First gig with Kemper, please sanity check

  • I'm excited to have my first Kemper gig coming up this Saturday. Here's my general setup. I'd appreciate you taking a looking. Is there anything I'm messing in preparation? What types of lessons did you learn after your first gig with the Kemper?


    Gear:
    Unpowered rack, Main Left XLR to FOH, Monitor to Mission Engineering Gemini 2 FRFR powered cab (speaker cable). Kemper Remote, Mission pedal for Wah/volume (mostly wah)


    Setup borrowed from other threads:
    1. In output menu choose "Master Mono" for the Main Outs.
    2. Bring the level of the Main Out to approx. -18 dB.
    3. Unlink the volume of the Main Outs from the Master volume knob to always have a fixed Main-Out-Level.
    4. Adjust Gemini sound level to taste for monitoring and/or tweak using master volume


    I have five or so basic performances like Fender Twin clean to dirty left to right, Marshall, Vox, etc. as a fall back plan but my main plan is to cycle through the 45 performances/songs in order. For those, I end up using one to maybe three slots max. Generally intro/main rhythm in slot one and solo in slot five (paranoid about hitting solo by accident so I keep them far away from each other. Solo tends to be same as main but with a "red" stomp pre-engaged when I switch to it. Haven't messed with morphing yet. Performances are using 100% Michael Britt profiles some I'm hoping for consistent volume levels among the different performances (seems so in rehearsal).


    My only real worry is the system or remote freezing during the gig. That happened twice during rehearsal but only when I had the remote and laptop (rig manager) connected at the same time. I won't have the laptop connected during the gig. The only other variable is this is an outside gig and all rehearsals were indoors. 8)


    Thanks for taking a look.

  • I always run in stereo to the PA so my delays and rotary effect are presented in the right way. Not usually panned hard L/R, but stereo wherever the sound person puts me in the mix.


    If you're running master mono you only need a single feed to the PA.


    I think your setup is good, but agree you don't need speaker cables to your powered monitors since all of the big current is happening at the monitor.


    Have a great show!

  • Thanks. Now that I think about it, the speaker cable usage is mostly me not "wasting" a pretty expensive cable I used in my old tube head/cab setup. Looking at this article, it seems a good (but not great) TS instrument cable will be fine and perhaps a tiny bit safer in terms fo noise rejection for the three foot run from rack to Gemini.


    https://www.fender.com/article…he-same-as-speaker-cables


    Mono vs. Stereo: I'm just keeping it simple for now but would love to go stereo next time. We do our own FOH sound and I'm basically re-using the XLR input that formerly was a mic'd cab.

  • I can confirm that as long as you don't have a computer running Rig Manager connected during the show (and you have a decent cable to the remote) you shouldn't have any issues.


    Whilst I've had lots of lock ups in practice sessions with a computer connected I've never had a blip on the 100 or so gigs I've done with mine.


    Good luck and hope the gig is a hoot!


    Si

  • The only problem I have ever had in over 100 gigs is the Cat 5 cable slipping out of the back port on the Kemper. I keep a clothes pin (hi tech) in the slot for optional power amp and always clip to the monitor out cable and haven't had that problem since.