Is it possible to acheive Eric Johnson type of sound with the Kemper alone?

  • Kind of what the title asks. I'm out afer that soft violin like sound in Cliffs of Dover or the solo part in Manhattan. I've seen some rig rundown with Eric himself showin everything. It looks like expensive gear to acheive that types of mellow distortion sound and a lot of delays and echos.. I don' know where to start. Would be easier if there was a profile for it already but can't seem to find any.

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  • He is playing a loud Marshall with plenty of gain (with a guitar that does not have high output pickups). The delay repeats have reduced high end, so they don’t compete with the notes he is actually playing.


    A few years ago, I uploaded “Holdsworth Nights 2” to RE/RM. It may be useful as a starting point for that kind of sound. If you listen to the second guitar solo part in the clip, you’ll hear a similar kind of attack on the notes because of the way I played the faster part.


    Standard disclaimer: All three solos were one-takes, and done when someone was looking for a Holdsworth Rig - this is just a sound demo ;)


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  • Nice! Good playing. Yes I remember that thread. I found it when searching for this type of sound. I'll download the profile and see if it's a good starting point. Might have to tweak some delays and echos also, but I wish I knew the exact parameters of EJ

  • For what it's worth, there's a paid profile sold by ToneHawk Studios that has a 68 plexi with the BK Butler Tube Driver pedal in front. Take that profile and add a fuzz pedal, plus delay and I felt I was getting pretty close. The fuzz pedal is a key part.

  • For what it's worth, there's a paid profile sold by ToneHawk Studios that has a 68 plexi with the BK Butler Tube Driver pedal in front. Take that profile and add a fuzz pedal, plus delay and I felt I was getting pretty close. The fuzz pedal is a key part.

    Nice. Which one of all the distortion pedals did you use?

  • I guess it is possible.Take the fuzz-stomp and also try the recti-shapers..instead old Marshall profiles I would try some Friedman/Bogner type of thing.Personally I would try Splawn for this kind of overdrive since they have a very nice harmonical behaviour in the mids and lows..


    It is also a good idea to have a good Stratocaster which has a effective tone control for the bridge-PU.On my I use the bridge and middle PU together and roll back both tone controls to 3-5..try it and see what happens.Together with the combination of amp & fuzz distortion you should get a nice creamy mid-freq orgy which brings you into the Eric Johnson ballpark.But it is all useless if you can't deliver the quintuplets in lightspeed.;)


    Most of his "rolling"-violin effect comes from his technique and all the gear just supports this..


    PS


    Nothing to do with the EJ sound but some time ago I tweaked a yerevil "splawn vh synth" profile for some "rolling" stuff and had a lot of fun for this style of playing.Maybe a nice starting point for experiments?This profile needs higher output humbuckers though..

  • paults That Holdsworth Nights 2 patch causes the kemper to freeze on the latest stable OS. Been a long time since you tested it? When finding it in Browse mode, and then try to switch the chicken head know, nothing happens. I guess it's because the patch causes the amp to crash.

  • What spesific splawn amp are you referring to? I'm searching in the RE, but there are so many

  • Nice. Which one of all the distortion pedals did you use?

    The Tube Driver is baked into the profile, but I ended up adding the Fuzz DS pedal to it as well. I'd just mess around with different profiles and try adding a fuzz and see where you end up.

  • paults That Holdsworth Nights 2 patch causes the kemper to freeze on the latest stable OS. Been a long time since you tested it? When finding it in Browse mode, and then try to switch the chicken head know, nothing happens. I guess it's because the patch causes the amp to crash.

    I will check it tonight with my KPA. But, if you think any Rig created with an earlier OS is causing a problem with your KPA, I suggest contacting Support.

  • I will check it tonight with my KPA. But, if you think any Rig created with an earlier OS is causing a problem with your KPA, I suggest contacting Support.

    Nice. Yes I told them by mail. Would be nice if you could check also.. It happened after 5 or 10 minutes playing

  • That rig has been on the Rig Exchange for almost three years without any changes to it.


    How did you load it onto your KPA, into what Mode, and then, what did you do with the chicken head knob?


    Come to think of it, I don’t have 5.5.2 installed. I’ve got the Spring Reverb Beta installed. So, I won’t be able to exactly recreate your issue.

    I loaded it in with Rig Manager. Dropped it on to my Kemper. Then I loaded it via browse mode. Played for a few minutes and tried to switch to performance mode. Nothing happened.. So I switched the chicken knob to tuner, nothing happened.. Then I started to try the stomp boxes, nothing happened. Then I started scrolling the browse wheel to unload/reload the profile, but nothing reacted.. It was stuck on your profile. Had to then force the KPA off.

  • What spesific splawn amp are you referring to? I'm searching in the RE, but there are so many

    I love the Splawn Nitro.. FastRedPonyCar has a nice profile in the RE.This special one works fine with my P-90s Gibson Special and even better with the DiMarzio Injectors in my custom Strat.It hates low output SCs and hotter HBs though..I love to use it for Jimis Voodoo child.."hysterical",screaming highs..singing mids and vivid,3D-like bass..and even on the neck PU with the tone control rolled back it does pinch harmonics..

  • Give this one (attached) a try. Just made it a minute ago. I'm relatively happy with it, but I didn't do any refining, which may or may not improve things.


    The guitar I used is a Carvin Bolt with AP-11 SCs. These pickups are highly underrated in my opinion, and are a bit beefier than your average strat pickups. With that in mind, you may have to drop the definition parameter if your pickups are on the bright side. This profile should also work fine with PAFs.


    I should also add that how well you utilize this tone is going to be highly dependent on your technique. If your technique and vocabulary is similar to Johnson's, you'll be most of the way there. Let me know what you think!