Reached a wall with my Kemper.

  • No, I plug into my Marshall with my LP it sounds excellent. I don't have to wait months for it to sound good. If someone tries a £1450 piece of gear and it doesn't sound satisfactory to them, in my experience it doesn't get better. I'm happy to know what people are doing, to get their Kempers sounding the way they want them.
    You may plug into an expensive Marshall and not like it. Someone telling you to be patient is a load of drivel, unless they suggest how you can get the sound your looking for with the gear your using.


    So what are you actually doing with the Kemper to make it sound better? Apart from patience, what's your actual technique?

    Have you stuck a mic in from of this marshall, then gone to a room where you are only listening to that sound via monitors and it still sounds just like you want to hear (unlike the Kemper)? If so then i would either, profile your Marshall (as others have said), or get a load box/IR loader and call it a day. You may not be at all happy with that either if you are used to sitting in the room with your amp through your cab and move to mic'ed sound (Kemper/IR) and monitors. You've stated that you have a lot of studio experience so you probably know this, just throwing it out there.


    I go back and forth from the fence on keeping/selling the kemper weekly for a few reasons, but its a personal battle that some need to fight. Others love it all the time, i love it 51% of the time. I think the new Reverbs might bump it to 60% :)


    will listen to the clip...i also recommend Soundcloud for free/easy clip posting.

  • Here is something to compare if you like to compare with other sounds out of the kpa


    JCM 800 from TAF (the amp factory) out of the kpa into a Steinberg UR 242 interface into cubase.


    No post eq. This is the pure sound out of the kpa recorded.


    Guitar: Gibson Les Paul type 1960, pick up's: dimarzio superdistortion and dimarzio air norton


    First is bridge nearly without fx
    Second is bridge with delay
    Third: The woman tone neck pu with closed volume pot
    Fourth neck volume and tone pots at 10


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    Bad sound?


    This is only one example and it's one JCM 800 profile. Not 100% my fav because I like the friedman BE 100 and mesa boogies, but I played an JCM 800 in the 90th and I can say that this profile is near by and on stage it blows you away.


    It's not a trick, it's the kemper ;)

  • I mentioned what Im listening to futher up the thread, Swan studio monitors and Seinheiser HD 75 headphones.


    Of course, it will sound different than an actual tube amp, that not my issue.

    Weren't you kind of comparing the sound of your Marshall to that of the Kemper when you originally said that your Marshall combo sounds excellent using your LP whereas you had to tweak the Kemper for a good while? What's your issue in particular? You referenced a Chop Tones video as the sort of quality you're striving for, however those guys are double tracking their guitars using different profiles, so it goes without saying that unless you're doing the same thing, you won't get the same result.

  • Superb, is this the one you used?

  • Ah what the hell. Here is a track I did recently - clean guitar but overdriven solo. the only thing of note is that the piano was played on guitar. The mix is a bit bass heavy! All the guitars are Kemper and cleans played with a Musicman Silhouette and the solo by a 335. Oh and I apologise for the single drum loop - I rather liked it!!


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  • Superb, is this the one you used?

    Yes, but I won't to discuss commercial things here. I just gave an example how cool the kpa can sound.
    There are many other gems in the free rm. I used another cab with the profile. It's a cab from deadlight studios called fredman1, it's one of my fav cabs. Also a 1960 AV from the free Lars Lüttge kpa pack.
    Awesome clear sounds with many many amps I use.


    The sound is little bit better with new strings. The ones you hear are not fresh and I think my Gibson has an awesome sound because it's a limited edition, one piece mahogany body 60 th specs and some other little things. The guitar is also a big factor, but I can reach also cool sounds with cheaper humbucker guitars. It's a question of the eq and some changes in the amp section.


    So my advise is


    be familar with the things you can do in the amp section
    get experience with the eq's
    try different cabs
    try to use some kemper magic extras ( in this sound I used the leadbooster in front of the amp) and an eq in slot x. With a little less treble you reach the typical gary moore sound with no fizz in the higher mids. Crazy for emotional solos.

  • I mentioned what Im listening to futher up the thread, Swan studio monitors and Seinheiser HD 75 headphones.


    Of course, it will sound different than an actual tube amp, that not my issue.

    Ok, actually have tried uploading an mp3 to this thread, I'm getting 'file extension invalid,' for some reason.


    #1: You can't expect the sound to be the same as through a guitar cabinet in the room - the kemper profiles include the sound of the mic'ing of the cab


    #2: You can use soundcloud instead.- that how most of us do it

  • #1: You can't expect the sound to be the same as through a guitar cabinet in the room - the kemper profiles include the sound of the mic'ing of the cab


    #2: You can use soundcloud instead.- that how most of us do it

    Otherwise, you can attach the mp3 if it is zipped, with the resulting file not exceeding 1 MB

  • Added some advices

  • No, I plug into my Marshall with my LP it sounds excellent. I don't have to wait months for it to sound good. If someone tries a £1450 piece of gear and it doesn't sound satisfactory to them, in my experience it doesn't get better. I'm happy to know what people are doing, to get their Kempers sounding the way they want them.
    You may plug into an expensive Marshall and not like it. Someone telling you to be patient is a load of drivel, unless they suggest how you can get the sound your looking for with the gear your using.


