Acoustic guitar percussive playing (nearly solved)

    I tried the Kemper for my acoustic guitar. It sounded quiet good with an UA preamp simulation, but something was missing.
    Now, as I tried again, I know what I missed. Sonetimes I do a little percussion on the body of the guitar. The kemper isn't capable of the low frequencies imitating a bass drum sound.
    Is there a way around this problem? It would be great, because with the Kemper I coud leave a big pedalboard at home.

    The Kemper has nothing to do with this. Besides the soundhole bar type, there are 2 types of acoustic guitar pickups: soundboard transducers and undersaddle transducers (piezo). You are probably using the latter: those undersaddle piezo (a strip under the bridge saddle) react to the pressure of the strings and therefore are not the best at catching other percussive sounds happening on the body. Soundboard transducers-type pickups (like K&K) on the other hand are more like little microphones and are better at catching this.

    Quote from JedMckenna

    The Kemper has nothing to do with this. Besides the soundhole bar type, there are 2 types of acoustic guitar pickups: soundboard transducers and undersaddle transducers (piezo). You are probably using the latter: those undersaddle piezo (a strip under the bridge saddle) react to the pressure of the strings and therefore are not the best at catching other percussive sounds happening on the body. Soundboard transducers-type pickups (like K&K) on the other hand are more like little microphones and are better at catching this.

    Thank you for your answer, but that's not my point.
    I know the different types of catching the sound of an acoustic guitar. My guitar is equipped with a K&K System (transducer&mic) and a soundhole magnetic pickup. I didn't mentioned it explicitly, but my system works fine with my TCHelicon Voice Live3.
    I do hear all the percussion effects through the kemper, but not the frequencies below 100 hz.

    Quote from lakewood

    Thank you for your answer, but that's not my point.I know the different types of catching the sound of an acoustic guitar. My guitar is equipped with a K&K System (transducer&mic) and a soundhole magnetic pickup. I didn't mentioned it explicitly, but my system works fine with my TCHelicon Voice Live3.
    I do hear all the percussion effects through the kemper, but not the frequencies below 100 hz.

    You introduce the premise that "Kemper doesn't pick up low frequencies below 100hz". That's wrong, there are plenty of 5/6 bass players using Kemper with no problem. An 8 second Google search with "Acoustic Guitar with Kemper" led to this random video of a dude doing what you describe with his own profiles:

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    So why would you have both a soundhole magnetic pickup and a K&K? Which one of the 2 are you plugging in? Because the soundhole magnetic pickup is also not be the best to respond to you banging on the body. I can do it with any guitar with a soundboard transducer.


    Edit: Maybe it's the profile... if you think the low frequencies are the problem, you can always use the parallel path feature or the Direct Mix parameter in the "stack - amplifier" menu to add some of your direct signal.

    The Kemper can definitely do the bass frequencies.As @JedMckenna mentioned there are lots of bass players using it without any problems.


    I suspect it is the profile. You mentioned the UA Preamp profile. Did you make this yourself or download it? Lots of pre-amps are set (particularly with vocals and acoustic guitar) with a high pass filter engaged to kill rumble. This is typically around 75 - 80hz but could be 100hz or even higher. If the HP filter is baked into the profile that would explain your experience.

    The video sounds good, but it's also a good example for what I mean. Unfortunately he plays the bassdrumsound with the bassound, so that it's not clear at all.
    You may be right, that it's not 100 hz. I tried different settings: Directly into mixer: it's all there (It's not a problem of my pickup!)
    By the way: I use a similar approach as Mike Dawes or Petteri Sariola. The magnetic pickup is mainly for the boss OC3.


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    So it's not really a problem, I have another solution. But on a small gig or rehearsal, it would be nice just to go with kemper.
    What I tried so far:
    Parallel path, different patches (bass included), just effects without profile. When I run into my Pa-System something (maybe below 80 hz?) is missing. There's no deep punch.

    Edited once, last by lakewood ().

    Quote from Wheresthedug

    The Kemper can definitely do the bass frequencies.As @JedMckenna mentioned there are lots of bass players using it without any problems.


    I suspect it is the profile. You mentioned the UA Preamp profile. Did you make this yourself or download it? Lots of pre-amps are set (particularly with vocals and acoustic guitar) with a high pass filter engaged to kill rumble. This is typically around 75 - 80hz but could be 100hz or even higher. If the HP filter is baked into the profile that would explain your experience.

