Kemper Profiling Amp Vs 3 Classic Amps - Blindfold Challenge

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  • I decided to buy my Kemper after watching the "Can Kemper Save Chappers" video.


    After 20 years of owning just my JCM 800 with pedals I wanted to explore other amps and the Kemper has completely changed my life as a guitar player.


    Can´t imagine how many people are sold on Kemper after watching any of these blindfold challenges with a Kemper because anyone that has followed Chappers for some time knows that his skill to recognize guitar tones is amazing.


    Great ad for Mbritt profiles, by the way...

  • Interesting this however it's worth noting that Lee had the opportunity to hear both the real and Kemper sounds and know which was which i.e. detect the differences tonally and quantify them. It would have been good (better) if he'd had three different amps and profiles...not sure he would have done so well!


    Either way they all sounded great..


    Si

  • The point made is that the Kemper with the right profiles can sound as good as a real amp, and sometimes even better. And I say CAN and not DOES because there are real amps that when recorded appropriately are very hard to beat. Should I own twenty amps, a super duper studio and a great producer around I would say nothing beats the real thing soundwise (weight, etc out of the equation). But the Kemper is a great machine and Britt a great profiler. Period. Thanks for the video.

    Never too old for rock'n'roll

  • It’s difficult to make any meaningful audio judgment over youtube’s crappy delivery.


    But I thought the Fender sound was more ch better than the equivalent Kemper. The others were a toss up.


    But! Having said all that, they aren’t really jus comparing an amp to a Kemper. They’re equally comparing THAT amp to a profile of MBritt’s OTHER amp.
    It may just be that I prefer their Fender to Michael’s; or the way Michael mic’ed it etc.


    They really should do it by Profiling their own amps and then blind comparing.


    I’m real life practise, I like many people’s profiles okay, but I far VASTLY prefer, and use, the ones I made myself from my own amps and my own microphones and preamps etc.

  • I will point out that you are not hearing the real amp in this comparison. They are running the the real amps into a UAD Ox Box which does power soak and digital speaker modelling and costs nearly as much as a Kemper.

  • For me the thing has come to the point of just knowing it sounds good. If it sounds just like the profiled amp or not is not that important for me.


    Anyway, everyone that has played for years with tube amps knows that even the same amp does not sound the same each time. And different amps of the same model usually sound also slightly different.


    So, what is clear by this video is that Chappers prefers the Kemper+Mbritt over the real tube amp+Ox Box. And the Captain thinks the opposite.


    I guess it´s a matter of preference and convenience.

  • It's an interesting scenario, but it doesn't tell much of anything really. Taking a Britt profile and compare to a similar amp that most certainly isn't dialled in exactly as the one that was profiled is no better than taking two identical amps and dial them in a little different. Players will prefer one or the other in either case. Most interesting is that the sound from the Kemper is preferred in most cases in the video.

  • Interesting video.


    Also funny to see the difference between a blind test (Chappers) and a confirmation bias test (Captain, 'testing' after knowing which is which).


    Would have been fun to see a real blind test with Captain, especially after playing with the Sag parameter on the Kemper...

  • So, what is clear by this video is that Chappers prefers the Kemper+Mbritt over the real tube amp+Ox Box. And the Captain thinks the opposite.

    Yep, Chappers prefers a darker/heavier sound whereas the Captain like it brighter. However, as Si said - would that have been the case if the roles were reversed? I think the Captain's decisions were biased and swayed by going first.


    At any rate, the Kemper sounded better in all instances - for me, YMMV. ;)

  • Those guys do a great job, but surely we can't forget that they're salesmen right? Grains of salt all around. :)

    I may be naive but i think they are genuine when doing these blinfolded video. They have a lot of fun and it's the main reason they are #1 on youtube.
    Many time they have bashed their own/friend brands when doing those blinfold tests (Victory, Mjolnir comes to mind...).

  • There is a similar thread going on over at TGP, in which one responder wrote:



    Quote

    "The real amps sound WAY better....it was really obvious."


    To which I made the following reply, which I think sums up the pros and cons of this Anderton's "Blind Comparison" test:


    ============================================


    That is an unusual "take-away" from this video.


    Rob Chapman would evidently completely disagree with you -- in this blind test, he preferred and chose the Kemper 6 out of 6 times, over and above the actual tube amp. (14:55 timestamp of video).


    After Anderton had the benefit of listening to Chapman's round, and figured out "the tell" in which he was able to distinguish the actual amp (on their set) from the Michael Britt profile of a non-identical amp from the same manufacture/model family-- he still admitted to preferring the tone of the Kemper in 2 out of 3 of the amps.


    "Kemper has this weird thing about making [tube] amps sound better" -- Lee "The Captain" Anderton


    In any case, it was a rather strange and contrived experiment. The crew should have made their own Direct Amp profiles of the three amps, then played everything back through a regular 2x12 guitar cabinet, or employed the same IRs (as used on the Ox Amp) and played the Direct Amp profiles and the actual amps (w/Ox Amp) back through a studio FRFR monitor system. Of course Michael Britt's amp profiles are going to sound tonally different then the amps they had on the set, because they were in fact different amps, which were recorded differently and dialed in differently.


    Nevertheless, both Chapman and Anderton admitted to preferring the tones from the Kemper.

  • The crew should have made their own Direct Amp profiles of the three amps, then played everything back through a regular 2x12 guitar cabinet

    But they had already done that a couple of years ago in the vídeo that I commented earlier.


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    And they even made a second round to be sure the next day



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  • But they had already done that a couple of years ago in the vídeo that I commented earlier.



    And they even made a second round to be sure the next day


    Hello Atlantic,


    I am not sure what bearing that has on my comment.


    In any event, the previous Anderton videos you linked to were NOT based upon Direct Amp profiles. They were regular Studio Profiles, and they simply disabled the Cabinet Module. This can be checked in the comment section of the video:


    Quote from wingee

    They're studio profiles not merged, not direct... I asked Pete and Bea and they used the studio profiling method with an SM57


    The same methodology was used in that 2nd video, except they used an A/B switching pedal, instead of physically disconnecting the speaker output cable when switching between amps.