    So what are you actually doing with the Kemper to make it sound better? Apart from patience, what's your actual technique?

    i never tried this Seinheiser HD 75 headphones


    but they are 70 ohms and i am currently using the Koss PRO4AA Titanium that is 250 Ohms


    also, if you record many minutes of your playing with different profiles (alternating then) and listen to that you may start to hear that in a different way


    i did not mean to be lack of information in saying that you need time to get used to the tone and your ears will distinguish it, it is not a tube amp, if you want to have the amp in the room feeling you may try like increasing the level


    disabling the Cab to check how your system react, try pushing kemper into your real cabinet or some pre amp to have more headroom (sorry if this word is wrong i did not recall now)


    i know it is not like your tube amp so do like people said, profile your own marshall and you will have a very close sound (assuming that you will use the same cabinet)


    on your kemper profile the cabinet character is a parameter that you may try to tweak a bit...


    my post was serious and may seems metaphysic or nielistic but your ear will get used and you will notice different sounds...


    i like my kemper more in 12 inches monitors and with a good sub woofer


    when i got it i also have that thinking to sell it or not, but now i could not even thinking on selling it, rather sell my tube amp than my kemper, i just keep it to have that vintage feeling and look on my studio...

  • I never had good results with distorted rigs when playing through small monitors. Even headphones did not get me where I wanted to be. Best of luck, OP, you will get there!

    I'm not sure that I can agree with this. I use a pair of Adam A7Xs with a Sub and find that they are up to the task. The thing about creating a tone from a profile for recording is referencing. You really have to listen to how guitars are mixed and more importantly how they are processed. There is no guitar player who has played on any track who just plays through the amp and leaves it there. Compression, eq, double tracking, delay, reverb etc. Sometimes soloing a guitar in a track will be strange because to make it fit in the mix certain areas of tone have to be EQ'ed out. Guitars in a mix do not sound like guitars through amps - they have been polished and honed to suit the music. Big speakers have their own issues as large drivers take a lot more energy to drive and often require more volume (and need a larger room) - which often means that things can sound better than they actually are. Smaller speakers in a small home studio are much better at reproducing the mid-range - which is where the guitar sound lives.

  • I'm not sure that I can agree with this. I use a pair of Adam A7Xs with a Sub and find that they are up to the task. The thing about creating a tone from a profile for recording is referencing. You really have to listen to how guitars are mixed and more importantly how they are processed. There is no guitar player who has played on any track who just plays through the amp and leaves it there. Compression, eq, double tracking, delay, reverb etc. Sometimes soloing a guitar in a track will be strange because to make it fit in the mix certain areas of tone have to be EQ'ed out. Guitars in a mix do not sound like guitars through amps - they have been polished and honed to suit the music. Big speakers have their own issues as large drivers take a lot more energy to drive and often require more volume (and need a larger room) - which often means that things can sound better than they actually are. Smaller speakers in a small home studio are much better at reproducing the mid-range - which is where the guitar sound lives.

    Allow me to clarify. By small, I mean 5 inch monitors or smaller. I have 8 inch monitors and am quite happy.

  • I think I need to leave this thread before it drives me crazy.


    Distorted guitars can sound good on any size speakers (including ear buds or a laptop). Are they going to sound like a 4x12 cranked?.... probably not.


    The Kemper is really incredible at reproducing the sound and feel of any amp as played in the studio. That being said, it's also great at outputting studio sound to full range PA monitors for live use. I'm not sure how it would compare to a real amp through guitar speakers unless you were using direct profiles; I've never personally used it that way...but it seems that a requirement for accuracy would be a direct profile that eliminates differences in mics, mic preamps, and speakers.


    Good tone is good tone, regardless of the playback. It's completely amateurish and unrealistic to expect the bone shaking crunch or ear piercing transients that you might get when sitting directly in front of a tube amp, after it's gone through a mic, mic preamp, been converted to digital and recorded, converted back to analog, amplified, and played back through speakers of varying sizes and quality.


    I've got a room full of tube amps that rivals the showroom at most music stores, and with a good profile I could replace any one of them with the Kemper and get professional results in the recording studio or live. I mean, sheeeeeeeesh, don't even get me started on the frustrations of live sound reproduction in any venue larger than a small club. I don't care what boutique tube amp you have...it can (and likely will) be reduced to sounding like a shrill solid state pile of junk after the talentless soundman puts a misplaced junk mic in front of it and applies EQ and effects to it. The Kemper can at least help by eliminating a few of those variables.


    If you're not happy with the Kemper, fair enough! If I was sitting in my bedroom jamming out during business hours, I'd probably pick a "real" amp over the Kemper myself. For any professional application (recording/live/low volume rehearsal) however, the Kemper has multiple advantages, with few if any disadvantages.


    Just my opinion....signing out!

  • There you go, Les Paul - Kemper - Reaper via SPDIF.


    No EQ, compression. Fist clip is a Topjimi Caswell profile, the second M Britt JCM 800.

    Thanks for the clips. As for the tone, something's definitely wrong, in my opinion. My hunch is that there's something amiss in the configuration of the KPA somewhere.

  • Distorted guitars can sound good on any size speaker? Even earbuds or a laptop? Sorry, not my experience at all.

  • Ah what the hell. Here is a track I did recently - clean guitar but overdriven solo. the only thing of note is that the piano was played on guitar. The mix is a bit bass heavy! All the guitars are Kemper and cleans played with a Musicman Silhouette and the solo by a 335. Oh and I apologise for the single drum loop - I rather liked it!!


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    Dude you need to ease up on yourself. You said in a previous post that you aren’t out there doing it because you aren’t good enough. Thats some beautiful playing and some great sounds!


    You mentioned the mix bass heavy but it sounds great to me. Admittedly I’m listening on a set of Shire SE425 in ears which are a bit bass lite but they have awesome mids that really show up the range where guitars sit - and your guitars sound fantastic to me :)

  • Thanks for the clips. As for the tone, something's definitely wrong, in my opinion. My hunch is that there's something amiss in the configuration of the KPA somewhere.

    I agree, something doesn't sound right here. It doesn't help that the file is extremely low in volume when trying to compare it to the clips on the profile makers site. Do you have any clips of this same guitar with your marshall mic'ed?