Kemper Issue

  • Hey guys,


    My Kemper has been acting a bit weird. Sometimes after I have adjusted the gain on a profile, the Kemper will start to turn the gain up or down by itself very slowly. This also happened with the master volume as well. It starting moving by itself very slowly.
    Is this a known software bug or is it the actual hardware that's the problem? I really don't want to have to be messing around by sending it back then waiting ages for it to be fixed.
    Is there a quick fix to this?


    Thanks!

  • Try turning the knob/s all the way down and fully-up half a dozen times, taking maybe 1 second for each down-up motion.


    This has generally helped me in the past with various bits o' gear. My unqualified theory is that dirt particles, possibly even tiny metal "filings", accumulate in a focussed area if a knob is only ever moved in a fixed range, and that said muck can cause tiny bleeds of the signal, resulting in "creeping", intermittent raising or lowering of a digital value.


    Even if my uneducated theory is incorrect, the method mentioned in the first sentence generally works in most of these situations... for me.


    EDIT:
    The general principle applies in many situations in life - when a limited range of something's travel is used, it pays to occasionally make a full movement in order to "reset" or "clear" things.

  • Do you have jacks plugged to your Kemper or remote in the SWITCH/PEDAL-inputs?


    When you plug in just a jack plug in the SWITCH/PEDAL-input and there's nothing connected to this jack, and you program this input as volume for example, than the volume goes up and down.


    So try removing the jacks from the SWITCH/PEDAL-inputs and see if everything stays stable.

  • Do you have jacks plugged to your Kemper or remote in the SWITCH/PEDAL-inputs?


    When you plug in just a jack plug in the SWITCH/PEDAL-input and there's nothing connected to this jack, and you program this input as volume for example, than the volume goes up and down.


    So try removing the jacks from the SWITCH/PEDAL-inputs and see if everything stays stable.

    The only jack going into the Kemper is the guitar input on the front, nothing going into the remote apart from the lead connecting it to the Kemper. Maybe i'll just disconnect the remote and see if anything changes?

  • My Bass eq knob does it every once in a while. I turn it either way (clockwise/counterclockwise)
    a few steps and it seems to correct itself. It's never done that on a gig interestingly.

  • It's still doing it. It's probably something i'll just have to live with i suppose! Also, sometimes when i adjust the gain on a profile, there will be a big jump "from 3 to 6 for example" rather than it adjusting smoothly as it should. Again, this is not all the time, just sometimes.
    Annoying but there doesn't seem to be much i can do!

  • As I suspected, it really does sound like the gain pot needs cleaning up, and possibly the master volume one as well.


    Either you'll have to send it in, possibly to a "local" authorised repair agent but otherwise to Kemper itself, for replacement, which could, based on experience with other gear, mean the swapping out of the whole panel to which it's attached, or...


    If Kemper were to allow it, I highly recommend Caig Deoxit for cleaning up pots, fader strips and jack connectors. You apply with the included thin "straw-like" nozzle, wiggle the pot, wait 3 minutes and apply again. In 99% of cases this works, in my experience at least. There's a reason this stuff's been engineers' go-to the world over for many decades, and that's because it works. Not cheap, but a can will last you a lifetime.


    Hopefully someone from the team will chime in and let you know whether or not applying Deoxit would void the warranty. My guess is Kemper would prefer you to send the unit in, obviously, and my hope is that I'll not be ridiculed for suggesting that the Caig product might be a "simple" alternative to full-blown servicing.