    Thank you for your answer! I also did a profile of my mackie mixer, which can handle the frequencies, but I had no success with this approach.
    Maybe it's not only related to special frequencies, but also to the fact that it's percussion?!

    My last question seems to be (a good part) of the answer. I plugged my stompbox (not a pedal) for imitating a bass drum and it sounded awful...until I turned the input sense all the way down. Now the kemper took (nearly) all the deep frequencies. There's still something missing maybe below 60-70 hz, but I can live with that.
    The input of the kemper seems to be sensitive for transients.

    Quote from lakewood

    My last question seems to be (a good part) of the answer. I plugged my stompbox (not a pedal) for imitating a bass drum and it sounded awful...until I turned the input sense all the way down. Now the kemper took (nearly) all the deep frequencies. There's still something missing maybe below 60-70 hz, but I can live with that.
    The input of the kemper seems to be sensitive for transients.



    Is there a reason you are plugging it into the guitar input? If it is not triggered by the guitar, You could use an input on the back of the KPA, like people use for backing tracks, and it would be a full range input

    *quote deleted by mod*


    Cut him a break. I play solo in a similar manner. I'm not Guthrie Govan, and the venues I play aren't Carnegie Hall. There's a need for guys like us, and people enjoy what we do.

    Go for it now. The future is promised to no one. - Wayne Dyer

    Like 3
    Quote from Zappledan

    *quote deleted by mod*


    Cut him a break. I play solo in a similar manner. I'm not Guthrie Govan, and the venues I play aren't Carnegie Hall. There's a need for guys like us, and people enjoy what we do.

    I don't care if anyone use his guitar to play bass drum or to play baseball but I dont think this is a discussion for a Kemper Forum... we cannot require our Kemper to make good bass drum as it is not conceive to do that . I consider it as an abuse of the equipement and the guitar too... besides that i concentrate on playing the guitar and there is a lot of ground to do

    Quote from Gforce guitar

    I don't care if anyone use his guitar to play bass drum or to play baseball but I dont think this is a discussion for a Kemper Forum... we cannot require our Kemper to make good bass drum as it is not conceive to do that . I consider it as an abuse of the equipement and the guitar too... besides that i concentrate on playing the guitar and there is a lot of ground to do

    Just to clarify:I'm happy with my kemper otherwise I would have sold it. And yes, I know, it's made for electric guitar and bass.

    I was just curious about the possibilities of the kemper. It's such an amazing tool and I explore it from day to day.

    By the way: if never anyone would have explored the boundaries of an amp, something like overdrive would'nt exist - and no kemper.


    But if I disturbed the rules of the forum, I have to apologize!

    Quote from paults

    Thank you for your suggestion.

    The only reason why I plugged in the stompbox was to test the behaviour of a percussionsound similar to the sound of my transducer pickup. It was just something like an experiment on the behaviour of the input. In another context I had some problems with clippings in clean sound playing muted percussive sounds on a tele.


    But to shorten it: I know how to get the sound that I wish from my other equipment. I just wanted to hear from the forum if I did something wrong in the settings.

    Everythings fine. Thanks to everbody, who gave a constructive advise!

    Quote from lakewood

    Just to clarify:I'm happy with my kemper otherwise I would have sold it. And yes, I know, it's made for electric guitar and bass.

    I was just curious about the possibilities of the kemper. It's such an amazing tool and I explore it from day to day.

    By the way: if never anyone would have explored the boundaries of an amp, something like overdrive would'nt exist - and no kemper.


    But if I disturbed the rules of the forum, I have to apologize!

    You are asking a reasonable question I think. There are no such rules. If the thread weas renamed to "Tips and tricks for performing acoustic percussion using Kemper" it would be a resource, and that is practically what this thread is. There are many ways to Rome.

    https://www.dropbox.com/sh/a7s…RWEw2on0cXs0ksEZ42na?dl=0 i eqed my bass and acoustic guitar with a 10 band parametric eq, so more bands than any live mixer has per channel ... it should give you a perfect starting point for live usage :)


    And i made profiles with the Tonedexter Pedal (

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    )


    https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6tu…jX0p4rspZcDSaTl3b0Ka?dl=0



    are you interested in a workflow to get you the "perfect" acoustic guitar sound with you piezo? all you would need is a audio interface a daw and a eq match plugin ...


    the problem is, acoustic gutiars sound so drastically different that profiles are not perfectly fitting for other guitars, so the best way woul be either

    profiling a channelstrip with a great EQ or a tonematch of your miced acoustic guitar