.
    However, I am happy to report that I am blown away by the quality of these profiles. :thumbup:


    I purchased the 'Essentials' pack for each of the amps mentioned above.
    These packs come with ~10 profiles capturing a variety of characteristics of the amp (for roughly $11 USD per pack).
    They do offer much larger packs (for more money), however I didn't feel it necessary to have more profiles of the same amp (for my use).


    Out of all of the profiles, the amps that really have the spotlight in my opinion are the IIC+, the Mk V, and the Bassman.
    Both the IIC+ and the Mk V can hit the entire spectrum from clean to heavy.
    The Bassman with a touch of reverb and delay is just beautiful.


    I would highly recommend ChopTones to anyone looking for really high quality profiles for their Kemper.
    I will certainly be buying from them again - thinking about picking up their Engl profiles next!


    I just wanted to share my experience with anyone who has been on the fence.
    Would also love to hear your experience, or any profiles from their collection that you'd recommend.

  • Nice review! Just out of curiosity can you give details about your rig? Are you using them primarily for recording or are you using them live as well? Guitar Cab or FRFR?

    I bought the Kemper for my home studio - its the unpowered rack version.
    So right now, I'm not using any cabinets or anything like that. Its going straight into my DAW for recording.


    I tested all of these sounds out with my ESP Eclipse (LP-Style (Maple on Mahogany, with a Maple Neck, Ebony Fretboard, and loaded with active EMGs)).
    Ran the Kemper directly into my Apogee Duet and tracked in Logic Pro X.


    Obviously the speaker / cab setup will add some kind of coloration to the tone, so I can't speak to how these will perform live.
    If they are anything near the recorded tone, I would be a happy camper.


    Is that something that a lot of people run into - the profile used for recording not translating well into a live setting? I'm pretty new to Kemper.



    Chop Tones is one of the vendors I definitely haven't given a fair chance to. Maybe next time he's running a sale, I'll grab a couple.

    Grab some - you wont regret it. And again, their 'Essentials' packs are the price of a decent fast food cheeseburger...
    Its nice to not break the bank over getting some really high end profiles.



    The carvin vai pack

    That is probably one of the only packs that I didn't demo.
    I have an immense amount of respect for Vai, but I've never been a huge fan of his tone.
    But - this is just my personal taste.
    Maybe I'll give the demo a listen.

  • Just saw this now but I have maybe 4 studio packs, a few of the just play, and I think about 8 essentials packs from them. That's a lot of money as far as I'm concerned.


    The Dave Mustaine 410 gets a lot of use from me - but just the profiles that come with 10 on definition.
    The Marshall 900 is great, too.
    The 5150 black essentials pack is amazing and super powerful.


    Maybe it's my setup but the Fried Jerry and IIc sounded good at first but I now hear weird overtones on the profiles, moreso with the IIc.


    Overall Choptones has been by far the best of the major vendors for high-gain tones in my setup at home.

  • Glad to hear you found good sounds. As far as commercial vendors go, Choptone is near the bottom of my spectrum of preference. That's a totally personal opinion though, they might work great for you. Just a slight disclaimer, when I first got the profiler I went through the same experiences and sometimes "love at first sight" phase with some vendors and bought many packs very quickly only to find out a few weeks after that they didn't compare favorably at all with others in some situations (often even free ones). A better investment for me has been to try pack of various vendors until I found my favorite ones.

  • Glad to hear you found good sounds. As far as commercial vendors go, Choptone is near the bottom of my spectrum of preference. That's a totally personal opinion though, they might work great for you. Just a slight disclaimer, when I first got the profiler I went through the same experiences and sometimes "love at first sight" phase with some vendors and bought many packs very quickly only to find out a few weeks after that they didn't compare favorably at all with others in some situations (often even free ones). A better investment for me has been to try pack of various vendors until I found my favorite ones.

    Hi Jed, please could you tell which products have you tried to put us near the bottom of your preferences? :)

  • i am a big fan of Choptones. I have purchased the Mark V pack and the John Petrucci and Marty Friedman sig packs. All of them sound amazing. Once I figured out howto read his charts it was easy to go to the right profile for the sound I wanted.

  • Does anyone have any experience with the Direct profiles from ChopTones? That's what interests me the most about them.

    I bought the Mesa Mark III Blue Stripe direct last night. Will get to playing them over the next few days. Expecting a great experience! Will post after.