Does a distorsion pedal from the stomp digitalize the sound?

the PROFILER has a very sweet and musical sounding, while at the same time very effective EQ.

using the EQ doesn't make the sound 'unrealistic' as you put it, it simply is an EQ that can be placed in front or behind the gain stage and intuitively used by the player.

I've seen plenty of pros that came from tube amps choose a rig, play a few chords and then adjust the EQ as anyone would on a 'regular' amp - no complaints.

EQ or stomps will not 'digitize' your sound, the whole PROFILER is a digital amp. Honestly, using the term digital in a pejorative manner makes no sense.

I'd suggest to stop worrying about what I assume is hearsay and simply react to the PROFILE as you did to your tube amp(s).

Need more gain? Dial it in.

Use the EQ, it really is quite nice.

Adjust the overall tonality with the DEFINITION parameter - interestingly enough, nobody has ever any reservations about using DEFINITION, although it is not present in any tube amp - or could be.

If it sounds good - it is good.

hth

As Don says, the whole thing is digital. But, in this day and age, digital is not to be equated with inferior.

The eq and gain work well but will not work in exactly the same was as the original amp..... For example, some tone control circuits on amps are interactive due to the circuit so, if you tweak the bass in one direction and the mid in another they interact. On other designs they are independent and the profiler doesn’t know this - it cannot. So it’s a great eq but it won’t work 100% the same as the original amp.

This is one reason why some profilers do multiple profiles of the same amp. It is capturing all the sweet spots (according to their taste of course). From each of these sweet spots, you can then tweak the gain and eq on the Kemper. Strictly speaking this may take the profile away from ‘reality’ as the mid control on the Kemper is unlikely to exactly correspond to the actual mid control on the amp.

Does this matter? I don’t think so. In fact, you have the best of both worlds as the multiple profiles capture exactly what the original amp did at given settings. Subtle eq and gain tweaks will be indistinguishable from the way the original amp would work in the real world to most people I think. Not so subtle tweaks go beyond what the actual amp would do and may sound cooler than the original amp. Or not. Depends :). If you care about it being ‘as real as possible’ then switch to the next profile on the same amp. If you care about making your ears happy, get close with the profile then tweak to go beyond reality. It’s often a nice place.

Quote from Gary_W

Strictly speaking this may take the profile away from ‘reality’ as the mid control on the Kemper is unlikely to exactly correspond to the actual mid control on the amp.

by this logic, all guitar tones that were ever recorded, our whole basis of what IS a great guitar sound could be described as 'unrealistic'.

Every guitar track is (heavily) treated with EQ on the recording & mixing consoles and with outboard gear.

it's all semantics, what counts is the tone.

Which is why in the next breath, I said I didn’t think this mattered

But this quest to have an exact duplicate of the original amp goes with the territory here - one of the main reasons why users love the Kemper is because it does indeed sound / feel realistic and just like the original, mic’d up amp at a certain setting. If realism didn’t matter to users then we’d all be using a Zoom 505 - it matters enough for the Kemper to be a successful and deservedly loved device.

I have seen it requested on here many times that the EQ section should work like the original amp but it doesn’t. Whilst I fully agree that it doesn’t really matter in practical terms and can take a profile in cool directions beyond the amp, we all know that if CK could find a way to make the eq of a profile behave in exactly the same way as the original amp then he would do so as this would take us closer still to ‘reality’ and make even more people buy the Kemper....... some folks get really, really hung up on this stuff. Of course, we would then trash that ‘reality’ for the sake of the song because what sounds awesome in isolation usually needs to sacrifice a lot to fit in to a typical recording.

Quote from Gary_W

Which is why in the next breath, I said I didn’t think this mattered

I know

my comment wasn't aimed as much against you as against the underlying 'logic' you used in an example to illustrate a point.

I'm aware you don't subscribe to this point of view (I think) but played devil's advocate, I guess.

Cool

Still very much in love with this box of tricks which started out great and has steadily improved in the 6 years I’ve been using it. Really pleased with the new reverbs, loved the delay release, am increasingly impressed with the output of the commercial profilers out there which seems to be getting better all the time and of course the free gems on the rig exchange. I’m excited for its future too - can’t wait for the editor that has been shown at NAMM (if an official video of what it can do would be available like you guys did with the delays, that would be welcome). It’s all good with reality and weird creative stuff. And all at a volume that means I can play when the children are asleep

Yep, I tend to think of the stack EQ as more like the EQ on a mixing desk. A mixing desk that has been designed to work on just the right frequencies for guitar sounds.

To answer the original question though, the distortion and OD stomps are likely to behave MORE like the pedals they are modeled on than the amp profiles do when turning knobs to extremes. This is because the profiler captures an almost perfect snapshot of the full signal chain being profiled UP TO the level of gain used on the real amp. Anything beyond that has to be estimated by the KPA. It generally does a pretty good job but can get a bit strange at extremes. Whereas the stomps are programmed to perform in an interactive fashion from outset.

MaqiEdits if you are finding that some profiles have too little gain and others have way too much gain, I would suggest taking a profile with too much gain and reducing it rather than one with not enough and increasing it. I find the Kemper tends to sound more natural when reducing gain than increasing. That might just be my taste but I would suggest trying it and see if you agree.

The only thing that matters in the end is that we find a sound we like rather than one that is absolutely "realistic". I often find it quite amusing that so many metal players refuse to use anything other than valve amps because they can't get a real valve sound from anything else. Then I listen to the guitar tones and think; it sounds so processed that it doesn't even sound like a valve amp any more

In fact, I am sure there are a lot of big name metal bands using Kemper, AXE, Helix, etc to record but aren't saying so because they need the endorsement deals from various valve amp manufacturers. It's ironic but I actually think digital is much better suited to most modern metal than valve nowadays.

Quote from DonPetersen

If it sounds good - it is good.

I think this is the thing that a great many people forget to focus on (less so here than in other forums or gatherings where people have strong religious feelings about what's "right" or "authentic" ).

Personally, I don't care if the sound is baked by little elves in a hollow tree. What matters is what comes out of the speakers, whether that's on the stage, FOH, or the final mix on a record.

Well, that's not entirely true...

Sure, first and foremost, how it sounds is what matters. However, once that's accomplished, there are a host of benefits to the digital world, such as being able to recall the exact same sound night after night on stage or in the studio. It's one of the reasons I don't miss the tape / analogue workflow even a little bit. No more Polaroids of mixer and outboard gear knob positions for this boy! Press a button, grab guitar, rock and roll.

I bleed ones and zeros.