Hi guys,
Although I have over 30 years gigging experience I'm not gigging much at the moment so most of my time with the KPA has been spent in my home studio or in rehearsal studios. At home I use Adam A7x monitors and I go straight into the studio's PA for rehearsals. I have absolutely no doubt the Kemper is light years ahead of my traditional valve amps in these scenarios but would I feel the same for live use?
Anyway, the crux of this post is that my old band decided to call it a day after 28 years and returned to our home town stomping ground to do their final gig ever on Friday night at The Grand Hall in Kilmarnock. We still hold the record for the largest ever crown there topping even The Sweet gig in the early 70's that spawned the song Ballroom Blitz 
I played with the band for 23 of those years; the first half on guitar before switching to bass for the next decade and a bit. Although I left 2 years ago they were kind enough to let me come back and do 6 songs on Friday. Several of the other ex members also made appearances along with a Gospel Choir for four songs and dancers for some tunes to so it turned into a bit of an extravaganza like The Band's Last Waltz 
. There were 47 people on stage at one point including a 7 piece horn section.
I took the Kemper with me and a 1x12 Mesa EVM12L Theile Cab for on stage monitor (I intend to go FRFR cab or even just straight IEM when the band I am currently rehearsing finally starts gigging regularly) . I just gave the FOH and Monitors a single mono XLR with the output section set to Master Mono and the -12db switch engaged.
I had loaded up one performance with with 5 rigs and a few stomps (just in case) to make sure I could cover anything that got thrown at me. The five rigs were all from a certain Amazed country guitar player also associated with an FRFR/GRFR speaker. They went from clean (Two Rock and 69 Marshal 1987 50w) to crunch (Marshall 69 1987 50w and 72 JMP) to full blown singing lead (Fuchs ODS50 with a profile named after a great jazz/blues monster who inspired the first ever Dumble amp 
) . I set up all 5 slots to add between 3 and 6 db boost using morphing on the second button push. At the end of the day I didn't use any of the stomps OR the morph feature. I used 3 of the 5 rigs (mainly just 2) and controlled everything else from pickup selector switch and guitar volume knob.
When I came off stage the monitor engineer ran over to me with a massive smile and said "Your guitar tonight was the best I have ever heard. It was fat, chunky, smooth, fluid in fact it was like liquid but also bright in ALL the right places! It just made my job SO easy because I had so much to work with." My ego nearly exploded because I mistakenly thought he said "your guitar PLAYING....." then I realised he meant the tone. He said that although the guitarist in his own band also uses a Kemper there was something about the combination of those specific profiles and the PRS 513 pickups (which he hadn't seen before) that just worked and created magic. I tried to explain to him that the gear has nothing to do with it as TONE IS IN THE FINGERS DUDE 
but he wasn't going to buy that one. We had a longer chat about it with some of the other stage crew too while they were derigging and the unanimous conclusion was that it sounded epic. The whole show was videoed with multiple cameras so I will eventually get a chance to see and hear it in the mix for mysleff.
The sound on stage was fantastic too (or at least as fantastic as it possible on stage that is euphemistically referred to as a "hostile sound environment". I can't wait to get back out gigging regularly again but for now that gig has blown away any lingering doubts about whether the KPA was really going to work for me as a live amp. Although I always thought it would be great live you still have those nagging little doubts until you experience it first hand.
Here's a few photos from the gig too:
