Boomy on neck pickip

  • Whenever I use the neck pickup on my guitars with the Kemper through my Powercab, The bass on my LP’s neck pickup is so pronounced. I can’t go from bridge to neck, and it’s difficult to EQ as I have to completely roll off the bass which means the bridge sounds completely thin.


    Any advice? Thanks.

  • I've encountered this too, with low notes booming out and muddying the whole sound. In my case I'm playing live with a DXR12 a few metres away at chest height, so I'm assuming its not a Kemper thing just a resonance thing. The best solution I've found is to add a 100hz high pass filter, which I can set on the DXR12 and has no effect on the general tone apart from the thinning out the very low notes (but actually in a good way for live use with a band). This will soon be an option on the output section of the kemper I believe.

  • Seemed more a guitar problem than a Kemper issue to.

    As mentioned before maybe some resonances.

    I also would advice an EQ with a low-pass close to 100Hz or lower.


    I can't remember that I ever have heard that a low pass option in the output preset will installed.

  • But why would it react so strangely with that guitar? It does it with my cab too, which is fine when I run it through a real amp. It’s only the Kemper. The bridge pickup is fine.


    I’ll have to try it with another guitar too.

  • Hiya Phil,


    I know with my les pauls (in particular) I've had to decide which pickup is the 'most used' and EQ my amp to that, and then play with the tone controls for the '2nd choice' pickup which often ends up a bit brittle and thin...


    Definitely work with that suggestion for cutting the low end with EQ - certainly when playing with others.


    I have a friendly joke with my bassist that he only sounds good because I sound so bad (when my guitar is solo'd with zero low end) :)

    PRS Custom 22's - Fender Strats - Diezel VH4 - Carol Ann OD2 - Toneking Imperial MK2 - Colin the Kemper - CLR Neo ii.

  • haha. It does sound great with the bridge pickup but is it a strange reaction to humbuckers? Maybe using a completely different profile for the neck would work and then using the remote in performance mode to change to it?


    I’d prefer it to react like a real amp though where you can just change pickups as you please without having to make sacrifices.

  • Both my PRS with 2 humbuckers are the same - I've made clean profiles and eq'd them so they sound a bit more like a neck pick-up so that I can just stay on my bridge...I agree though...it is weird!

    PRS Custom 22's - Fender Strats - Diezel VH4 - Carol Ann OD2 - Toneking Imperial MK2 - Colin the Kemper - CLR Neo ii.

  • I find this with Humbucker guitars in general with all my real amps as well as the Kemper so I don’t think its a Kemper issue. I suppose its just the full range monitor puting out some frequencies that ypur guitar cab doesn’t.

    I’m using a cab.


    This is much more than anything I’ve experienced from my amps.


    I will try the bass cut as mentioned.


    Thanks.

  • There are two things you can do:


    1 Put a .047 mF cap in series with the neck pu hot wire to thin it out, but even better;


    2 Wire up your Les Paul with a master bass roll off and master treble roll off. This is great for on the fly tweaks in tone with quite a bit of range.


    I have a Gibson 498t in one guitar which sounds sort of overbearing on it's own, but roll a bit of bass out of it and it turns into a magic pickup.

    Edited once, last by David C ().

  • I have had a similar experience: the notes C through D# tended to have a lot more bass than any other notes (both on the low E string and on the A string). I noted this on both the neck and the bridge pickup, though somewhat more pronounced on the neck pickup. So, I searched Google for the frequencies that corresponded to those notes. Turned out it's about at 130Hz like PhilUK84 noted above. I used the studio/parametric EQ centered around at 130Hz, adjusted the cut and the Q and was able to, pretty surgically, bring those frequencies back to where everything was nice and smooth, without having to reduce ALL of the lower frequencies. Your guitar(s) may resonate at a different frequency, so adjust to suit. Also, experiment with the placement of the EQ; placing it before or after the stack may make a difference.

    Be Thankful.

  • I had to adjust my pickups when going from Tubeamp to Kemper! the neck pickup and in general bass side was to much!! I think the bass strings have a greater signal than the thin strings. Its not a problem but I can feel the difference from a tube amp and Kemper.. on the Kemper the thin strings is a little bit weaker