Remote secrets: How are you using it in your live rigs?

  • One of the bands I play with is a kind of surf-inspired Americana, where I don’t need loads of quick-fire changes. Usually just switching on a tremolo or a slap back delay here and there. However, I play quite a few solos. With this band I’ve found it to be really convenient to have morphing enabled when second-pressing a slot in performance mode (I assign it to an expression pedal and use the second-pressing to reinstantiate the default state of a slot normally), and use EQ, compression and a low gain boost to morph all slots into an appropriate solo sound. Means I can have many different solo sounds in the same performance, depending on the song, or just have one main slot and use the others for more out there effects that can be called in for little phrases here and there in the set.

  • This a bit niche but I always have slot 5 loaded with an acoustic profile. When I play my PRS P22 (the one in my avatar) i can quickly flick the switch to the Piezo pickup and hit slot 5 for a glorious acoustic tone.


    I always have a wah in slot 1 but I find using the off@..... options doesn’t work for me so I leave it as On and use the toe switch in the EXP pedal to toggle Stomp A on and off. Feels just like using a real Wah. Doesn’t give me any surprises with the Wah>Volume etc acting weird and lets my use the old cocked wah trick too.


    I never really use a volume pedal and use pitch maybe 2 times a year so Wah to Volume and Wah to Pitch are totally redundant for me. However, I would love to have real time control of my Delay/Reverb mix at all times. However, I also like having morphing set to control Gain etc so the one thong I really wish we could permanently assign something like Pitch to....... or Volume to........ then linke to any parameter I choose to give a second level of morphing.

  • and lets my use the old cocked wah trick too.

    I don't use expression pedals but am currently working up a couple of Queen tunes and would love to be able to add that to the sound. His handmade guitar / pickups have always sounded like that to me, so it's a subtle cheat I'd like to employ.


    Do you have to have an expression pedal in order to use the wah?

    Kemper remote -> Powered toaster -> Yamaha DXR-10

  • Any expression pedal will work. The Mission EP1 wrks well for wah because the travel is shorter than most EXP pedals. The two downsides are 1) it isn't as good as other pedals for anything other than wah because it's too difficult to get an exact position. 2) it's stupidly (rip off) expensive for what it is. It is literally a Dunlop Crybay without any of the Wah circuitry for almost twice the price of the DUnlop INCLUDING the wah circuit :rolleyes:


    The best solution is to buy a cheap used Dunlop Crybaby and replace the input jack with a stereo connector wired to the pot and the footswich wired to the output jack.

  • Any expression pedal will work.

    My bad, probably didn't explain well. I don't use expression pedals in my setup (and don't want to), so I was wondering if there's a way to get the "cocked wah" trick into a rig without having one.

    Kemper remote -> Powered toaster -> Yamaha DXR-10

  • Nothing special here...1 performance per band ( although 1 band I have a performance for different guitars - gretsch vs Les Paul).


    Performances are generally the same - slots, from clean rhythm and lead (and a couple more for good measure). I use morph by double tapping the remote to add more gain and volume for riffs on rhythm channel, and more delay/reverb on lead channel for longer drawn out notes...

    3 expression pedals, 1 for pitch/whammy ( don;t use this anymore) , one for volume ( both Moog EP3) and converted crybaby for wah.


    And that's it baby!

  • Live I'm using just one performance.


    The slots are CLEAN (with some chorus) - DRY ROCK CRUNCH - METAL CHUG (with a little reverb/delay)- SOLO (with some FX) - SCREAMING SOLO (with LOTS of FX!)


    All morph to something special that I need during the set, for example clean can morph to the intro sound of "She Sells Sanctuary" and the metal chug can morph to the intro to "Spirit of Radio".


    I've disabled the looper button (after accidentally turning it on mid-gig one too many times!)


    Each slot has its own mix of FX that I can turn on and off during a song for extra variety. I've also got the -2 transposer locked and can control it using the reassigned TAP for the dropped songs in our set.


    I'm using a Mission pedal to control Wah/Pitch so it can be a Cry Baby or Whammy as required.


    So my whole set-up is guitar into Kemper into cab, controlled by the remote and the Mission pedal. That's it!

  • I find using 1 performance per song is best for me, to K.I.S.S.


    I use a Dunlop dv4 expression pedal as a volume pedal/wah and love Wah>Volume, how cool! Also expression pedal. I connect these pedals to the remote instead of the back of the kemper.


    I disabled LOOPER (a must do!@) and put rubber fittings over the performance up and down stomp buttons so those are effectively disabled.


    In general, I keep performances as a storage bank of the best profiles from a certain amp— so for example, I have a clean, crunch, Drive, drive SOLO rigs in my performance for my favorite Lonestar amp tones. I keep these as Gold Reference Rigs, so at any point, someone wants a great Fender Deluxe 59, bam, go to the performance and there are 5 nice (favorite) rigs sorted right there.


    I also have a few performances that contain my fav rigs per guitar.


    When I’m preparing to play for a show I can go through them or just browse my saved rigs to construct my band/live performance Performances. Those are set up as required by the song, but the 5th slot is always a swell of some sort.


    Finally, I chose to make the double tap the button for the rigs in performance NOT morph, but reset to default state. I use expression pedal for morph, and the ability to jump back to the default state is more useful than morph by stomp.


    Think that’s all for now! :). Just a few obvious observations, hope you like. :)

  • I use about 10 performances in my covers band. One is a 'generic' clean in slot 1 (Fender DRRI 65) slot 2 (Morgan ac 20) which gets me through quite a few tunes. But the most demanding of the performances is Queen's Bo Rhap which I have to use 2 performances to cover.

    This uses 6 rigs and from the Fanfare through the Orch section to the tail uses 4 of them - the last two involve a rig change mid phrase (different harmony set-ups) luckily this is 'almost seamless' but occasionally I stumble (literally) on the adjacent footswitch .... :D

    Still, it's all good fun .....:thumbup:

  • I'm constantly changing how I use the remote - I used to have one performance per 'amp', with slots 1 to 5 increasing in gain accordingly.

    Now, I have a performance per amp 'type' - for example, my Top Hat performance bank (my main one) has a couple of AFD amps in there, a Silver Jubilee, and a couple of Jimi's Caswell modded JCM's (one Greenback, one v30). I then have a wah and a morph pedal connected as well, across all performances (although the wah can be assigned to a different effect on certain patches - for example, a pitch shifter).

  • I find using 1 performance per song is best for me, to K.I.S.S.

    and put rubber fittings over the performance up and down stomp buttons so those are effectively disabled.

    If you use a different performance for each song but your performance up / down buttons are disabled, how do you change to a new performance? I've only had the remote for a week so there's probably something obvious that I'm missing here.

    Kemper remote -> Powered toaster -> Yamaha DXR-10

  • Ah, makes sense.


    I'm finding the remote excellent to work with. I'm going the one performance per song route and am currently just using different profiles for rhythm / solos, so I haven't even tapped into some of the other features like the dual tap for solos, morphing, etc.


    I've always used regular midi controllers in the past so I'm really enjoying the tight integration.

    Kemper remote -> Powered toaster -> Yamaha DXR-10

  • If you use a different performance for each song but your performance up / down buttons are disabled, how do you change to a new performance? I've only had the remote for a week so there's probably something obvious that I'm missing here.

    Hi Chris,

    I have the kemper on a stand (on stage) and I can just press the button on the kemper itself so for me it's not an issue to change performances via the remote, more of a liability with the mistakes you can make with a sloppy toe press. :)


    Also, morphing (and a expression pedal) most certainly should become your second best tool to the Kemper itself! Morph is so useful, every rig I use has a morph of some sort depending on what I need; usually rhythm will morph to more distortion or effects and solo morph to different delay, reverb etc.


    It's very easy (and possible) to just use a single rig and morph through most songs, but I like the simplicity of the performances and making sure I don't confuse rigs, LOL.

  • Hi Chris,

    I have the kemper on a stand (on stage) and I can just press the button on the kemper itself so for me it's not an issue to change performances via the remote, more of a liability with the mistakes you can make with a sloppy toe press. :)


    Also, morphing (and a expression pedal) most certainly should become your second best tool to the Kemper itself! Morph is so useful, every rig I use has a morph of some sort depending on what I need; usually rhythm will morph to more distortion or effects and solo morph to different delay, reverb etc.

    Yeah, I got into a one track mind with the remote and forgot that the front panel still works. D'oh! :)


    I'm hooking up with some guys next weekend to see if it's a good fit and it'll be the first run with the Kemper, so right now I'm just taking baby steps. Was actually supposed to get together today but it got bumped by a week, which gives me more time to get acclimated. Slowly chewing my way through the manual (which is very well written) and looking forward to truly understanding everything this beast can do.

    Kemper remote -> Powered toaster -> Yamaha DXR-10